Urban Planning Vision
Our vision of Urban Planning
Planning has a key role in connecting often fragmented efforts in a dynamic spatial governance context. It can enable the development of new imaginaries, identify the need and opportunity to experiment, point at barriers and enablers of change, and shape conditions for the co-creation of transformative practices. Our group aims to understand, inform, and facilitate these societal processes by means of engaged research and teaching.
Our driving research question is:
How can planning contribute to governance of and understanding the change towards socially and ecologically just cities?
We study the planning of practices that aim to change urban environments by making them more livable, just, accessible, economically resilient, and ecologically sustainable. We follow a planning approach strongly embedded within the social sciences (sociology, political sciences, law, economics, anthropology, geography, architecture) but also cross-fertilizing with the natural sciences (ecology), engineering and the arts and humanities.
We strive to co-create ideas, common projects, and new imaginaries with policymakers, scientists and grassroots movements. Geographically, we bring an international comparative perspective to the critical examination of local practices and knowledge, combining activism/action research with policy advocacy prompting a critical reflection of existing systems and institutions. We focus on prefiguring different ways of undertaking planning through: living labs; action research; prototype creation; educational research practices; etc.
Within this framework, the vision of the Amsterdam School of Planning is defined by four core characteristics:
Planning between crisis and hope
Engaging with concrete issues that invite theory
Reading institutional contexts
Maintaining a critical yet constructive scholarly attitude
urban planning vision
The world between crisis and hope
Engaging with concrete issues that invite theory
Reading institutional contexts
Maintaining a critical yet constructive scholarly attitude