Organisers and track chairs for the joint TU Delft-Utrecht University Congress for the Association of European Schools of Planning have sifted through 1000 abstracts from academics around the world hopeful of securing a place in the programme for 9-12 July 2014. The congress attracted 896 abstracts for papers and 18 for roundtable sessions, whilst the PhD School attracted 86 abstracts – a grand total of exactly 1000.
Vincent Nadin, vice-president of the congress reports that “abstracts came from 55 countries with the Netherlands, China, Italy, the UK and Germany taking the lead. We expect to see more than 800 planning academics at the Congress who will be working in 17 parallel tracks. A big thank you to those who helped to ensure that decisions on all abstracts were made within six weeks, well ahead of schedule”.
The central theme of the congress ‘from control to co-evolution’ challenges the possibility to anticipate and influence change through fixed plans, pre-arranged procedures and conventional institutional settings when confronted with the complexity of contemporary socio-spatial systems.
The joint Delft-Utrecht AESOP 2014 Congress will be held mostly on the Utrecht campus where it is possible to hold the plenary sessions and tracks under one roof. Two ‘mobile tracks’ will be visiting the TU Delft campus involving about 200 participants. TU Delft will also host the PhD School for about 40 students and six leading international planning scholars. Fourteen members of staff and PhD candidates from Architecture and the Built Environment are currently working on the congress in the local organising committee, and as track chairs and mentors.
Full information about the congress for those interested in attending is available at: http://www.aesop2014.eu
