RuR - CfP for Special Issue Sustainability Transformation
Call for papers for a special issue on "Planning for sustainability transformations: Theoretical approaches, practical experiences, and political consequences"
Transformative change is in! Global environmental changes, high resource consumption, biodiversity loss, and rising social inequalities have made sustainability transformations more necessary than ever. As a result, transformation research has become a dynamic and multidisciplinary field, and a “transformative turn” has gained traction in the sustainability sciences (Blythe/Silver/Evans et al. 2018). New ways of theorizing, empirically exploring, and supporting transformations have emerged, building on the normative premise that radical socio-technical and social-ecological innovations, institutional, economic, and political reforms and behavioral shifts are essential to support desirable futures (Blythe/Silver/Evans et al. 2018). But so far, contributions by urban and regional planning scholarship to multi-disciplinary debates on broader sustainability transformations have been limited (exceptions include Wolfram 2016; Carroli, 2018; Levin-Keitel/Mölders/Othengrafen et al. 2018; Hofmeister/Warner/Ott 2021; Lukkarinen/Nieminen/Lazarevic 2023), or have focused almost exclusively on the transformation of land use (e.g., Larsson 2006; Hersperger/Oliveira/Pagliarin et al. 2018). Conversely, transformation research has contributed little to urban and regional planning scholarship and has often sidelined the rich insights available in planning theory and methods, e.g., on policy integration, multi-level governance, science-policy coordination, stakeholder participation, institutional reform, or the normative and ethical foundations of policymaking.
This call for papers for a special issue of Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning will foreground the contribution of spatial planning scholarship and, more broadly, the spatial sciences, to debates on sustainability transformations. We welcome contributions that reflect on
1) how the theoretical foundations of spatial planning scholarship contribute to research on sustainability transformations (and vice versa),
2) empirical research on practical experiences of planning for such transformations, and/or
3) the procedural, institutional, and/or substantive reforms needed to increase the transformative capacity in urban and regional planning.
We invite papers that reflect on the theoretical foundations of planning scholarship and practice or that engage with empirica research with conceptual, methodological, and critical ambitions. We welcome papers focusing on planning contexts in the global North or South, as well as studies of urban and infrastructural transformations in historical and contemporary contexts.
Please send us a 300-word paper proposal in English or German by 30 June 2024. Initial feedback and notification of acceptance or rejection will be sent before 15 July 2024.
The deadline for submission of full papers for peer review is 30 October 2024.
Call for Papers (PDF)
Guest editors:
Prof. Dr. Tanja Mölders, Chair of Environmental Planning and Transformation, University of Freiburg, tanja.moelders@upt.uni-freiburg.de
Prof. Dr. Jochen Monstadt, Professor of Governance of Urban Dynamics and Transitions, Spatial Planning Chair, Utrecht University, j.monstadt@uu.nl
Niclas Ruppert, PhD candidate, Environmental Planning and Transformation Chair Group, University of Freiburg, niclas.ruppert@upt.uni-freiburg.de
For subject-related queries, please contact the guest editors, for organisational queries, please contact the Editor-in-Chief of Raumforschung und Raumordnung | Spatial Research and Planning, Prof. Dr. Andreas Klee (andreas.klee@arl-net.de).
