This book offers a unique and timely contribution, informed by responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, to unpack the intertwined challenges that planning needs to cope with in the future. It argues that the pandemic and post-pandemic periods, in their successive waves of restrictions and social distancing, have disrupted ‘normal’ practices but have also contributed to shaping a ‘new normal’. The new normal is emerging, re-configuring, and prioritizing the substantive objects of planning and its governance and participatory processes. This book discusses this shift and presents a collection of episodes and cases from diverse European urban contexts to develop a new vocabulary for describing and addressing challenges, models, perspectives, and imaginaries that contribute to defining the new normal. The book is aimed at scholars interested in urban planning, sociology, geography, anthropology, art, economy, technology studies, design studies, and political science.
Enza Lissandrello is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University with a background in urban planning and public policy, human geography, and the governance of socio-technical system innovation and transitions. Her work examines urban and regional planning under contemporary trends of reflexive modernization, participation, deliberation, conflicts, and issues of representation. She has taught and published on the roles of planners and policy actors in sustainable urban planning and deliberative forms. She is leading research on smart cities and urban development, urban living labs, and positive energy districts. She is the research coordinator of the Urban Europe Research Alliance (UERA).
Janni Sørensen is an associate professor at the department of Planning at Aalborg University. She holds a Ph.D. in Regional Planning from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and has for many years worked on participatory neighborhood-scale planning with marginalized communities in Charlotte, North Carolina. Today her work centers on research and teaching at Aalborg University with a focus on both Rural and Urban communities’ access to and influence in local planning processes.
Kristian Olesen is an associate professor in strategic spatial planning at the Department of Planning at Aalborg University. Kristian’s main research interests are in strategic spatial planning, planning theory, neoliberalisation of planning, transportation policies, and housing policies. Kristian is currently leading a research project investigating how housing associations in Denmark increasingly are acting as strategic urban developers when transforming socio-economically disadvantaged non-profit housing areas.
Rasmus Nedergård Steffansen is an assistant professor in sustainable urban planning at Aalborg University. His research focuses on connecting diverse themes of sustainabilityplanning such as how air quality can become a driver in urban transitions, implementation of UN sustainable development goals in local planning and planning education, as well as the sustainability of multi-dwelling households, and second home planning. He teaches a broad range of topics related to sustainability planning and methods and theories of science in planning.
