AESOP Digital Archive

Institutional Repository of AESOP | Association of European Schools of Planning

easily ingest documents, articles, PhD theses, reports, datasets and their corresponding Dublin Core metadata
open up this content to local and global audiences, thanks to the OAI-PMH interface and Google Scholar optimizations
issue permanent urls and trustworthy identifiers through the integration with handle.net

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Communities in the AESOP Digital Archive

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7

I - AESOP | Association of European Schools of Planning
Promoting Excellence in Planning Education and Research
II - Events
Congresses, Workshops, Meetings, Lectures and Summer School Events
III - Excellence in Planning Education
Safeguarding the development of AESOP’s Quality Recognition Programme
IV - Awards
Awards in Teaching, Best Published Paper, Best Congress Paper
V - Journals
International, peer-reviewed, open-access journals
VI - YA Network | AESOP Young Academics Network
Encouraging the active participation and exchange of academic work from PhD students and Early-Stage Researchers
VII - Thematic Groups
Working groups on specific themes, established in order to create more effective platforms for debate and discussion amongst AESOP members

Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
The Organisation of Doctoral Research. Interim Report
(AESOP, 2000) Needham, D. B.; van Putten, A. M.
This interim report presents the work of the AESOP/SOCRATES Working Group on PhD education (WG-PhD) within the SOCRATES project “Improving planning education in Europe”. Building on earlier surveys of doctoral studies in planning in AESOP member schools, the report examines how doctoral research and doctoral training are organised in AESOP countries and how this organisation affects the possibilities for PhD researchers to spend a period abroad. Part A analyses questionnaire responses from 14 AESOP member countries, reviewing doctoral “trajects”, supervision, formal training, duties, timeframes and funding for mobility. The findings indicate that short completion periods, concentrated training requirements and teaching obligations often limit opportunities for international research stays. Part B examines internationalisation efforts in other academic disciplines in the Netherlands, including philosophy, law (Ius Commune), discrete mathematics (EIDMA) and nuclear physics (FANTOM). These examples illustrate models of joint training, research-school structures and coordinated mobility schemes, and highlight organisational challenges relevant to AESOP’s future development.
Access status: Open Access ,
TRANSACTIONS of AESOP: Podcast – Planning Ukraine’s Recovery
(AESOP, 2025) Cremaschi, Marco; Anisimov, Oleksandr; Stead, Dominic
The podcast offers a thirty-minute conversation between the two editors, Oleksandr Anisimov and Dominic Stead, and Marco Cremaschi for the journal, providing an accessible introduction to the latest issue of Transactions. This special issue addresses a major blind spot in current debates on Ukraine’s recovery: the role of spatial planning. By filling this critical gap, it provides an analytical foundation for rebuilding Ukraine’s territories in ways that are resilient, democratic, and aligned with European integration. Despite war devastation on a scale unseen in Europe since 1945, most policy discussions continue to focus on financial, military, or governance dimensions, overlooking the central importance of geography, land use, and the built environment for meaningful reconstruction. Post-war recovery in Europe historically relied on new planning approaches and welfare institutions. Ukraine is now facing a similarly transformative moment, where the alignment of its spatial governance with EU directives will have far-reaching implications for land, the environment, infrastructure, and regional development.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Dynamics of Panarchy: Sensing, Planning and Designing Grounded Local-Regional Transformations — 23rd Meeting of AESOP Thematic Group on Planning and Complexity
(AESOP, 2025) Lamker, Christian; Björling, Nils; Gregorowicz-Kipszak, Joanna
This report summarises the 23rd meeting of the AESOP Thematic Group on Planning and Complexity, held in Gothenburg in November 2025. Around 40 researchers and practitioners from seven countries gathered to discuss complex adaptive systems, panarchy, spatial transformations, resilience, governance, and long-term planning challenges. Keynote contributions by Jon Norberg and Sara Brorström framed discussions on the science of panarchy and multi-level planning in the Gothenburg harbour area. Six thematic sessions addressed paradigms in spatial transformations, flows and self-organisation, temporalities and resilience, analytical frameworks, adaptive governance, and digital/participatory approaches to spatial complexity. The report highlights four major developments: the need to revisit and expand conceptual foundations of complexity in planning; strengthened links with planning practice; broader inclusion of urban–rural and peri-urban perspectives; and increasing internationalisation of research, particularly involving the Global South. The meeting also marked the group’s 20th anniversary, reflecting on its history, ongoing activities, and upcoming publications. The event was supported by Chalmers University of Technology, the thematic group coordinators, and AESOP.
Access status: Open Access ,
Introducing Rural Planning: A new AESOP Thematic Group
(Taylor & Francis, 2025) Gkartzios, Menelaos; Scott, Mark; Gallent, Nick
The article introduces the newly established AESOP Thematic Group on Rural Planning, approved at the AESOP Heads of Schools meeting in Liverpool and formally launched at the AESOP Annual Congress in Istanbul in July 2025. The authors outline the conceptual foundations of contemporary rural planning, emphasizing the complexity, diversity and dynamic nature of rural places in the 21st century. The paper argues for the importance of rural scholarship within AESOP, highlighting emerging challenges such as counterurbanisation, climate-related risks, rural housing pressures, spatial justice, sustainability, and global socio-economic inequalities. It also summarizes the group’s initial discussions, future plans, workshop ambitions, and commitment to building an international and interdisciplinary community around rural planning.
Access status: Open Access ,
Foreword: A bright future for plaNext and the AESOP publishing platform
(AESOP, 2025) Cotella, Giancarlo
This foreword reflects on the significance of plaNext – Next Generation Planning achieving Scopus indexing in early 2025, situating this milestone within AESOP’s broader publishing ecosystem. The author reviews plaNext’s foundational mission to support early-career scholars, its evolution into a platform for innovative and inclusive planning scholarship, and its growing role in international dissemination. The text places plaNext alongside AESOP’s other publication channels—Transactions of AESOP, the Conversations in Planning Theory and Practice booklet series, and the AESOP Digital Archive—emphasising their complementarity and collective contribution to a plural, open, and value-driven knowledge infrastructure. It concludes by outlining a future vision for an integrated AESOP publishing platform rooted in openness, scholarly excellence, intergenerational collaboration, and a systemic approach to knowledge production and dissemination.