The term ‘Development‘ (physical development) may be defined as – carrying out engineering, building, mining, quarrying and other such works in/on/under land. T...

Housing is an important aspect of city development. Population growth in a city is mainly attributed to two main reasons: migration from different areas in sear...

Spatial planning, at its best, can facilitate sustainable development. Planning policies, however, are no silver bullet for the implementation of sustainable de...

One of the last major spatial planning events was the 12th AESOP Young Academics conference, held at the University of Groningen 26-29 March 2018. Following las...

This is the first of two posts about cyborgs: what they are, and how they manifest as the hybrid objects and forms of knowledge that characterise much of place-...

In this post I explore how the notion of User Experience (UX), a key dimension of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), can enhance urban planning. Applying user-ce...

In this blog I explore the value of minimalism for many aspects of our urban lives. I draw parallels between such varied phenomena as urban acupuncture, resourc...

Picture credit: Shopping Trip, by carnagenyc on flickr, Non-Commercial CC Attribution 2.0. “It doesn’t matter what country or what political system you are from...

In early 2013, a freshman post-doc fellow, I was struggling around the idea of creating a research blog. At that time, not many blogs in the field of planning a...

The smart city concept builds on technological and governance innovations to better enable cities to face up to urbanisation challenges, including the ability t...

2016 has been another rich year for the blog of the AESOP Young Academics, with more than 20 posts published on a wide variety of topics (more before). With mor...

The smart city is much discussed as a sustainable urban development model. However, as discussed in former posts on the blog, “smartness” is in the eye of the b...

Figure 1. Transforming codes of understanding water supply from public sector water supply to water ATM 'Water' is understood both as natural resource and publi...

‘Urban metabolism’, ‘resiliency’ and ‘sustainability’ are competing concepts. ‘Sustainability’ is the oldest and more like an umbrella term for the rest. ‘Urban...

Is participatory planning about engaging everyone and making cities inclusive? Or about satisfying those who speak the loudest? These difficult questions affect...

Place-making affects all of us. Yet how many of us, apart from place-making professionals and decision-makers, can really shape the places we live in? This post...

The UN Summit Habitat III is just months away. At a critical time for climate change and sustainable development, public participation has a vital role to play ...

2015 has been the second year of the blog of the YA, a year of consolidation and some changes in the team of regular contributors. We published 24 posts and had...

Guest author: Dezsö Vajtho, Utrecht University, MSc Sustainable Development (LinkedIN). This post is a report from the two sessions organized by the AESOP Young...

Lazy August, you may have noticed that the blog slowed down in the last couple of weeks. Well, after a productive and rich year, warm summer - in Southern Europ...