Abstracts Submission

The following issues are currently accepting abstract submissions:

The Urban Canvas: Spatial Computing in Planning, Analysing, and Representing the Cityscape

Academic Editors: Valerio Signorelli (University College London), Andy Hudson-Smith (University College London), and Heejung Kwon (Yonsei University)

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 September 2025
Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 January 2026
Publication of the Issue: July/September 2026

This thematic issue aims to provide insight on the current and future role of spatial computing technologies in representing urban data, and to understand the opportunities and barriers of bridging physical and digital environments.

Contributions will cover practical and envisioned uses of spatial computing technologies to:

- Improve city stakeholders' understanding and participation in urban design projects and data visualization in urban settings.

- Explore scenarios and visions of utopian and dystopian futures of the cityscape.

- Support climate adaptations practices in response to climate disruptions.

- Access the palimpsest of multisensory memories in urban places.

Urban studies have predominantly relied on visual representation to plan, design, and communicate features of the built environment. Maps, renderings, interactive digital models, and synthetic immersive experiences have been explored using different techniques to test scenarios, monitor the performance of urban forms, and enable conversation among city stakeholders.

The advances and democratization in spatial computing technologies are set to further transform how planners model, visualize, and engage with cities. Like the gaming approaches explored in urban planning (Hudson-Smith & Shakeri, 2022), where gaming frameworks allowed planners and citizens to “play” with urban scenarios, spatial computing technologies enhance this capability by offering multi-sensory, layered, and contextualised interactive environments, promoting citizen participation and enriching the urban design processes.

Spatial computing emphasizes the role of space-as-a-medium. Through augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) approaches, it enables the blending of digital and physical features, leading to innovative forms of designing, analysing, and representing the cityscape. Solutions introduced by companies like Meta, Apple, Niantic, and OpenAI, along with reality capture methods, demonstrate the ability to enable novel data-driven urban visualizations and simulations. They offer deeper understanding of scale, context, and the potential impact of urban interventions, allowing walkthroughs of cityscapes before they are constructed, promoting accessibility, playful experimentation, and co-creation activities (Batty & Hudson-Smith, 2001; Lovett et al., 2024).

Spatial computing not only enhances the level of immersion through enhanced visual fidelity and real-time data visualization, but extends further by providing layers of accessible urban knowledge using digital twins, portals and situated visualisations where urban spaces turn into canvases for digital habitation, blending with the physical experience of the city.

References:

Batty, M., & Hudson-Smith, A. (2001). Virtuality and cities: Definitions, geographies, designs. In P. F. Fisher & D. Unwin (Eds.), Virtual reality in geography (pp. 270–291). Taylor & Francis.

Hudson-Smith, A., & Shakeri, M. (2022). The future’s not what it used to be: Urban wormholes, simulation, participation, and planning in the metaverse. Urban Planning, 7(2), 214–217. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v7i2.5893

Lovett, L., Signorelli, V., & Hudson-Smith, A. (2024). Exploring the materiality of augmented reality markers through arts-led cocreation: Drawing, weaving, and tiling. Leonardo, 57(4), 379–386. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02542

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.

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Suburban Development and City Extensions

Academic Editors: Henriette Bertram (TU Braunschweig), Angela Million (TU Berlin), and Uwe Altrock (University of Kassel)

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 September 2025
Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 January 2026
Publication of the Issue: July/September 2026

Under the pressure of a housing shortage experienced in a number of countries, greenfield development is debated and already underway in many major cities in Western industrialized countries despite a strong commitment to reurbanization. Compared to city expansion projects in the 19th and 20th centuries, the complexities of these developments have increased. As new urban quarters are developed on city fringes, municipalities are often confronted with conflicts and civic protests as they balance growth needs with competing public–public and public–private interests and ecological constraints.

This thematic issue seeks to explore how these dynamics manifest in the international context today. Our focus is on the multiple contradictions of urban development that become obvious through the lens of suburbanization: between a growing GDP and a pressing need for affordable housing as well as between the existence of powerful (state and corporate) stakeholders promoting development and the increasing environmental and other constraints that impede development. How are suburbanization and city extension promoted and managed in this context of demographic changes, housing market pressures, and environmental concerns? What roles do private developers and a growing desire for new suburban living forms play in this process? The question of how cities are expanding in response to these pressures raises fundamental concerns about sustainability, equity, and governance, which this issue seeks to address.

We invite contributions that examine topics such as:

    The role of policy and planning in reconciling housing demands with environmental and spatial constraints.
    Public participation, civic engagement, and the conflict between urban expansion and local resistance.
    Innovations in suburban infrastructure and mobility that reflect the changing needs of suburban populations.
    Planners’ imagined target groups of suburban living and their self-perception in the planning processes;
    Comparative case studies of suburbanization processes in diverse political and cultural settings.
    The intersection of economic development and social mobility in shaping new suburban geographies.
    The revaluation and regeneration of suburban areas amidst urban densification limits.
    How different spatial and planning concepts, such as hybrid urban–suburban typologies, influence contemporary city extensions.

This issue is open to theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented contributions from across the disciplines of urban and regional planning, landscape architecture, social geography, and urban studies looking at formal suburban development and planned city extensions. We encourage submissions that critically reflect on the emerging trends in suburbanization, the negotiation of urban planning ideals, and the role of stakeholders in shaping the future of suburbia and the edges of the cities.

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