Amsterdam’s Urban Planning Group makes a lasting impact at AESOP 2025 Congress in Istanbul

The AESOP 2025 Congress in Istanbul will be remembered not only for its stunning setting and pressing theme, transformative planning in an age of planetary crises, but also for the remarkable presence of the Urban Planning (UP) Group from the University of Amsterdam. With almost 30 academic contributions, our group shaped the intellectual pulse of the congress, offering critical reflections, new imaginaries, and transformative agendas for planning research and practice.

Held in the vibrant metropolis of Istanbul, the Congress opened in the magnificent Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, where Maria Kaika delivered the opening keynote, “Urban Political Ecology: Prefigurative Planning for a Climate Emergency.” She called on planners to go beyond technocratic solutions and adopt justice-oriented strategies in the face of deepening climate crises. Later in the week, Federico Savini offered a provocative second keynote, “After Green Growth: Satiation as the Strategic Impulse for Spatial Planning,” challenging the growth imperative and urging planners to reorient their focus toward well-being and sufficiency. Group leader, Tuna Taşan-Kok, served as the moderator for this keynote session.

A wealth of scholarly contributions

Across the week, UP Group scholars, senior, mid-career, postdoctoral, and PhD candidates presented research that engaged deeply with themes of urban justice, post-growth, governance, infrastructure, mobility, and collective action:

A deeply reflective closing talk by our esteemed colleague, Emeritus Professor Willem Salet, the founder of the UP Group, whose remarks powerfully tied together the week’s key debates on planning and transformation.

Special thanks to our early career scholars

The extraordinary presence of the UP Group at AESOP 2025 was not only a matter of numbers but of quality, energy, and ambition, thanks in large part to our PhD researchers and postdoctoral fellows. We offer special thanks to Ran Zhang, Vivian Yeboah, Lekha Samant, Ebru Kurt-Özman, and Amal Barre for participating the PhD workshop, delivering strong presentations, and enriching debates throughout the conference. Their work exemplified the Group’s commitment to critical, field-based, and globally engaged planning scholarship.

Likewise, our postdoctoral researchers Danielle MacCarthy, Elisa Schramm, and Annemiek Prins made an exceptional impact with original, thought-provoking contributions that connected themes of mobility, care, social enterprise, and commoning with broader debates on justice and planetary well-being.

Core impact: justice-oriented planning for planetary times

Taken together, the UP Group’s presentations and debates at AESOP 2025 underscore a clear and consistent message: urban planning must confront the limits of market logic, challenge the inequalities produced by technocratic governance, and cultivate practices of care, solidarity, and commoning. Whether through studies of infrastructure in Mumbai, mobility transitions in London and Barcelona, or housing justice in Thessaloniki, our work highlighted the relational dynamics of planning, the importance of knowledge politics, and the urgency of rethinking land, property, and governance in the face of compounding crises.

From critiques of green growth to prefigurative strategies for the climate emergency, the UP Group demonstrated how planning can be reimagined as a transformative, inclusive, and deeply political practice.

We return from Istanbul not only proud of our collective visibility but energized by the conversations we helped spark, connected, and committed to continuing our work on planning futures that are just, democratic, and sustainable.