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The 21st AESOP Young Academics Conference invites contributions that explore how planning operates in contexts characterised by uncertainty, incomplete or ambiguous information, contested evidence, conflicting values, and rapidly changing socio-ecological and socio-technical conditions.
Uncertainty is no longer understood merely as a technical limitation to be reduced through better data, models or forecasts. It is increasingly recognised as a structural feature of planning processes, shaped by institutional arrangements, governance structures, power relations and decision-making procedures. At the same time, uncertainty may create opportunities for experimentation, collective learning and transformative action.
THEMATIC TRACKS
1. Risks and Adaptations: Planning Scenarios
This track explores how planning responds to risks, crises and long-term pressures in conditions of uncertainty. Particular attention is given to scenarios, the framing of possible futures and the governance of uneven risks across territories and communities.
2. Transitions or Transformations? Facing and Activating Change
This track focuses on processes of change in planning, including transitions in energy, mobility, services and territorial development. It invites reflections on how pathways are shaped, contested and implemented, and on when incremental change may lead to deeper transformation.
3. Everyday Uncertainty: Creating and Negotiating Places of Change
This track examines how uncertainty is experienced in everyday life through insecure living conditions, unequal access to housing and services, affordability pressures and social vulnerability. It considers how planning decisions distribute costs, opportunities and capacities to act.
4. Uncertainty in Model-Mediated and Data-Intensive Planning Environments
This track explores how models, data, digital technologies and artificial intelligence shape planning processes, influence evidence production, and affect legitimacy and decision-making under uncertainty.