Call for Abstracts

CONFERENCE TRACKS

1. ADAPTIVE PLANNING THEORY

With the rapid socio-economic developments and environmental challenges, handling uncertainty and dealing with unknowns become particularly important, especially in the planning processes and among planners. Since the ability to adapt starts from the premise of uncertainty, the acknowledgement of uncertainty and ability to incorporate it in our processes is necessary to make actors receptive. On the other hand, planning is a discipline rooted in knowledge, and most of what we constitute as knowledge in planning is framed under evidence. However, the complexity of the evolution and functioning of our socio-economic systems and ecosystem requires us (as planners) to continuously challenge the way knowledge is generated and acquired. To operationalize adaptive planning, it’s argued that professionals, stakeholders and researchers need to function in a genuinely transdisciplinary mode (fields such as planning, transport, economy, data analytics, technology, environmental issues, sociology etc.), where all contribute to and benefit from decision-making and the continuous generation of new knowledge. Additionally, this track aims to discuss what constitutes knowledge in planning and how to deal with the unknown. With the rapid socio-economic developments, environmental challenges and the unknown impacts of the future as well as of planning decision and actions, it becomes highly important to discuss future prospects of planning theory. While discussion regarding the evolution of planning theory remains a broad topic, in this track, papers related to planning theory and adaptivity, uncertainty, resilience including the following themes are welcomed:

- Adaptive Planning Theory;

- Resilience Theory and Planning;

- Evolution on Planning Theory and Practice;

- Links between Theory and Practice;

- Role of Planners in Society;

- Governance of the Unknown

2. CLIMATE CHANGE CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES

Climate change and natural hazards affect territories and natural resources at all geographical scales. Currently, major coastal cities are planning for sea-level rise while decision-makers are committing to new measures to adapt and mitigate. On the other hand, forests are facing fatal wildfires, inland droughts and floods have increased and are even becoming life threatening, while ice melting in the Arctic is becoming another major concern. In this situation, planners and communities should be aware of potential impacts from natural hazards and climate change and build up preparedness and resilience at policy, institutional, and individual levels. In this sense, it becomes necessary to increase our capacities in dealing with uncertainty and the unknown.

As such, discussions on how planning could address adapting and mitigating risks and vulnerability of socio-ecological systems are necessary. Increasing the ability to withstand natural hazards, adapt to change and re-establish new socio-economic balances, improve the metabolism of urban/territorial ecosystem are highly important. In this track, we welcome contributions on new methodologies, instruments, and articles, which broaden the discourse and explore topics on adaptation and mitigation, including but not limited to:

- Community resilience;

- Land-use policies in the face of uncertainty;

- Energy efficiency in urban contexts;

- Energy transitions towards the use of renewable resources;

- Ecosystem services in planning;

- Water systems;

- Circular economy;

- Territorial metabolism;

- Disaster risk reduction and resilience.

3. TECHNOLOGY AND ADAPTIVE PLANNING

The way we plan, design and build our settlements and territorial systems has changed rapidly over the last decades. The advances in technology and the ability to have multiple and vast data available from different sources is a great opportunity for planning and planners but at the same time, data management is an enormous challenge. Still, technology can also be seen as a tool to overcome some of the challenges of uncertainty. In this age of information, massive volumes of data about cities, environment and citizens, can be found and extracted everywhere. Since these big data bear great potential for providing accurate and enhanced insights on issue at hand and at the same time improve the decision-making process, its understanding and effective application becomes a key factor for unravelling uncertainties and successfully adapting and developing towards smart and resilient cities. Additionally, the further unexplored potentials of our technological advancement and big data can open interesting discussions regarding the “unknowns” and how to deal with them. As we posed from the general theme discussion, one of the challenges of this conference is also to discuss and explore the questions related to knowledge and what constitutes knowledge in planning. How we can use technology to overcome some of the known unknowns and how to deal with the “unknown unknowns” are also important questions that can be addressed as part of this track.

This track welcomes discussions regarding better utilization of big data and technology in the planning field, current applications of these means/approaches, revealing the problems and challenges that need to be taken in consideration (overcome poor data quality, data analytics, information security etc.). Additionally, the track welcomes papers that focus on the use of technology to overcome climate change challenges as well as the following themes:

- Technology in planning and for planning;

- Artificial intelligence in planning;

- Big Data in planning;

- Technology as a solution for climate change challenges;

- Technology and Resilience;

- Technology to foster new knowledge.

4. SOCIO-ECONOMIC RESILIENCE

Decision makers and planning professionals design and implement strategies aiming to improve quality of life. While many planning programs treat social development and economic development as a separate set of practices, there is considerable overlap between the two fields. At the same time, perspective from other areas of planning practices (transportation, land use, real estate etc.) is required, in order to achieve the goals/better results in improving the quality of life and enhancing development.

This session emphasizes issues of particular concern to social and economic topics such as migration, housing, local and regional development, increasing disparities and social resilience. These topics are scrutinized under the prospect of uncertainty and “unknown”. Papers that examine various aspects of planning through the lens of equity, diversity, socio-economic sustainability and focus on the distinctive circumstances and concerns of planners are welcomed. What are the uncertainties that are associated with the above issues and how can they be overcome? What are the known unknowns of planning actions in terms of socio-economic resilience? What methods can be used to generate new knowledge in planning? What kind of knowledge do we need to tackle socio-economic resilience? Some of the topics that papers could focus on are:

- Local and Regional Development;

- Disparities at different territorial scales;

- Inner- Peripheries;

- Equity in planning;

- Preserving Diversity;

- Cultural and Historical Heritage;

- Housing.

5. TERRITORIAL GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS

This track aims at exploring how territorial politics and governance could adapt in a context of increasing uncertainties and complexity of unknowns. Discussions/debates regarding participatory planning, place-based governance, network governance and territorial governance are important issues to be tackled in planning where actors/stakeholders and their interests are highly diverse. These issues are crucial in dealing with the aspects of reducing uncertainty and most notably generating new knowledge, approaches and shaping paradigms of knowledge-making. Discussions on governance platforms that are resilient are at the core of this track. Issues that can be addressed in this track include:

- Multi-level territorial governance;

- Territorial rescaling;

- Political processes behind territorial mismatches;

- Participatory planning and co-management tools to deal with the myriad interactions and stakeholders, etc.;

- Policy integration;

- Institutional design;

- Europeanization of Planning.

6. TERRITORIAL GOVERNANCE AND SPATIAL PLANNING IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE

While the previous five tracks deal with issues pertinent to planning and governance in terms of uncertainty and unknown, this track restricts these issues in a confined geographical and socio-spatial scope of South-east Europe. This part has distinct features of planning systems, territorial governance as well as challenges related to development and climate change. South-east Europe will be hit the most by the rise of sea levels and climate change impacts. Additionally, the political situation in the Western Balkans, with most countries aspiring to join the EU and on a difficult path of transition from dictatorial regimes towards democracies, is resulting in mixed systems and further challenges of territorial governance.

As such, the absence of capacities, financial means and political attention in dealing with resilience increases the uncertainties of the future. Meanwhile, the lack of adequate data, knowledge and technology (when compared to the rest of Europe) poses an important question regarding the governance of unknown and generating of new knowledge.

Thus, this track invites all authors whose research focuses on the South-east Europe and Western Balkans to contribute with papers looking at, among others:

- Spatial Planning and Territorial Governance

- Resilience Policies and Approaches

- Participatory planning

- European Integration

- Climate Change

The articles can be of comparative or country-specific focus.

7. COVID-19 AND TERRITORIAL GOVERNANCE

This conference track is dedicated to papers focusing on research on the impacts of COVID-19 in spatial planning and territorial governance. The pandemics are a planning problem, too: it has impacts on planning (governance, processes, instruments), for planning (paradigms and approaches) and impacts in space. Planning plays a great role in the way our society uses space and the governance of space. Thus, we would like to invite, young academics who are conducting research on COVID-19 (or pandemics in general) and spatial planning to open a discussion regarding different dimensions of the interrelation between the two. Papers could focus on the below topics:

- Impacts of COVID-19 on spatial planning systems;

- Impacts of COVID-19 on the way we use space;

- Impacts of COVID-19 on planning approaches;

- Impacts of COVID-19 on planning policies and design;

- Role of planning after the pandemic.