Cities and regions are of critical importance to move societies from a state of perpetual and aggravating social-ecological crises towards sustainability. The corona pandemic has contributed to further accentuate their role as spatial subjects and arenas of change to achieve a wide range of interconnected transformations e.g. in terms of land use, biodiversity, water, energy, mobility, food, built environment, health, education or digitalization, among others. Deeply entrenched systemic configurations causing multiple sustainability and justice deficits have become widely visible, illustrating the urgency of, but also resistances to, faster and disruptive societal innovation.

Urban and regional transformations are thus about such deep, path-deviant changes simultaneously affecting ecological, technological, institutional, cultural and practice dimensions within or across diverse action and knowledge domains. Research in this field has been particularly interested in unpacking how complex dynamics of place as well as relations across territories, scales and networks play out in acknowledging, questioning and ultimately reshaping current patterns of inertia or “lock-in”, connecting the above dimensions in and through spatial relations, and from the individual to collective levels.

This track aims to bring together contributions from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and global contexts to juxtapose and advance current understandings of urban and regional transformations. Authors may draw on conceptual and methodological developments or empirical studies (comparative and longitudinal ones are especially welcome). Research concerning the drivers and opportunities, the resistances and obstacles, as well as the patterns, processes and dynamics of such transformations is particularly relevant.

Individual contributions may therefore examine e.g.:

• Place-making and place-based relations considering identities or sense of place and their time-bound, socio-spatial and intersectional characteristics
• Cross-domain spatial relations linking e.g. energy/mobility/built environs/health, food/biodiversity/land use, etc.
• Multi-scalar spatial and multi-level authority relations regarding the transformation synergies or frictions they create
• Territorial and translocal relations concerning the role and influence of borders and boundaries, as well as (national or global) networks of urban and regional places
• Longer term or emerging future pathways of urban and regional transformations identified in retrospective or prospective studies (e.g. scenarios)
• Reconfiguration of socio-spatial relationships (social networks) and the impacts on sustainability transformations

Length and content of the proposed abstract to the track

Each proposed abstract of between 300 and 500 words:

1. shall be organized without headlines but synthesise the contribution along a clear structure (e.g. problem/method/findings/conclusions)
2. does not need to, but can include references

Potential publication channels

Full paper contributions of high quality and novelty will be considered for submission individually or as a thematic collection (special issue) in the open access journal “Urban Transformations”: https://urbantransformations.biomedcentral.com/about

Keep up to date with developments of ISDRS 2024 Track 6a here