Suburban Development and City Extensions

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.

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.