Urban Planning is a new international peer-reviewed open access journal of urban studies

Collins and Raymond (2006), for instance, propose to not only see (participatory) planning as a matter of providing all participants with the possibility of “having a say” but also as an opportunity to bring different forms of knowledge together to learn together about a specific issue (Pretty 1995; Collins and Raymond 2006). To trigger this learning, Whatmore (2009) proposes to build ‘competency groups’ around opposing collectives in order to deconstruct their ‘knowledge controversies’. Podziba (2012), in turn, invites us to shift our focus from working towards shared values to learning to respect opposing value frameworks. Torfing et al. (2020) illustrate how competing governance paradigms co-exist in all public organizations and provide clues on how planners can navigate in highly conflictual contexts.

With this thematic issue, we want to draw lessons from these recent experiences in planning around polarization. We are interested in frameworks and cases that describe attempts to reorder how we perceive, think, act, and engage with our own self and the object of planning as living systems; how we can organize and engage with conflicts by introducing non-dualistic viewpoints and processes that blur the disjuncture between rational theory and social practice; and how we can rethink the instruments of planning to fundamentally engage with its relational nature.

References:

Collins, K. & Raymond, I. (2006). Dare we jump off Arnstein’s ladder? Social learning as a new policy paradigm. In: Proceedings of PATH (Participatory Approaches in Science & Technology) Conference, 4-7 June 2006, Edinburgh.

Podziba, S. L. (2012). Civic Fusion: Mediating Polarized Public Disputes. American Bar Association.

Torfing, J., Andersen, L. B., Greve, C. & Klausen, K. K. (2020). Public governance paradigms: Competing and co-existing. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Whatmore, S. (2009), Mapping knowledge controversies: science, democracy and the redistribution of expertise, Progress in Human Geography, 33: 587–98.

1. Socio-spatial regulation

a) The role of past and present bylaws, licenses, zoning, and plans in regulating LGBTQ+ lives in cities and suburbs.

b) The impacts of normative constructions of families, gender, and sexuality on community development plans and housing policies.

c) The (re)production of LGBTQ+ exclusions in public spaces through urban redevelopment priorities and/or policing strategies.

2. Queering plans and policies

a) The place of LGBTQ+ knowledge, networks, and lived experiences in social inclusion policies and community plans shaped by municipal agendas for creative, livable, digital, and sustainable cities.

b) The extent to which queer and transgender competencies inform municipal urban planning and policymaking.

c) The conflicts, impediments, and contradictions found in municipal urban planning and policymaking responses to queering planning.

3. Governance coalitions and activisms

a) The role of LGBTQ+ activists in reworking and resisting municipal logics to build community resilience.

b) Instances when LGBTQ+-inclusivity exceeds social planning to engage with an (in)visibility politics that may impact upon the tangible materialities of infrastructure.

c) The tensions, disconnects, and misrecognitions generated through the integration of LGBTQ+ and QTBIPOC activists into local participatory urban planning processes and planning discourses.

The smart city discourses focus on a techno-centered digital solution to urban problems/issues, to make cities more responsive, efficient, sustainable, and intelligent. It considers the use of technical or technological infrastructures and interventions as a means to ensure optimum efficiency with regards to urban planning and sustainable development (Goodman et al., 2020; Hollands, 2008; Roche, 2014). Smart cities can be also built based more on collaborative democratic approaches in which cities provide access to data and allow citizens to be part of urban innovation processes, thus building city governance through open and participatory people-centric approaches (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019; Helgason, 2002; Lee & Lee, 2014; O’Grady & O’Hare, 2012). Community engagement and citizen participation are not exclusive to smart cities and smart city planning (Arnstein, 1967; Innes & Booher, 2004; Staeheli, 2005); however, smart cities have shed a new light on these concepts and practices by providing new means to enable inclusive public citizen participation in urban and community planning process. There is a potential for smart engagement to represent the kind of direct democracy and participatory planning that define a vibrant civil society, with citizens engaged as active participants in the inclusive planning process with the ability to connect humans through physical, digital, online, and hybrid engagement.

This thematic issue invites scholars who are interested in a variety of new visions, facets and methods, practices, and tools for enabling smart engagements, in which smart technologies, infrastructure and governance, and inclusive planning processes all together foster social inclusion, democratization, communications, and engagements with the citizens. These bind the prospect of smart communities in which citizens are actively involved in the design of smart cities as users/consumers, as well as participants and co-producers. Case studies from inter- and trans-national perspectives to better examine the extent of citizen participation and engagement in smart cities are encouraged.

Authors are invited to address any of the following topics (but not limited to):

• Collaborative democracy and citizen participation in smart cities;
• Inequality, justice, and social and digital division in smart city planning;
• Community-based climate change planning with “the smart”;
• Smart engagement and community platforms;
• Smart engagement for urban regeneration;
• Assessment and evaluation of smart engagement.

References:

Arnstein, S. R. (1967). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of American Planning Association, 35(4), 216-224.

Cardullo, P., & Kitchin, R. (2019). Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city: Up and down the scaffold of smart citizen participation in Dublin, Ireland. GeoJournal. 84(1), 1-13.

Coe, A., Paquet, G., & Roy, J. (2001). E-governance and smart communities: A social learning challenge. Social Science Computer Review, 19(1), 80-93.

Goodman, N., Zwick, A., Spicer, Z., & Carlsen, N. (2020). Public engagement in smart city development: Lessons from communities in Canada's smart city challenge. The Canadian Geographer, 64(3), 416-432.

Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of hope. Edinburgh University Press.

Helgason, W. (2002, November 15). Inclusion through a digital lens [Paper presentation]. Thinking Smart Cities, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

Hollands, R. G. (2008). Will the real smart city please stand up? City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action, 12(3), 303-320.

Innes, J. E., & Booher, D. E. (2004). Reframing public participation: Strategies for the 21st century. Planning Theory & Practice, 5(4), 419-436.

Lee, J., & Lee, H. (2014). Developing and validating a citizen-centric typology for smart city service. Government Information Quarterly, 31(1), S93-S105.

O'Grady, M., & O'Hare, G. (2012). How smart is your city? Science, 335, 1581-1582.

Roche, S. (2014). Geographic Information Science I: Why does a smart city need to be spatially enabled? Progress in Human Geography, 38(5), 703-711.

Staeheli, L. A. (2005). Can American cities be sites of citizenship? What can we do about it? Urban Geography, 26(3), 197-199.

Visvizi, A., & Lytras, M. D. (2019). Smart cities: Issues and challenges. Elsevier.

Zukin, S. (1995). The culture of cities. Blackwell.

Contributions can focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

 - Determinants of actual, perceived, and subjective car dependency in urban settings: importance of design of public space, walkability, bikeability, or transit-oriented development;

- Forced car ownership, forced long-distance commuting, and car-dependent passengers;

- Mobility induced social exclusion, transport disadvantage, and car dependency;

- Urban form, society, and culture;

- Travel behaviour, residential self-selection, and mode choice;

- Sustainable urban planning and policy in relation to reducing car dependency;

- Spatial and socio-demographic variations of car dependency;

- Direct and indirect costs of car-dependent built environments.

References:

- Goodwin, P. (1995). Car dependence. Transport Policy, 2(3), 151–152.

- Mattioli, G., Anable, J., & Vrotsou, K. (2016). Car dependent practices: Findings from a sequence pattern mining study of UK time use data. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 89, 56–72.

- Newman, P., & Kenworthy, J. (1989). Cities and automobile dependence: An international sourcebook. Gower.

Existing research on encounters in urban spaces treats seriously everyday experiences, improvisations, and negotiations between strangers, where identities are produced, affirmed, and/or negated, and where differences are highlighted, assumed, and/or ignored. Recently there has been an explosion of (mostly Western-focused) research on conviviality in everyday urban life (Germain, 2013; Radice, 2016; Vigneswaran, 2014; Wise & Velayutham, 2009, 2014). This ‘convivial turn’ (Neal et al., 2013) is inspired by Gilroy’s (2005, p. xv) positioning of conviviality as centrally concerned with “processes of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life.” Convivialities research provides insights into everyday collective life, with many studies providing a valuable counterweight to the ‘vast sociology of hopelessness’ (Hall & Smith 2014). Make no mistake, though, this is no panacea. Simultaneously, research attunes us to the bubbling up of new forms of conflict, and the consolidation of old forms of marginalization. As Back and Sinha (2016, p. 517) note, we must attend to the “paradoxical co-existence of both racism and conviviality in city life.”

For this thematic issue, we invite papers that explore varieties of co-existence amongst strangers expressed in and through everyday encounters—improvised, convivial, conflictual, or otherwise—in urban public spaces. We welcome research that takes seriously the challenge of treating everyday public space as a domain where strangers encounter one another. Contributions work with and/or against the convivial turn, whether to identify and address, expose and challenge, and/or expand and surpass its limits and possibilities. We especially welcome research working at the conceptual boundaries of the convivial turn in one or more of the following ways: (1) by elaborating concepts/cases that make trouble for research on conviviality in urban public space; (2) by examining how urban public spaces facilitate or hinder improvisation in interactions between strangers; and (3) by engaging with potentially overlooked intersections between conviviality and adjacent concepts including but not limited to sociability, (in)civility, interdependence, solidarity, reciprocity, mutuality, and superdiversity.

In the post-industrial world of urban redevelopment, manufacturing and other industrial activities have typically been relegated to the urban margins, if not ‘offshored’ entirely in the now familiar global divisions of labour. Pushed out of sight and out of mind by modernist zoning practices designed to protect more privileged land uses, the contributions of manufacturing to urban vitality have, until recently, been forgotten and/or overlooked by planners and development practitioners seeking to cash in on post-industrial momentum. However, this is now changing (e.g., Ferm et al, 2020; Nawratek, 2017). New examples of ‘conspicuous production’ (Baker, 2017) signal a potential turning of the tide. Following Karl Baker’s (2017) original suggestion, making production conspicuous means weaving manufacturing back into the fabric of the city, bringing visibility and proximity to the sector in ways that open space for engagement, attention, and support. Within this policy context and spatial reorientation, this issue looks thematically at planning for, with, and/or through manufacturing as a critical new form of green urbanism, building on and extending ideas advanced recently in this journal by authors in “Future Commercial and Industrial Areas” (Vol. 6, No. 3, 2021) as well as by the two guest editors organized under the theme of “keeping blue collars in green cities” (see, e.g., Dierwechter, 2013, 2021; Dierwechter & Pendras, 2020; Pendras & Williams, 2021). In addition to asking how to make urban-based manufacturing greener, this thematic issue specifically explores how emerging efforts to retain (and expand) manufacturing in so-called ‘post-industrial societies’ are now helping cities and city-regions to be greener and more climate friendly by situating production not as a problem to be overcome but rather as an important component of urban sustainability. The papers collectively will explore how planning systems in different settings are both adapting to and accelerating this possibility.

References:

Baker, K. (2017). Conspicuous production: Valuing the visibility of industry in urban re-industrialisation. In K. Nawratek (Ed.), Urban re-industrialization (pp. 117-126). Punctum Books.

Dierwechter, Y. (2013). Smart city-regionalism across Seattle: Progressing transit nodes in labor space? Geoforum, 49(0), 139-149.

Dierwechter, Y. (2021). Climate change and the future of Seattle. Anthem.

Dierwechter, Y., & Pendras, M. (2020). Keeping blue collars in green cities: From TOD to TOM? Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2(7).

Ferm, J., Panayotopoulos-Tsiros, D., & Griffiths, S. (2021). Planning urban manufacturing, industrial building typologies, and built environments: Lessons from Inner London. Urban Planning, 6(3), 350-367.

Nawratek, K. (Ed.). (2017). Urban re-industrialization. Punctum Books.

Pendras, M., & Williams, C. (2020). Secondary cities: Exploring uneven development in dynamic urban regions of the Global North. Bristol University Press.

We consider cities as complex relational entities that are shaped by an interplay between broader structural configurations and dynamics and local practices and activities (cf. Kihato, 2013). We therefore argue that approaches with a focus on structural dynamics and everyday practices can not only be merged but they should also be combined for a better understanding of cities. However, this combination of perspectives poses methodological challenges, particularly in terms of research comparing cities, as the description of the internal interplay needs to be abstract without losing the specificities. Our aim for this thematic issue is to accept this challenge and to discuss methods that bridge the divide between approaches focusing on the “structural” on the one hand and the “everyday” on the other, while being able to place individual urban accounts within the larger realm of city-systems.

We invite contributions focusing on one or more of the following questions:

1. Which particular methods, sets of methods, and research designs lend themselves to understanding cities through everyday practices as well as structural forces?
2. Which methods allow comparative urban research that pays attention to the common trends as well as to the particularities of cities?
3. What are suggestions for expanding criteria of urban comparison and proposals for heterodox descriptions of city-networks?

References:

Appelhans, N. (2017). Urban planning and everyday urbanisation: A case study of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. Transcript.

Healey, P. (2012). The universal and the contingent: Some reflections on the transnational flow of planning ideas and practices. Planning Theory, 11(2), 188–207.

Kihato, C. W. (2013). Migrant women of Johannesburg: Everyday life in an in-between city. Palgrave Macmillan.

Nijman, J. (2007). Introduction: Comparative urbanism. Urban Geography, 28(1), 1–6.

Robinson, J. (2011). Cities in a world of cities: The comparative gesture. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(1), 1–23.

Schramm, S., & Ibrahim, B. (2019). Hacking the pipes: Hydro-political currents in a Nairobi housing estate. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(2), 354-370.

Cities change and face various challenges that are increasingly complex, intractable, persistent, and not amenable to simple solutions. What is more, when governments prove to be incapable of being the only possible supplier of public goods and services, collaborative forms of public service delivery gain significance. This phenomenon is known as co-production and refers to the collaboration between service professionals and users in the design and delivery of public goods and services. Co-production also represents an increasingly apparent mode of engagement with public agencies. Underlying co-production is the idea that networks of public, private, and non-public organisations and partnerships with citizens can increase context-specific and effective solutions while maintaining the public values. Although co-production has often been associated with the delivery of public goods and services, at its core it remains a concept that refers to all phases of delivery processes: co-planning (co-design), co-testing, co-financing, and co-evaluation. Thereby, it aims to create win-win situations that are beneficial for all as cities adapt, transition, or transform into more sustainable and desirable futures.

As interest in co-production grows, however, so does the sense of unclarity for the concept. This unclarity might be rooted in a spectrum of participants or be reflective of the diverse phases of the processes co-production features. Following the argument that this lack of clarity requires attention, this thematic issue seeks to foreground methodologically comparative approaches to study co-production as a way to sharpen understandings and definition of differences and commonalities that might enhance the concept of co-production. These can include, but are not limited to, frameworks and heuristics covering intra-, cross-case variations in single or multiple case studies. To illustrate, distinguishing or discussing actors, modes, or phases of co-productive processes could be points of entry for such comparative insights.

Cities in the Global North and South are marked by rapid socio-spatial transformation stemming from socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural transitions. The result is often socio-spatial fragmentation, frequently produced by the processes of urban planning and governance. In this thematic issue, contributions are concerned with the nature of planned urban borderlands as spaces of spatio-temporal in-betweenness signifying difference and inequality.

We understand difference across and inclusive of its multiple and intersecting domains, among them species, class, caste, race, gender, age, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or religion. Similarly, we embrace definitions of inequality along the lines of, for instance, spatial, social, economic, educational, or infrastructural. We are particularly interested in the spaces of spatio-temporal in-betweenness (urban borderlands; Iossifova, 2015) that the convergence of difference and inequality produces. These are the physical spaces in-between differently characterized fragments of the city that may exist only for a short time as the city ‘develops’ and transforms, or the physical spaces in-between such fragments that remain permanently to remind us of the differences that produced them.

We are interested in the production of such borderlands, and particularly in the role that architectural, planning, or governance practices play in the (re)production of these spaces across time and space. We also invite contributions that discuss—even suggest—alternatives to the usually crippling effect of such spaces on human health and wellbeing as well as socio-ecological sustainability. We invite contributions from across the spectrum of disciplinary fields and/or professional practice.

Accordingly, this issue of Urban Planning challenges the common perception of neoliberalism as a post-Fordist Keynesian phenomenon. It asks to frame the concept of post-socialist neoliberalism, focusing on the transition from a state-led (or party-led) economy to a market-led one while examining how this influenced the formation of regions, cities, and buildings. We invite scholars interested in developing the framework of post-socialist neoliberalism through place-based analyses of market-oriented urban development and architecture in various global contexts. Authors are encouraged to present research that challenges the conventional understanding of neoliberalism, illustrating the unique circumstances of post-socialism and the manner in which it influences not only urban spaces, but also transnational landscapes, individual buildings, and dwelling units.

References:

Curtis, A. (2021). Can’t get you out of my head [BBC mini-series]. BBC. https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head

Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.

Peck, J., Theodore, N., & Brenner, N. (2013). Neoliberal urbanism redux? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3), 1091-1099.

Rolnik, R. (2019). Urban warfare: Housing under the empire of finance. Verso.

Housing design is greatly informed by social and cultural norms or expectations around home use and everyday life. This thematic issue examines the interrelationships between social norms, cultural expectations, home use, everyday life, and lived experiences to technical housing standards and design outcomes. It is interested in how a socio-technical discourse can produce new insights, evidence, or analytical frameworks for housing and design research studies.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the use and space of homes were extensively studied, with analysis frequently combining design research, qualitative, and statistical methods. These studies became formative to technical standards, design companions, and typical design solutions that determined the way housing is designed and delivered. For example, graphical and dimensional methods of assessing plan layouts based on furniture and movement requirements are still in use today as part of space standards to regulate minimum dwelling sizes, dimensions, and functionality.

Interactions between norms and standards are contextual to different periods, regions, and cultures. How domestic practices and uses become normative and translated into technical standards can thus greatly vary. While housing priorities and lifestyles continuously change, significant historical events have often acted as a catalyst to long-term transformations in housing policy, design, and expectations. The COVID-19 pandemic and its lived experience at home is such an event, which has profoundly challenged existing notions of domesticity and dwelling functionality or usability. World War II and post-war public housing programmes or the fall of communism and the rise of housing marketisation are other historical examples.

This issue invites papers that can advance a new socio-technical discourse through a study of technical housing standards and the lived experience or changes in socio-cultural norms that challenge them.

Urban shrinkage has affected an increasing amount of cities and towns in the past decades and has attracted increasing interest of urban studies scholars as well as urban policy-makers. Urban shrinkage can have several causes, but most often is rooted in structural economic crisis, resulting in population decline, vacant and decaying buildings, and underused infrastructure. While some cities manage to return to a growth path after shrinkage, most may have to prepare for further shrinkage or stabilisation instead. Generally, the urban shrinkage discourse advocates a departure from the dominant growth paradigm, and policy advice focuses on adapting to shrinkage rather than a forced attempt to return to growth (e.g., Hospers, 2014; Mallach et al., 2017; Wiechmann & Bontje, 2015). However, this is easier said than done: both academics and policy-makers still struggle with how to revitalise shrinking cities sustainably in the absence of growth (Liu, 2020). Yet, given the current trends of urbanization and demographic change, this issue has global relevance (Jarzebski et al., 2021).

In the early 21st century, the “limits to growth” debate of the 1970s revived under the radical header of “degrowth.” The degrowth movement aims for fundamental changes in economic and political systems and societies to reduce resource and energy use and achieve a sustainable society. Degrowth offers a critical perspective on the exploitative and destructive nature of the global capitalist system. Instead, societies should prioritise social and ecological well-being (D’Alisa et al., 2014; Kallis et al., 2018). So far, the main protagonists in the degrowth debate are academics and environmental activists, but degrowth has yet to become a prominent discourse in urban planning. According to Lehtinen (2018, p. 44), growth is still the primary objective in urban planning, though in a highly selective form: favouring concentrations of population and consumption. Several recent publications call for developing a degrowth research and policy agenda in urban planning (e.g., Brokow-Loga & Eckardt, 2020; Ferreira & Von Schönfeld, 2020; Savini, 2021; Xue, 2021). However, concrete examples of degrowth-based urban planning strategies, let alone their practical implementation, are still lacking.

Urban shrinkage and degrowth thinking seem to have much to offer to each other. Could degrowth be an inspiring and guiding new urban planning paradigm for the sustainable development of shrinking cities? Could shrinking cities be relevant testing grounds to make degrowth’s idealistic principles work in planning practice? This thematic issue aims to bring together novel empirical contributions taking stock of first attempts to connect degrowth to urban shrinkage, exploring in how far this potential unfolds in practice and what obstacles these attempts face. Contributions are asked to address at least one of the following questions:

 - When, why, and how do cities and local planning departments implement post-growth approaches? In how far do these approaches reflect degrowth principles? And can the results be considered sustainable?

- When, why, and how do degrowth ambitions get embedded in broader strategic frameworks for urban planning?

- What obstacles do urban planners and policymakers encounter when trying to mobilize degrowth approaches (Lamker, 2021; Lamker & Schulze Dieckhoff, in press)?

- How would a degrowth strategy for a shrinking city look like? And how useful are recent urban degrowth-based planning proposals for shrinking cities?

- Are there examples of degrowth-like practices or implemented degrowth-like proposals in shrinking cities, and what can we learn from them about the potential of degrowth principles?

References:

Brokow-Loga, A., & Eckardt, F. (2020). Postwachstumsstadt. Konturen einer solidarischen Stadtpolitik. Oekom.

D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.). (2014). Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. Routledge.

Ferreira, A., & von Schönfeld, K. (2020). Interlacing planning and degrowth scholarship. A manifesto for an interdisciplinary alliance. disP: The Planning Review, 56(1), 53-64.

Hospers, G. J. (2014). Policy responses to urban shrinkage: From growth thinking to civic engagement. European Planning Studies, 22(7), 1507-1523.

Jarzebski, M. P., Elmqvist, T., Gasparatos, A., Fukushi, K., Eckersten, S., Haase, D., Goodness, J., Khoshkar, S., Saito, O., Takeuchi, K., Theorelll, T., Dong, N., Kasuga, F., Watanabe, R., Sioen, G. B., Yokohari, M., & Pu, J. (2021). Ageing and population shrinking: Implications for sustainability in the urban century. npj Urban Sustainability, 1(1), Article 17.

Kallis, G., Kostakis, V., Lange, S., Muraca, B., Paulson, S., & Schmelzer, M. (2018). Research on degrowth. Annual Reviews of Environment and Resources, 43, 291-316.

Lamker, C. W. (2021). Becoming a post-growth planner. Rooilijn. https://www.rooilijn.nl/artikelen/becoming-a-post-growth-planner

Lamker, C. W., & Schulze Dieckhoff, V. (in press). Becoming a post-growth planner: Inner obstacles to changing roles. In F. Savini, A. Ferreira, & K. C. von Schönfeld (Eds.), Post-growth planning: Cities beyond the market economy. Routledge.

Lehtinen, A. A. (2018). Degrowth in city planning. Fennia, 196(1), 43-57.

Liu, R. (2020). Strategies for sustainability in shrinking cities: Frames, rationales and goals for a development path change. Nordia Geographical Publications, 49(5), 49-74.

Mallach, A., Haase, A., & Hattori, K. (2017). The shrinking city in comparative perspective: Contrasting dynamics and responses to urban shrinkage. Cities, 69, 102-118.

Savini, F. (2021). Towards and urban degrowth: Habitability, finity and polycentric autonomism. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 53(5), Article 0308518X20981391.

Wiechmann, T., & Bontje, M. (2015). Responding to tough times: Policies and planning strategies in shrinking cities. European Planning Studies, 23(1), 1-11.

Xue, J. (2021). Urban planning and degrowth: A missing dialogue. Local Environment. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2020.1867840

Cities act as the territorial interfaces between social and planetary transformations. They are the centre for discussing, planning, and implementing climate (mitigation/adaptation) and energy (PV, hydrogen, etc.) transitions.

In this thematic issue, we aim to shed light on how these processes of transformation are dealt in so-called “ordinary” cities. The term “ordinary” cities has been suggested by urban theorist Jennifer Robinson (2005) to highlight the importance of studying urbanization processes in out-of-the centre, small- and medium-sized cities (e.g., in the Arctic and the Global South) that may have different conditions and capacities in dealing with the ensuing urban transitions.

Today, these ordinary towns are facing the massive challenge to transition to carbon-free/climate adaptive/positive energy cities in 30 or less years and meet the international obligations their respective countries have signed up to (e.g., Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement). Also, it is in ordinary towns where most of the world population lives and where the biggest impact of the abovementioned transitions will be accrued from.

As such, we aim to push for “ordinary” approaches to urban planning vis-à-vis climate, energy, and social challenges for harnessing diverse strategies to deal with socio-urban transformations. We welcome theoretically-informed, empirical, and comparative contributions of diverse methodological or ontological foundations on any of the following themes and questions:

- Which (new) capacities, relationships, and resources are present in “ordinary” cities in regard to climate and energy transitions?

- How do new forms of (collaborative) governance, such as co-design and living labs, play out in “ordinary cities”?

- How do “ordinary” cities translate (inter)national obligations and treaties to their urban governance?

- How does access to climate-proof infrastructures and positive energy cities play out along different dimensions, such as gender, ethnicity, and class, in “ordinary” cities?

- How can new inter- and trans-disciplinary methods help to better understand the challenges and opportunities as well as planning and managing the climate and energy transitions in “ordinary cities”?

We live in a rapidly urbanizing world where many cities are facing a housing affordability crisis. There is a shortage of all types of housing and a severe shortage of affordable housing in urban areas. Housing affordability is context sensitive and dependent on the type of development and the jurisdiction, however, housing cost burden is distributed unevenly across households of different income and ethnicity. Addressing the housing needs of different types of households—from families with children to the elderly, and especially low-income households—is important for the planning and development of cities.

There is an ongoing debate on the barriers to housing supply. Several studies have examined regulatory barriers that contribute to housing shortage. Some researchers contend that the strictness of land use regulations, limited availability of developable land, and environmental laws are correlated with high housing prices. Others have explained that non-regulatory barriers and challenges, such as community opposition to higher-density housing projects as well as the cost and availability of labor and construction materials, also contribute to housing affordability crisis. Advocacy groups assert that housing is a human right. Given this, how might we address the housing affordability crisis?

Proposals are invited for a thematic issue of Urban Planning, a peer-reviewed open access journal, to explore the theme of housing affordability crisis. Researchers could, for instance, examine the following types of questions: What are the causes and consequences of housing affordability crisis? How might state laws and local government policies address the problem? Contributions also could be based on case studies that examine housing development projects and related concerns of loss of sense of place, gentrification, and displacement as well as apprehensions of projects’ impact on traffic, environmental quality, property value, and neighborhood character.

The discussion about children as users of the city is even more urgent at this moment, since the experience of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic has showed very vividly how important public urban spaces are to all citizens, children in particular. The closing down of play-spaces brought about the realization that urban space needs to be reshaped giving children equal share. Streets, sidewalks, public spaces are the “fourth environment” for kids growing up and should be designed as such. In many cities around the world, emergency responses to the pandemic have included giving priority to children as users of open spaces. Indeed, the pandemic has made visible the importance of designing urban neighborhoods, in their entirety, with children in mind, and not only spaces specifically designed for children.

The quest for a truly “childhood city” (Karsten, 2002) is still quite elusive, but of extreme urgency, if we are to escape the present-day domestication of play, children’s growing addiction to screens, and the resulting impact on children’s physical and mental health as well as the alarming disconnection of children from nature. As urban designers, we need to address children as citizens with equal rights (if the premises of UNCRC are to be realized) and at the same time make cities more livable for all. To do this, we need a holistic approach, a multi-scale coordinated effort, from the macroscale, policy level to the organization of districts and neighborhoods and the physical design of streets, school areas, and open spaces. As urbanization rates continue to soar, humanity’s own existence and survival in the age of the Anthropocene depends on how children will relate to cities. If they experience them as friendly, welcoming, and nature-inclusive, they will love them as adults—and this is what, ultimately, urban design should aim for.

Contributors are asked to address (one of) the following questions:

• How do children experience the city?
• How safely and independently can they get around?
• Where can children play and gather? What is the role of play in the city?
• Are children’s needs and opinions taken into account in urban design? How can children participate in the design process?
• How can cities “use” children to their benefit to become more livable for all?

Both theoretical and case-study based approaches are welcome.