Highlights from 2016

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 more than 8 thousand visits, we saw a significant increase of visibility. Like in past years, visits have come from all around the world - Italy, USA, UK, Germany, India, France, Netherlands, Spain, Australia and Greece being the ten most represented countries.

In 2016, we welcomed two new regular contributors, Chandrima Mukhopadhyay (CEPT University, Ahmedabad) and Ian Babelon (Northumbria University) and a new member in the Editorial Board, Lorenzo Chelleri, who had been contributing regularly to the blog. I am confident their ideas and energy will enrich the blog from 2017 onward.

The list of Open Access journals is now an independent page and has reached a considerable size (more than 70 journals) and quality thanks to contributions from many people.

So, let's take a look at the highlights from 2016, starting with the occasional contributors.

• Alessandra Feliciotti (University of Strathclyde), focusing on the relation between urban form and resilience, reflected on the end of the positivistic dream and advocated urban design to embrace change and uncertainty.
• Isabelle Anguelovski (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) co-authored with Lorenzo Chelleri a critique on the use of the concepts of resilience and sustainability, highlighting the risk that 'most of the times social negative implications for the most vulnerable groups constitute the trade-offs for enhancing overall and better city services and environment'.
• Enzo Falco (Gran Sasso Science Institute) and Alessandro Rinaldi (Sapienza University of Rome) co-authored the most read article in the history of the YA blog, a summary of the main findings of a research on the (not so bright) future perspectives in academia for Italian PhD holders - a topic of interest way beyond Italy.
• Manoel Schlindwein (TU-Darmstadt/Tongji University) discussed the new zoning plan for São Paulo and the conflicts surrounding it, particularly in relation to urban mobility.

And now on our regular contributors.

• Ian Babelon delivered a coherent set of posts about public engagement and many buzzwords around it. I appreciated particularly his discussion of how public engagement could (and should) be more than "reflecting" and be oriented to "transforming".
• Adam Radzimski concluded his experience as regular contributor with a reflection on the reconstruction of L'Aquila after the 2009 earthquake, and the meaning of 'living and moving' in a post-disaster city.
• Tiziana Susca kept up with her methodological and empirical discussions around sustainability, environmental assessment and climate, and summed up the COP 21 agreement of Paris in a handy post.
• Chandrima Mukhopadhyay contributed with rich empirical material from her research in Indian cities and theoretical reflections on topics such as urban financing, smart cities and innovation. The discussion on the way the concept of smart city has been 'imported' in Indian cities is particularly timely.

Looking forward for an even richer 2017!

(Simone Tulumello)