Calls for Abstracts and Papers

 

Journal of the American Planning Association - Call for Papers - Public Housing: Legacies and Futures

The Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) seeks original essays devoted to public housing on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. Researchers are invited to submit webstracts of potential articles for inclusion in a special JAPA issue to be published in late 2012 on the legacies, experience, and future of public housing in America, to be guest edited by Joseph Heathcott of The New School. Professor Heathcott may also convene associated panels at the spring 2013 APA conference in Chicago.

Interested authors must submit abstracts to the guest editor (publichousing75@gmail.com) by September 15, 2011. These should not exceed 450 words, following the style guidelines at www.informaworld.com/japa. (For examples, see the first page of every article in recent issues.) By October 15, 2011, the authors of a subset of these proposals will be invited to submit full papers to JAPA@ucla.edu by February 1, 2012. All papers will undergo a double-blind peer review, so invitation to contribute is not a guarantee to publish. Papers submitted but not accepted for this special issue will also be considered for publication in a later issue.

Throughout its existence, public housing has occupied an ambivalent place in American society. It emerged in the 1930s at the tense nexus between basic American concepts of liberty and equality. It took shape and expanded against opposition by a wide range of groups and amid constant charges of socialism, racism, and design hubris.

Despite this, few acts of Congress have had such wide-ranging impact on planning, urban design, metropolitan politics, and federal-city relations. In this landmark legislation, the federal government codified its approach to the planning, development, construction, and habitation of publicly subsidized low-rent housing. Subsequent Acts between 1949 and 1968 articulated the federal charge, but it was Wagner-Steagall that established the basic premises. Today, there are over one million units of public housing operated by 3300 housing authorities in every state and in Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile, beginning in the 1970s, a series of congressional and executive actions began to shift U.S. housing policy away from the construction of large scale, publicly owned and operated complexes. Charges of discrimination, court challenges, reductions in funding, and physical deterioration plagued housing projects in cities across the nation. This shift in policy culminated in the 1992 creation of the HOPE VI program to replace much of the public housing landscapes built after the 1937 Act.

The special issue of the JAPA seeks articles that examine the background, impact, experience, and legacy of public housing in America. Comparative work demonstrating similarities and differences between U.S. social housing and that of other countries is also encouraged. The purpose is to assess the current state of the art in research and thinking about public housing's role in American society, especially in how we imagine, shape, and inhabit our cities. The range of potential topics is open, and could include (but is not limited to):

• The national and/or international contexts surrounding the passage of Wagner-Steagall
• The impacts of Wagner-Steagall's various provisions over time, whether in terms of urban politics, home building, federal-city relations or the planning profession
• Articulations of Wagner-Steagall through subsequent Housing Acts, court cases, executive decisions, and other instruments
• Shifting debates among planners, policy makers, reformers, and architects over the form and meaning of public housing in America
• The changing roles of race, gender, class and other key forms of social identity in the planning, design, and population of public housing
• Regional variations in the provision, scale, and design of public housing
• Long term interactions between housing projects and the cities that surround them, with regard to urban form, architecture, urban politics, and residential experience
• Re-assessments of public housing as it expands and contracts over time, particularly in terms of land use, units produced, populations, and other broad factors
• Comparisons between U.S. models and those of other national systems, particularly in terms of the planning, siting, design, and population of social housing
• Resident-led movements in public housing for expanded access, improvements, power sharing, civil rights, and social justice

We are interested in broad interpretive, reflective, and analytic pieces that advance an argument or reveal new approaches. We are less interested in descriptive and narrowly defined work such as needs assessments, site-specific studies, current program evaluations, or demographic accounts. Papers based on the experience of one city, or in limited cases one project, are welcome as long as they connect to and reveal larger themes, histories, and conclusions.

The 75th anniversary of the 1937 Housing Act is an occasion to think boldly and expansively about the multiple trajectories, experiences, and legacies of public housing in America. JAPA has been a major source for scholarly work on public housing. Authors should build on work that has appeared in this journal previously by checking the nearly 100 year archive as well as work published elsewhere.

JOSEPH HEATHCOTT
U.S. Fulbright Distinguished Chair | University of the Arts, London
Senior Visiting Fellow | London School of Economics
Associate Professor of Urban Studies | The New School, New York, NY
 

Regional Development Studies, Call for Articles for the Journal of the United Nations Centre for Regional Development, Nagoya, Japan - Are you a researcher in the following aspects of regional development in developing countries: Human Security, Environmental Management, Disaster Management; and Local and Regional Economic Development? We are soliciting articles in English for our Annual internationally -
refereed journal, Regional Development Studies (RDS). Authors should ensure that their manuscripts are original, unpublished works which are not being submitted for publication in other journals or books. Also, authors are responsible for the accuracy of facts and opinions expressed in their various articles. The preferred length of articles is in the range of 6,000 – 8,000 words with a 300 word abstract, together with key words. Articles should be in English with submissions preferably in electronic file form. The journal is black and white, with no color reproduction. Maps and other figures should, as far as possible, be camera ready for printing. Photographed
images cannot be published. To access past publications of RDS Journal, please visit UNCRD Site at http://www.uncrd.or.jp/pub/rds.htm. Send your Articles to:

Office of the Managing Editor
University of Nairobi, ADD Building, Room 209
P. O. Box. 30197- 00100 GPO
Tel (254-20) 2711574
Email: rds@uonbi.ac.ke
Nairobi, Kenya

JOURNAL OF URBAN DESIGN AND PLANNING - Special Issue "The use of Geographical Information and ICT in urban design and planning"

Abstract deadline: 19 July. Complete papers submitted by the 19th of September.

Aim:
The use of computer technology for both quantitative and qualitative analysis in Planning and urban design is a requirement for most practitioners and researchers.
Focus groups and workshops require new ways of participative methodologies that use computers; spatial planning, sector and integrated planning use GIS and other spatial explicit computer applications in order to analyse and simulate the world.
New faster, real-time, detailed allow multiple ways of collecting data and feed powerful computers with information for analysis and visualization. The maturing of computer models and new waves of theories and models allow on-demand interactive representation and simulation of the real world.
It is now common sense that the world of planning and urban design requires ICT and GI. The opportunities and new open doors of research are worth exploring, not only for information but also as guiding beacons of best practice.

This special issue aims at addressing the previous needs through the use of computers in Planning and Urban Design.

Topics to be address might include:
-The use of Geographical Information (GI) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in planning;
-Representation and visualisation of the urban built environment, for use in urban design;
- The use of GI and ICT in participative planning and design;
- Participative methodologies that use computers as a way to facilitate processes and the implementation of methods;
- Computer applications to produce spatial analyses and future scenarios/simulations;
- New emerging areas the cross traditional boundaries of planning and urban designers, as well as academic researchers;
- The research and development of ICT and GI in urban design and planning across multiple research areas (i.e. planning, geography, architecture, civil engineering, sociology, computation, maths and stats) and multiple scales of analysis.

Papers should be aprox. 5000 words and focus in the use of GI and ICT in urban design and planning.
Papers should contain a fist part contextualizes the research being presented and briefly reviews previous research theory/practice (no more than 700 words); two/three subsequent parts that detail methodologies, case-studies, new models, new frameworks of urban design and planning. A final part of the paper should contain a comprehensive discussion that also includes future directions of research (aprox. 700 words). Reference list should be included in the total word count of 5000 words.

Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your ideas and submission plans. For further contacts please email: Dr. Elisabete A. Silva (es424@cam.ac.uk)