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.

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.

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.

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”?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In recent years, social scientists have paid increasing attention to the diversity of newcomers´ arrival processes, observing an increasing heterogeneity of people who migrate, with different aspirations, temporal perspectives, and political responses. Spatial settings where arrival takes place vary from diverse urban spaces with longstanding experiences of arrival, to more suburban or rural spaces which are often less equipped with arrival-related infrastructures, to (often peripheral) camps (Bovo, 2020). Arrival infrastructuring can be understood as a mediating process which connects individuals (and their social, economic, and cultural capital) with places and societal contexts of arrival. Arrival is shaped by a variety of policies, actors, and places that enhance, channel, or hinder how people gain a foothold in the city (Meeus et al. 2019).

Current research on arrival infrastructures focusses on both structural conditions of arrival as well as newcomers’ agency in shaping arrival processes, illustrating the close interconnectedness of formal, non-formal, and informal arrival infrastructures (Fawaz, 2017). The lens of in/formality is a fruitful perspective to grasp arrival infrastructures and the dynamic interplay and blurry lines between different actors, including state, market, and citizens. Moving beyond the formal–informal dichotomy, this thematic issue seeks to explore the practices, negotiations, and interconnections between different (migrant and non-migrant) actors involved in arrival infrastructuring.

We invite articles that explore the diversity of in/formal practices related to arrival and the ongoing negotiations between more or less institutionally embedded actors. We specifically encourage contributions exploring the various and fluid roles individuals involved in arrival processes play. Articles can, for example, address some of the following questions:

-              Migrant agency in the context of arrival: What role do migrants themselves play in the (co-) production of arrival infrastructures and in shaping how different in/formal structures play out and gain relevance?

-              Between solidarity and exploitation: Which forms of support evolve in the light of commercialisation, privatization, and drawbacks of welfare states?

-              Street-level bureaucracy: How do institutionally embedded actors and their daily routines and practices shape newcomers´ arrival?

-              Transformative engagement: How can urban planners, NGOs, and state representatives deal with urban in/formalities and facilitate arrival?

We welcome theoretical and empirical articles applying methodological approaches such as ethnographic research, mapping, and mixed methods. We invite contributions from across the spectrum of disciplinary fields and/or professional practice. Submissions covering case studies in both the Global North and South may focus on a specific city/country or be comparative in nature.

References:

Bovo, M. (2020). How the presence of newly arrived migrants challenges urban spaces: Three perspectives from recent literature. Urban Planning, 5(3), 23–32.

Fawaz, M. (2017). Planning and the refugee crisis: Informality as a framework of analysis and reflection. Planning Theory, 16(1), 99–115.

Meeus, B., Arnaut, K., & Van Heur, B. (Eds.). (2019). Arrival infrastructures: Migration and urban social mobilities. Palgrave Macmillan.

For well over a decade, everyday urban life has been shaped by neoliberal austerity policies that affect everyday caring practices in both private and institutional contexts (Gabauer et al., 2022; Lawson, 2007; Theodore, 2020). However, practices of care are not only part of individual survival; they are also key elements of urbanity and of lived social day-to-day experiences in public spaces. Particularly in times of multiple societal crises, individual and communal quality of life are under severe stress. Therefore, caring communities and the resulting urban cultures of care are becoming an increasingly important element of social justice and cohesion in diversified urban societies.

Caring communities respond to unequal access to resources on the basis of intersectional powergeometries by caring for one another in a self-organized manner. As a result, new and more resilient social relationships might develop, which also collectively empower and enable socio-political democratization. However, caring communities do not simply take place in various spaces; they also produce public spaces of mutual care, which then become part of the city's social infrastructure (Latham & Layton, 2019; Middleton & Samanani, 2021; Simone, 2004). Therefore, a growing number of caring communities results in formal and informal cultures of care (Greenhough et al., 2022), which have the potential to create urban cultures of care with high social and spatial visibility and thus opportunities for social interaction.

In this thematic issue, we aim to develop further the concept of “caring communities” and to establish “urban cultures of care” by connecting different strands of already existing discourses. We invite articles from various fields related to urban studies that contribute novel conceptual ideas, insightful case studies, and critical perspectives. We particularly encourage young researchers and authors with a practice-based perspective on urban cultures of care to join this issue.

Reference list:

Gabauer, A., Knierbein, S., Cohen, N., Lebuhn, H., Trogal, K., Viderman, T., & Haas, T. (Eds.). (2022). Care and the city. Routledge.

Greenhough, B., Davis, G., & Bowlby, S. (2022). Why ‘cultures of care’? Social & Cultural Geography, 24(1), 1–10.

Latham, A., & Layton, J. (2019). Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces. Geography Compass, 13(7), Article e12444.

Lawson, V. (2007). Geographies of care and responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(1), 1–11.

Middleton, J., & Samanani, F. (2021). Accounting for care within human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46(1), 29–43.

Simone, A. (2004). People as infrastructure: Intersecting fragments in Johannesburg. Public Culture, 16(3), 407–429.

Theodore, N. (2020). Governing through austerity: (Il)logics of neoliberal urbanism after the global financial crisis. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(1), 1–17.

In recent times, people and communities around the world have faced numerous global crises, leading to increased expectations for urgent action from governments, industries, and civil society. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 global objectives, were designed to address key challenges, such as poverty eradication, sustainable cities and communities, and reduced inequalities, to create a better and more sustainable future for all. Aligned with the UN SDGs, this call for contributions to a thematic issue of the Urban Planning journal seeks to advance participatory planning approaches and methods exploring connections between planning and the climate emergency. Its key goal is to demonstrate the diversity of responses and contributions from participatory planning and design in addressing the UN SDGs.

Concurrently, the adoption of smart city technologies by businesses and city administrations aims to optimise resources and enhance public governance. However, these predominantly techno-centric and top-down approaches often overlook crucial social, civic, and environmental factors, prioritising urban contexts while neglecting rural areas. To achieve the SDGs, it is crucial to shift the focus from solely “smart” technologies to participatory planning involving meaningful community engagement and collaboration with stakeholders from the early design stages to project completion. By leveraging information and communication technology, participatory planning and design can foster a sense of shared ownership, social responsibility, and investment in sustainable development for cities, regions, and rural communities.

By embracing participatory planning and design, we can collectively strive for inclusive and sustainable urban development, promoting social equity, economic prosperity, and environmental stewardship. However, participatory planning practice comes with challenges, and this thematic issue hopes to curate a diverse collection of articles that report on both challenges and opportunities.

Planning has always been an ambivalent practice. On the one hand, for the ruling powers planning can be a tool to exercise control and establish hierarchies of power. On the other hand, it can be a tool to distribute resources and lay ground for welfare structures. However, the benefits of planning have never included everyone and there is always a need for a critical eye on planning as a governing practice. This critical eye is today urgent as attacks on democratic institutions are now spreading so fast that, according to Freedom House (2021), there is reason to talk about an “antidemocratic turn” in history. Over a few decades, in Europe and elsewhere, there has been an increasing support of far-right and ethno-nationalist parties. Many of these draw on ideologies of white supremacy and disregard fundamental principles of democracy, such as respect for all people’s rights regardless of race, gender, religious beliefs, etc. In a recent report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), it is stated that in as much as half of the world’s democracies, democracy is currently in retreat. A similar negative tendency is visible among the world’s non-democracies; half of them are becoming significantly more repressive (International IDEA, 2022).

This thematic issue for Urban Planning focuses on the consequences of anti-democratic tendencies for planning practices in different geographical and political contexts and how they risk reinforcing existing un-equal power structures based on e.g., gender, sexuality, class, race and colonial relations. We especially welcome contributions which critically reflect on the effects of current anti-democratic development, what the implications are for different social groups, and what new roles planning must take on in order for it to contribute to new and democratic futures for all.

References:

Freedom House. (2021). Nations in transit 2021: The antidemocratic turn. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/NIT_2021_final_042321.pdf

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. (2022). The global state of democracy 2022: Forging social contracts in a time of discontent. https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/sites/default/files/2022-11/the-global-state-of-democracy-2022.pdf

Walkability has emerged as a key focus of multi-disciplinary research, linked to the aims of reversing car-dependence and re-enabling walking as a healthy, environmentally sustainable and sociable mode of mobility. While often conflated with actual walking, etymologically walkability refers to the capacity for walking enabled by the built environment. It has been linked to the key neighbourhood-scale morphological properties of access, density, and mix, as well as micro-scalar elements of the street section, such as public/private interfaces, footpaths, and landscaping. Yet none of these attributes can be reduced to a simple measure, nor are these separable from the natural conditions of topography or climate. The multiplicity of interrelations between these various factors is what defines the overall urban design quality.

This thematic issue will present a collection of articles engaging with the conundrum posed by the imperative for urban codes leading to the formation of walkable environments, and the intrinsic limitations of reducing such a complex spatio-temporal concept to a single index or metric. How can walkability be operationalised in a non-reductionist way? What research methods can capture spatial properties linked to walkability? Which urban codes can be effective in enhancing walkability and what are their limitations? How do walkable environments emerge informally? What are the unintended outcomes of formal codes for walkability? The issue will include articles contributing to urban theory, research methods, and planning practice, advancing understandings of walkability.

As a tool serving other disciplines of enquiry, artificial intelligence (AI) comes of age in the first decades of the 21st century. AI offers the potential of a potent discovery, design, and analysis paradigm for questions in urban planning. For instance, AI algorithms generate large-scale city models from point clouds, and machine learning predict scenarios for resilient urban environments. This thematic issue raises a forum for cross-disciplinary discourse at the intersection of urban planning and AI. It will discuss emerging use cases in the urban planning practice, and the relevant AI techniques being used and developed, and articulate challenges and opportunities for urban planning in the age of AI.

This thematic issue looks specifically at two aspects of this intersection: AI for urban planning, where existing AI techniques are applied to questions of interest for UP scholars; and AI in urban planning, where (UP and other) scholars raise new challenges for AI or develop new methods in AI. Topics of interest include, without being limited to, AI for and in:

• Land-use planning
• Environmental planning
• Smart and sustainable mobility
• Energy efficiency; community engagement
• Safety, security, and resilience
• Multi-actor systems and multi-stakeholder deliberation
• Explainable AI
• Data, knowledge, and workflows
• Ethical, justice, and legal issues

Contributions to the thematic issue are welcomed from researchers and practitioners who identify with communities such as urban planning, built environment or environmental geography, or AI communities (e.g., machine learning, knowledge representation, natural language technologies, multi-agent systems), or situate themselves with a multi-disciplinary lens.

What does it mean for city planners and designers to shape places through and with time? The 2020 pandemic restrictions helped re-introduce Carlos Moreno’s 15-minute-city concept of a chrono-urbanism; however, notions of temporal planning have deeper roots. Christopher Alexander’s 2003 Nature of Order series highlighted the importance of time and geometry for unfolding appropriate built form complexity. Kevin Lynch’s 1961 classic Image of the City and What Time Is This Place? (1972) highlighted planning as a temporal art, distinct from other temporal arts such as music, and his broad characterisation of city types in Theory of Good City Form (1981) identified three epochs of city form—the Cosmic city, the Organic city, and the Mechanical city—as representing successively dominant, spatiotemporal paradigms from the cosmological and societal to the scientific.

Time is implicated in planning’s capacity to address societal needs and challenges. Further, the socio-spatial structures and practices in Global South cities, for example, have distinctive, temporal narratives, which remain underexplored in mainstream planning discourses of alternative city imaginaries. So, this is an appropriate juncture to reflect upon seemingly neutral technical assumptions underlying varied approaches to urbanism. Which temporalities have societies producing distinctive city forms espoused? How might currently dominant, linear-temporal modes be influencing mainstream land-use/spatial planning and design practices? What implications do contemporary digital modes have for education, praxis, resilient 15-minute-cities, or ‘smart’ future-city visions?

This thematic issue is concerned with concepts, practices, and implications of time and the role of spatiotemporal perceptions and knowledges in cities, and/or their planning and design—highlighting these as implicit tools or frameworks, underlying identities, and forms of urbanism, from antiquity to the medieval, modernist, and contemporary eras—across a variety of localities and scales. It explores what, if any, cultural implications such analyses might have, e.g., decentring and potentially decolonising indigenous knowledges and enabling diverse temporalities to be identified and deployed in urban planning and design.

Consequently, this issue asks what lessons and possibilities a greater awareness and more explicit treatment of the temporal dimension might offer cities, planners, and designers, in addressing complex contemporary challenges from climate change and public health to place-shaping, spatial justice, and digital/virtual urbanisms.

We invite papers addressing a range of temporal perspectives including, but not limited to the following:

• To what extent have societies associated with specific city forms addressed time as either cyclical, linear, or structured in other ways? How were indigenous ontologies or knowledge bases embedded in genius-loci/senses of place? And what lessons may these suggest for re-integrating cultural values into urban planning?
• How are modern modes of tracking, recording, and mediating time—embedded in current approaches to pedagogy and praxis, underlying current or emerging challenges in either; policymaking, zoning, or urban ‘regeneration/renewal’ practices—driving innovations in socio-environmental mapping or monitoring tools?
• Which benefits and/or problems have contemporary digital/virtual modes and temporal representations conferred upon everyday practices or upon elements of stakeholder praxis, such as visioning, and community consultation, including capacities to go beyond participation into co-production of outcomes?
• What might be the contribution of a temporal perspective in avoiding the slow and out-of-sight violence created by toxic geographies/non-economic urban loss?
• Are current 15-20-minute ‘chrono-urbanism’ perspectives likely to deliver resilience for public health and other emergencies, or do they risk valorising the dominant linear temporal mode and its inherent limitations?
• How could the inclusion of diverse temporalities, forgotten and hidden spatiotemporal narratives from the Global South aid the development of alternative theories, tools, practices, and forms?
• What are the implications or risks of prevailing temporal visions for ‘smart’/future-cities, and potentials for alternative temporalities to better ensure achievement of citizen-led, rather than technology-led, outcomes?

Representative of the growing awareness of pressing social, political, planning, and environmental issues in the food context, such as sustainable and fair food system design, is the thematic boom around the research field of food geographies. They open a critical view on current food production, preparation, and consumption relations in urban contexts from a geographical perspective and integrate also decolonial, feminist, and intersectional approaches. The shift of food policy to the urban level forms one of many solutions to current debates on the negative impacts and social injustices of food production, consumption, and waste.

By signing the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact in 2015, hundreds of cities recognized the importance of food as a significant urban system and its necessary socio-ecological transition(s) for achieving urban sustainability goals. In this context, public catering (food provided in public municipal entities) can be seen as ‘leverage point’ for transitions toward sustainable food systems. Similarly, civil society initiatives, such as food policy councils, demand for democratic participation in the decision-making processes on local food systems. Also, they call for ‘food justice’ in the sense of overcoming postcolonial power relations in urban foodscapes that led to exclusions from access to fresh, healthy food for disadvantaged social groups due to interlinked factors, such as class, gender, race, and age.

The aim of this thematic issue is to discuss the importance of food geographies for the research of social-ecological transition processes of the food system for a sustainable city. Hereby, the field of food geographies with its methodological approaches at the interface of different disciplines is to be critically assessed and new interdisciplinary perspectives are to be opened up.

Food environments are the collective physical, economic, digital, policy, and socio-cultural conditions that influence food and beverage choices. They are directly linked to diets and health outcomes such as overweight, obesity, and noncommunicable diseases.

Food environments are complex and, in recent years, economic, welfare, and technological developments have increased this complexity. The Covid-19 pandemic led to record levels of food waste in wealthier countries, due to retail closures, supply chain shocks, stockpiling, and the logistical challenges of redistributing food. The economic aftermath of the pandemic has contributed to a cost-of-living crisis which has further accelerated the growth of the charity food sector, and food banks in particular, as they become an evermore established feature of food and welfare landscapes. Greater levels of inequality and falls in income have had a negative impact on diet, with households left reliant on cheap, filling, processed foods. Against this backdrop of crises and inequality, the digitalization of food environments is becoming a central issue in public health, yet little is known about this emerging field. A variety of landscape metaphors including food deserts, food swamps, and food brownfields have been deployed to provide a critical lens for moving beyond a sole focus on retail outlets and towards pathologizing food environment failures.

All these factors motivate us to draw upon collective expertise in these fields for a thematic issue and provide an overview of current debates and evidence.

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

•             Digital food environments

•             Food insecurity and charitable food aid

•             Conceptualizing and measuring food environments

•             The impact of Covid-19 on food environments

•             Disruptions to food systems and environments