Themes and Tracks – AESOP 2019

Planning for Transition

Contemporary cities and territories face significant challenges – natural disasters due to climate change impacts, ecological crises, growing socio-economic unrest, global migration, political rifts including a rise of right wing factions, ambitious public works and mega-projects – all of which require new capacities in dealing with such individual and multiple groupings of such challenging and profound changes. It is a matter of fact that at international level a discourse if not a condition of transition is pervading sectors and societies. This discourse points to alternative patterns and solutions to many of the challenges faced. A quickly changing scenario requires forms of planning, both locally and globally, which bear the capacity to support and manage mutable urban and environmental conditions. In fact, although cities do incessantly change, policy-makers and institutions are never fully prepared to respond to complex and risky situations, as well as relying on planning and policy tools which are often outdated;

in addition, also existing theoretical frameworks, concepts, cognitive abilities and approaches become ineffective or outmoded.
Each unintended or unanticipated change comes as a break to existing social, political, and administrative routines and yet is may be anticipated that mechanisms of collective reflection and action will be generated. The congress invites scholars and practitioners to present and discuss case-studies of cities and projects that have engaged in meeting challenging situations – supporting transitions in urban contexts. Specifically, it is aimed at offering an understanding of the forms of knowledge, concepts, tools, and skills needed to plan and address transition. Furthermore, it seeks to explore whether (and how) managing such changes has brought any overall reconsideration of the city design model and towards more general institutional reconfigurations.

Tracks

1- Transforming built heritage and landscapes

Transforming built heritage and landscapes

Co-chairs
Adrianna Kupidura (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
Anna Marson (University Iuav of Venice, Italy)
Rozana Darwich (Université Paris-Sorbonne, France; Université Libanaise, Lebanon)

Planning for Transition

Tracks

Transforming built heritage and landscapes

Urban design for multilevel planning

Teaching planning for the transition

Institutional change and regional transition

Methods and technologies for transformative planning

Community-based planning and social innovation

Theorizing urban change: complexity and ethics

Transition paths and urban futures

Climate proof cities and resilient societies

Urban metabolism and circular economy

Housing, gentrification and socio-spatial dynamics

Healthy city planning: food, physical activity and social justice

Planning for accessibility and sustainable mobilities

Planning, Law and Property Right: in the face of transitions

Tourism, public spaces and urban cultures

Urban and Regional economics of transition

Special Session

9 – 13 July 2019

The event takes place in convenient locations.