Street Transformations and Urban Justice

Transforming car-centric streets towards a more balanced mix of uses has become widely recognised as a key urban policy to achieve liveability and sustainability goals related to social cohesion, climate mitigation and adaptation, public health, and transportation. Particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, concepts such as complete streets, tactical urbanism, superblocks, and street experiments have become a mainstay of urban policy in cities worldwide.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the apparent desirability of these street transformations, they also raise the question of who benefits and who loses from them. Indeed, street transformations may create or strengthen existing socio-spatial inequalities, raise issues of inclusiveness and representation, or lead to unintended consequences such as green gentrification (Anguelovski et al., 2023; Nello-Deakin, 2024). Building upon previous efforts in this direction (Smeds et al., 2023) and a broader turn towards critical transport studies (Kębłowski et al., 2019), this thematic issue invites contributions exploring the implications of street transformations for urban equity and justice. Among other possible related themes, we encourage submissions addressing the following topics:

• Impacts of street transformations on urban mobility, public space, and broader urban dynamics (e.g., housing, commercial activity) from a socio-spatial equity perspective
• Conflicts regarding street transformation and competing uses of space
• Issues surrounding public participation and inclusiveness in street transformation processes
• Equity assessments of the existing status quo in urban streets
• Analyses of policies, legal regulations, and guidelines for urban equity at a street level (e.g., design manuals, traffic codes)

We welcome submissions in a variety of formats and methods, from empirical case studies to theoretical or viewpoint articles. Likewise, we welcome diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding and assessing urban equity and justice.

References:

Anguelovski, I., Honey-Rosés, J., & Marquet, O. (2023). Equity concerns in transformative planning: Barcelona’s Superblocks under scrutiny. Cities & Health, 7(6), 950–958. https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2023.2207929

Kębłowski, W., Van Criekingen, M., & Bassens, D. (2019). Moving past the sustainable perspectives on transport: An attempt to mobilise critical urban transport studies with the right to the city. Transport Policy, 81, 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.05.012

Nello-Deakin, S. (2024). “Winner” versus “loser” streets? Pedestrianisation and intra-neighbourhood equity. Journal of Urban Mobility, 5, 100074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urbmob.2024.100074

Smeds, E., Verlinghieri, E., Kocsis, J., Connolly, J. J. T., Polgár, A., Manaugh, K., Waygood, E. O. D., Castañeda, P., & Wargent, M. (2023). ‘Seeing like a citizen’: Rethinking city street transformations through the lens of epistemic justice. Planning Theory & Practice, 24(5), 697–729. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2023.2273664

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.