plaNext–Next Generation Planning

Financialization and deterritorialization in the Milanese major urban development projects

Alberto Bortolotti — 2025-06-30

Major urban development projects are pivotal to connect financial and real estate markets through the ‘financialization’ of strategic lands and the ‘deterritorialization’ of actors, practices and instruments. Milan is currently facing several large-scale property operations delivered by global developers and investors. Among these, this article problematizes the Milano Innovation District (MIND) by reconstructing its spatial development, showing how property financialization generates a deterritorialization of this project from the city planning system. Milan’s case has been considered relevant because of the convergence of global and local interest in developing the former Expo 2015 site, in a little metropolis which, on the other hand, shows an enormous concentration of financial capital managed in the Milanese headquarters of some of the largest European banks. In this article I will introduce the concept of financialization, which challenges land uses in this hyper-capitalization time, provide an illustration of the Milanese planning system, outline the interactions between planning, politics and finance, and present the case analysis of MIND and a discussion of its findings. In conclusion, this contribution remarks how such projects are used as levers to pursue polycentrism by challenging the ‘raison d’étre’ of statutory planning in overseeing the city’s urban growth instead of just enabling land value extraction, expansion and densification. Overall, the article argues that financialization has undermined redistribution of wealth through spatial planning, and this role has shifted to the major property corporations.

Rethinking the In-Between: Designing with a socio-ecological approach to activate the potential of Terrain Vague spaces

Lorenzo Stefano Iannizzotto — 2025-09-12

Rapid and uncontrolled processes of urbanization expanded cities boundaries and generated a new type of space that can offer rare opportunities. These Terrain Vague spaces are abandoned and open spaces where urban, rural and wild dimensions mingle. They could play a significant role in addressing urgent urban socio-ecological challenges related to sustainable, resilient and inclusive development. These spaces have great value and potential as rare intersections of social and ecological interests. Despite their value, these spaces are constantly at risk of disappearing due to massive urban development pressures and the perception that they are problems to be solved rather than valued. To harness the enormous potential of Terrain Vague, a new approach is necessary. This paper aims to describe a new social-ecological approach that amplifies and activates the potential of Terrain Vague spaces, outlining principles derived from theory and academic literature, and verifying the emergence of projects in line with these principles. For this purpose, nine projects were chosen as case studies, with the aim of demonstrating the concrete implementation of theoretical principles to make an initial attempt at systematizing these projects, and finally, to identify some of the possible strategies implemented in the development of these specific cases.

Foreword: A bright future for plaNext and the AESOP publishing platform

Giancarlo Cotella — 2025-07-31

In early 2025, plaNext – Next Generation Planning achieved a significant milestone: its indexing in the Scopus database. This event marks a pivotal moment for the journal and for the broader publication strategy of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). It is a recognition of the collective efforts made by successive editorial boards, contributors, reviewers, and above all, by the young scholars who believed in a journal that could serve both as a platform for emerging voices and as a vehicle for innovation in planning scholarship. More than a celebratory note, this foreword seeks to situate plaNext within AESOP’s evolving ecosystem of publications and overall digital environment. It reflects on the journal’s distinctive role and achievements, connects it with the broader ambitions of AESOP’s scientific dissemination strategy, and explores how recent developments—including the launch of the AESOP Digital Archive—are contributing to a renewed and more integrated platform for publishing in planning.

plaNext in transition: A decade of young academic publishing in planning (2015–2025) – Insights and futures

Asma Mehan — 2025-08-18

This article reflects on the ten-year journey of plaNext – Next Generation Planning, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal initiated by the AESOP Young Academics Network (AESOP-YAN). First published in 2015, plaNext has served as a platform for early-career researchers to engage in planning debates, publish their work, and foster professional development. As the journal approaches its tenth anniversary, this reflection examines its history, legacy, and future directions, highlighting its role in promoting inclusive, critical, and innovative scholarship in the field of planning. Over the past decade, plaNext has evolved into a dynamic forum that publishes diverse contributions, fosters international dialogues, and challenges conventional planning paradigms. The journal’s commitment to promoting interdisciplinary dialogues is evident in its eclectic range of published works, encompassing empirical research, theoretical discussions, innovative methodologies, and critical case studies. This breadth reflects plaNext’s mission to serve as a conduit for creative and socially responsive planning research. As the journal evolved, it remained steadfast in its dedication to nurturing the professional development of young academics by providing opportunities for early-career researchers to engage in editorial processes, peer review, and scholarly debates. As plaNext transitions to a new editorial board, this article offers a comprehensive overview of its evolution and impact. Drawing on the journal’s trajectory and broader shifts in planning scholarship, the discussion highlights the critical role of platforms like plaNext in shaping the discipline’s future.

Ethical publishing as resistance: Reflections from plaNext and the politics of knowledge and space

Feras Hammami — 2025-07-05

What does it mean to publish ethically in a world where knowledge production is shaped by human rights violations, social inequalities, colonial legacies, and systemic exclusions? This reflection draws on ten years of experience with plaNext, an open access journal created by the Young Academics Network of the Association of European Schools of Planning to support early career scholars. It explores how ethical publishing can act as a form of resistance to dominant academic norms, the marginalization of alternative epistemologies, and the politicization of knowledge. Through personal and collective experiences, the article examines plaNext's commitment to academic freedom, equity, decolonisation, and inclusivity, expressed through practices such as voluntary management, half-blind peer review, and a justice-based ethical policy. It also addresses the challenges of sustaining these principles within the constraints of institutional expectations, the publishing industry, and global crises. Ethical publishing, it argues, is not about pretentious neutrality but about taking a principled stance in support of marginalized voices, critical scholarship, and transformative knowledge production. Whether this vision remains viable is an open question that plaNext and many other international journals must continue to examine.

For a dialectic of planning pasts and futures: Theoretical courses and recourses in conversation with Patsy Healey

Simone Tulumello — 2025-07-04

Planning theory has done much, during the last decade or so, to broaden and enrich its own geographies: thanks to the engagements with critical urban studies and post-colonial theory, planning theorists have problematised the disciplinary insistence on certain modernist ideas and universalist approaches. Much less has been done to problematise the relation of planning with time—its ontology of action. This short essay takes step from my personal experience of editing a special issue of plaNext with Patsy Healey to argue for a different—dialectic, open, experimental—engagement of planning theory/practice with time, an endeavour that seems perfectly fit for a journal like plaNext turning 10 years old.

Grounded futures: A decade of planning through humanitarian and Southern lenses

Batoul Ibrahim — 2025-07-31

This reflective article marks the tenth anniversary of plaNext – Next Generation Planning, tracing its evolution as a critical platform for spatial planning discourse, particularly in humanitarian and Global South contexts. Drawing on personal editorial and field-based experience, the author explores how plaNext has shifted spatial planning discourse toward inclusion, ethics, and contextual sensitivity. Focusing on contributions from Volumes 9 to 11, the article highlights planning’s potential as a transformative tool in humanitarian settings, centering community agency, participatory methods, and interdisciplinary innovation. The analysis further integrates non-Western ethical frameworks, advocating for planning as a reparative and care-based practice, especially relevant in post-crisis urban environments. Contributions from the Global South illustrate planning as a reparative practice rooted in justice, resilience, and relational well-being. Ultimately, the article calls for bridging academic and humanitarian spheres to foster responsive, interdisciplinary, and just planning. The next decade of plaNext offers a chance to consolidate many gains and push further. Thus, the journal’s commitment to fostering a young researchers-driven process is vital for the future of spatial planning.

Bridging generations: A decade of open peer review and collective knowledge-building in planning scholarship through plaNext

Sıla Ceren Varış Husar — 2025-09-03

This dialogue between the old and new editorial board marks the 10^th anniversary of plaNext – Next Generation Planning, reflecting on its evolution as an experimental and inclusive platform for early career scholars. Born out of the AESOP Young Academics Network, plaNext has advocated the principles of open peer review, aiming to foster constructive, transparent and mentorship-driven academic publishing. As a fully online and open-access journal, it has served as both a publishing outlet and a pedagogical space where academic writing is cultivated collaboratively. Now indexed in Scopus, plaNext enters a new phase—grappling with questions of visibility, institutional expectations and the sustainability of its original mission. This dialogue gathers founding and current editorial board members to examine key milestones, reflect on the ideological and operational implications of open review, and strategize on maintaining the journal’s core identity while embracing global relevance and growth. Through honest discussion of challenges, aspirations and future pathways, the conversation offers critical insights into the journal’s past decade and its renewed commitments for the next.

Empowering scholarship: Young researcher-led journals as spaces for learning, envisioning, and experimenting with alternatives

Elisa (Lizzy) Privitera — 2025-09-03

This paper presents reflections and experience-based perspectives on the potential of young researcher-led journals, such as plaNext – Next Generation Planning, to generate a space for learning from and networking with peers and senior scholars, as well as empowering young researchers and creating new ideas. Its original dialogue-based format is drawn from a two-hour online conversation that took place on March 7, 2025, between founding and current editorial members of plaNext. The discussion was recorded, then transcribed and polished, while leaving the main core of the discussion and tone intact. It was structured around a series of guiding questions prepared by the editors of this special issue, who adopted a qualitative research approach situated between focus groups and semi-structured interview formats. As such, the themes addressed were guided, while still allowing space for personal reflections and open expression.

The resulting article is organized into five main thematic sections. The first explores the motivations that led participants to found or join the editorial team of plaNext, detailing its genesis as a collective initiative led by early career academics seeking to resist and challenge the competitive and exclusionary practices of academic publishing by offering a more inclusive and supportive environment for young scholars. The second section examines the tension between creatively innovating within the publishing system while maintaining scientific credibility and appeal. The third addresses the ethical challenges of adopting a supportive yet rigorous editorial approach, as well as the complexities of navigating diverse editorial roles and responsibilities. The fourth focuses on lessons learned from previous editorial experiences and how they could shape the vision and future direction of the journal. It also touches upon how the cross-cutting skills developed through editorial work can support career pathways both within and beyond academia. The final section presents general reflections and concrete suggestions for recognizing and valuing the work of reviewers.

Echoes of a decade in plaNext – Next Generation Planning journal and the road ahead

Esra Kut Görgün — 2025-09-01

plaNext – Next Generation Planning journal is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal founded by the AESOP Young Academics network. Established as a platform to amplify the voices of emerging scholars, plaNext enables early career researchers to contribute to international planning debates and make their work accessible to a global audience. The journal welcomes a wide range of contributions, including empirical research, theoretical discussions, innovative methodologies, case studies, and book reviews, fostering both academic engagement and professional development among young planners.

This paper presents a threefold contribution: (i) a retrospective overview of plaNext’s scholarly output over the past decade, (ii) an empirical survey assessing the journal’s outreach within the Young Academics network and capturing respondents’ perspectives on the contemporary publishing system, and (iii) a collective editorial dialogue. It culminated in a set of strategic recommendations aimed at enhancing editorial practices, strengthening mentorship mechanisms, and consolidating plaNext’s role as a supportive and inclusive platform. In positioning itself through these initiatives, plaNext aspires to serve as a distinctive and forward-looking model of an open-access journal committed to empowering early career researchers in the planning discipline.

Artificial intelligence and the planning task

Peter Ache — 2025-08-05

The editors of this special issue invited me to reflect on the planning task and, given the 10^th anniversary of plaNext, to provide an outlook for the next ten years or more regarding urban futures, all in connection with artificial intelligence (henceforth, AI). A fine call to develop a piece of speculative future, seasoned with armchair evidence from actual debates about cities, futures, and artificial intelligence. I will do so in nine movements, starting by briefly addressing what the urban is made of, a clarification which is essential for our view on the makings of AI. Then I will look at AI proper, well not as an expert, which I am certainly not, but rather like what I find interesting about AI and what is supposedly confronting us in the planning context. Finally, a short outlook will be done inviting the renowned science fiction author Phil K. Dick for a comment on the future and the urban.

Framing the values of teaching urban design in planning education

Ender Peker — 2025-08-04

This article explores the pedagogical value of urban design within planning education, framing it as a distinct mode of inquiry that strengthens spatial, analytical, ethical, and collaborative competencies. Drawing on a review of the literature and insights from teaching practice, it identifies six core contributions: (i) experiencing space through studio-based learning, (ii) enhancing spatial reasoning, (iii) fostering critical reflection, (iv) learning through co-production, (v) engaging with public needs and institutional structures, and (vi) developing sensitivity to both local contexts and global challenges. These values demonstrate how urban design supports students in analysing, interpreting, and (re)shaping the built environment. Rather than occupying a peripheral or elective role, urban design serves as a foundational element in planning education, one that reintegrates design as a form of knowledge production.

Planning ahead: Toward a critical, environmental, just, and action-oriented planning theory, practice, and journal

Elisa (Lizzy) Privitera — 2025-11-24

This essay contributes to the 10^th Anniversary Special Issue of plaNext – Next Generation Planning by offering reflections and ideas for inspiring a renewed roadmap in planning theory and practice that more systematically incorporates tools and contents from emerging critical disciplines. It emphasizes the crucial contributions that young researchers and planners can make through their work, as well as the potential of a journal led by early-career scholars—such as plaNext—to shape the field.

The paper introduces the contemporary challenges facing planners within the context of the current global polycrisis, i.e., crisis of the ecosystem, society, democracy, and knowledge. Such a polycrisis will be linked to the urgent need for renewal in the field and a rethinking of how planning scholars and practitioners contribute to and engage with societal transformation and existing inequities and injustices.

Drawing on emerging critical disciplines—including critical ecofeminism, critical disability studies, critical environmental justice, critical heritage studies and critical eco-museology, multispecies justice and critical animal studies, critical food studies, and urban political ecology—the essay explores how these perspectives have brought an ecosystemic understanding of the axes of power that drive inequality and injustice. It examines the extent to which these perspectives have already been incorporated into planning studies, the added value of integrating their critical tools, and the potential for planners and policymakers to engage in spatial and practical experimentation with these provocative concepts.

Finally, the essay outlines some ideas for what a journal like plaNext could do for providing a space for innovative theoretical developments while supporting action- and justice-oriented work—both of which are increasingly crucial in today’s global context.

Editorial: plaNext and planning in transition (2015–2025)

Sıla Ceren Varış Husar — 2025-11-24

When plaNext first emerged in 2015, it was born out of a decision that the field of spatial planning needed a dedicated platform for emerging scholars who would highlight new voices. Ten years later, the world we plan for has shifted significantly, and so has our journal.

The purpose of this special issue “plaNext in Transition 2015–2025” is to reflect on the journal’s evolution over the past decade and to envision its future trajectory for the next ten years. It marks a moment of reflection and reimagination. Over the past decade, plaNext has accompanied and often anticipated momentous changes: the climate emergency transitioning from future threat to present crisis, new movements for social justice and spatial equity gaining visibility, digitalization and AI altering how we imagine urban futures, and an increasingly interconnected yet still fractured global planning discourse. We thought that it would be interesting to see how plaNext has evolved over the last decade, and to reflect on the next decade for the journal, especially as the name of the journal implies to “plan” what is coming “next” as in “next generation of planners and planning as a discipline”. This special issue brings together contributions on both editorial developments and future directions, as well as on current planning debates, challenges, and emerging trends.