YA Conference 2027 Bari

Scientific Programme

Track 1 | Risks and adaptations: planning scenarios

Planning increasingly takes place in contexts characterized by crises, risks, shocks and long-term stressors, where knowledge is partial, evidence contested, and consequences uneven across places and groups. This track explores how planners and communities use scenarios to navigate in uncertainties, compare alternatives, and design responses that remain legitimate and workable over time.

We welcome conceptual, empirical and methodological contributions across risk-related planning domains, including work that critically reflects on how risk is framed, communicated and governed in planning and policy processes.

Guiding questions:
• How are possible futures framed in your case, and which assumptions or forms of evidence shape planning priorities and choices?
• Whose knowledge is recognized in risk-related decisions, and which risks are prioritized or deferred across scales and institutions?
• How can scenarios practices support learning and action in conditions of uncertainty while remaining transparent and socially legitimate?

Thematic hands-on Workshop:
“Scenarios for risk and adaptation: mapping uncertainties, pathways and trade-offs”

Track 2 | Transitions or transformations? Facing and activating change

Transitions are rarely linear. They unfold through contested visions, shifting coalitions, institutional frictions, and uneven capacities to implement change. This track addresses uncertainty as a defining feature of change processes: how planning navigates multiple possible pathways over time, and how choices made “along the way” shape what becomes feasible, legitimate and implementable.

We welcome contributions that analyze how transition pathways are framed and steered in real planning and policy settings - how priorities are set, how coordination across actors and scales is achieved (or fails), and how trade-offs and conflicts are negotiated. A central focus is the boundary between transitions and transformations: when incremental adjustments accumulate into deeper institutional and socio-spatial change, and what this means for legitimacy, justice and implementation capacity across different domains (e.g., energy, mobility, circular strategies, digitalization, public services).

Guiding questions:
• What makes a process “a transition” in your case, and what conditions or ruptures might turn it into transformation?
• How are pathways framed and contested over time, and which knowledges, priorities and actors become dominant in steering them?
• How can planning act within change processes while negotiating trade-offs, institutional constraints and implementation capacity?

Thematic hands-on Workshop:
“Transitions vs transformations: mapping pathways, constraints and leverage points”

Track 3 | Everyday uncertainty: creating and negotiating places of change

This track focuses on uncertainty as it is experienced in everyday life: rising costs, insecure living conditions, unequal access to services and opportunities, and the cumulative effects of planning and policy choices. It invites contributions that examine how everyday uncertainty is produced and negotiated through markets, regulation and local decision-making, and how this shapes trust, legitimacy and the capacity to act.

We welcome contributions on affordability and access in a broad sense, as well as on vulnerability, exclusion and the uneven distribution of burdens and benefits. Contributions are encouraged to analyze who bears the costs of uncertainty, which experiences and forms of knowledge are recognized in decision-making, and what tends to be prioritized, normalized or deferred in practice.

Guiding questions:
• Where does everyday uncertainty emerge in your case, and whose experiences are most visible – or overlooked – in planning processes?
• How do markets, rules and local decisions shape affordability and access across domains?
• What responses are considered feasible and legitimate, and who benefits – or remains exposed – when uncertainty persists?

Thematic hands-on Workshop:
“Everyday uncertainty: mapping pressures, exposures and workable responses”

Track 4 | Uncertainty in model-mediated and data-intensive planning environments

This track will offer an integrative perspective that reflects on how uncertainty is governed across scales and domains, including the interaction between institutional arrangements and modelling practices in contemporary planning. It will also address the tensions between institutional governance and model-mediated reasoning in contemporary planning practice. Everyday uncertainty is also increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures and algorithmic systems that mediate access to housing, mobility, services, and public resources. Particular attention will be paid to the role of modelling practices, agent-based approaches, formal knowledge structures, and emerging AI-based tools in structuring planning knowledge and influencing decision processes The track therefore encourages reflections on how such tools influence visibility, prioritization and legitimacy in everyday planning practices.

Guiding questions:
• In what ways is uncertainty embedded in agent-based models of institutional and political decision-making processes?
• How do digital and AI-blended systems influence everyday planning practices and their implications for equity and legitimacy?
• How do models contribute not only to describing but also to framing possible futures?
• What are the implications of using formal ontologies and AI-based tools in supporting planning practices concerning environmental crisis?

Thematic hands-on Workshop:
“Model-mediated planning in uncertainties: mapping evidence, priorities and legitimacy”