This special volume of plaNext brings together peer reviewed papers from the 18th AESOP Young Academics Conference, Bridging Gaps Urban Planning for Coexistence, held at Politecnico di Milano in March 2024. It reflects shared concerns about widening disconnections in planning theory and practice, including gaps between social groups, policy sectors, spatial scales, knowledge systems, and human and non-human actors. Against a background of climate stress, social inequality, and institutional fragmentation, the contributions explore how planning can support forms of coexistence that are socially just, environmentally grounded, and institutionally feasible. The papers span diverse empirical contexts and approaches, addressing energy, climate adaptation, housing, and historically embedded spatial inequalities. Together, they question planning models centred on technical optimization or hierarchical decision making, and instead emphasize relational perspectives, historical awareness, and plural forms of knowledge. By contributing to wider debates on resilience, sustainability transitions, and planning ethics, this volume offers a platform for emerging scholars while inviting reflection on planning as a practice of negotiation and coexistence across social, spatial, and institutional boundaries. Additionally, this issue of plaNext also includes two papers from the open call.
Editorial introduction
-
Today, urban planning attempts to address trans-scalar issues while dealing with the increasingly complex socio-environmental, economic, and cultural challenges that demand specific, innovative, sustainable, and inclusive solutions. The 18th AESOP Young Academics Conference, titled Bridging Gaps: Urban Planning for Coexistence, was organized and hosted by a group of PhD candidates at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Politecnico di Milano) in March 2024. The conference was conceived as an open platform, designed specifically by and for early career researchers to engage with...
Research article
-
This study explores the role played by the seascape in the public acceptance of nearshore and offshore wind farms. The transposition of onshore wind farms to the sea has been defended as an alternative to mitigate resistance, assuming that, by locating them offshore, opposition would be halted. However, research indicates that this is a misconception, as offshore sites do not guarantee a problem-free solution for wind farms, and conflicts can persist even when wind parks are planned to be installed away from populated areas. The study discusses how the seascape can be perceived...
-
The urgency of addressing climate change-induced risks is internationally recognised. However, urban and territorial contexts do not yet appear ready to face this challenge. Based on the state of the art, this research proposes the definition of an innovative method for mapping heterogeneous data to support planners in increasing climate resilience. The application of the research project presented in this paper focuses on heat waves in the urban area of the Municipality of Lamezia Terme (Calabria Region,...
-
Serial retrofitting represents a crucial advancement in urban sustainability, addressing cost increases, resource constraints, and labour shortages within the building sector. “Energiesprong Deutschland”, coordinated by the German Energy Agency (dena), is a pioneering initiative for the retrofitting of 1950s–1970s multi-family housing through cost- and time-efficient solutions utilising industrial prefabrication and standardised components.
Within the study, the role of serial retrofitting as a transformative innovation within the energy transition is assessed using Geels’...
-
Following the discovery of oil in southwestern Iran, an unprecedented form of settlement emerged in the region. The company towns of Masjed Soleyman (Masjid-i-Suleiman) and Abadan were built in dependence on the British-owned oil company APOC, later AIOC. The development of these cities between 1901 and 1951 reflects broader socio-political dynamics between the Company and local population. By considering both intra-company factors as well as national and international events, this research proposes a periodization aligned with shifts in the Company’s policies. It studies the...
-
Beginning with UN Agenda 2030, the European Commission has recently adopted many strategic policies, such as Farm to Fork, Biodiversity Strategy, and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These documents set up important objectives to cope with environmental and climate challenges. The study uses a quantitative and qualitative research methodology to provide an empirical analysis of the land-use changes and landscape modifications in an important area of apple production in Italy, such as Val di Non in the Trentino Region. The aim is to reflect upon the gap between...
-
This article explores how insights from past and present North American infrastructure projects can inform the rethinking of infrastructure’s role in the transformation of European ‘dispersed territories’, i.e. low-density urban-rural configurations. Framed by the concept of the “territorial palimpsest”, this paper adopts a qualitative, comparative case study approach to examine how infrastructure design can mediate the urban-rural divide. Through diachronic analysis, it considers several twentieth-century infrastructural imaginaries and contemporary projects. While...
