CALL FOR PAPERS
Submissions are open all-year round and evaluated on a rolling basis.
- All submissions will be subject to blind peer review.
- Submissions should be sent via https://peerreview.sagepub.com/urb
- Please refer to the submission guidelines.
ARTICLE TYPES
Urbanisation invites submissions for the following sections:
General Articles (4,000–10,000 words)
We invite original research and review articles that
- deepen our understanding of discourses and realities of contemporary global urbanisation at multiple scales—from the global to local;
- offer new ways of reading cities at times of transition, recognition and refraction;
- meet the journal’s core mandate of curating located knowledge from the Global South, that is, the countries of Asia, Africa and South America;
- cross disciplinary boundaries;
- engage with cities of the Global South—not only the southern megacity but also the rapid transitions of small and medium towns and the dynamics of urbanisation in these sites.
Writing from Practice (up to 10,000 words)
Urban questions refuse simple boundaries of theory and practice. To encourage and enable theorising from practice, articles in this section attempt to understand the complexity of doing, acting and intervening in the urban and regional space, across different scales, from neighbourhood to city-region, national to global. This includes a range of formal and informal, client-driven or community-led, deeply local or transnational forms of urban practice across planning, design, policy formulation and implementation, economic and development consulting, project management, activism and advocacy, artistic and literary activity, urban service delivery, engineering, construction and journalism or community engagement, to name just a few. We do not seek staid narratives of ‘best practice’ or just an empirical documentation of projects and actions. Instead, we encourage reflexive contributions that seek to analyse and write from practice rather than just narrate it.
Learning and Pedagogy (4,000–6,000 words)
How can comparative experiences of learning be developed, good lessons shared and disseminated? How must the epistemic experience and endeavour of the urban become part of the teaching–learning experience, where one borrows from other disciplines, as well as encounters its own? These are some of the larger questions that articles in this section engage with.
On MethodM (4,000–6,000 words)
This section specifically focuses on the methods we must bring to bear to capture the sheer diversity of the urban experience and oeuvre, particularly in the Global South. How can such methods compliment and detract from accepted pedagogies? In the methods of knowing the urban, do prevailing tools of analysis de-ontologise the urban into a field of constant contemporaneity and a never-ending instrumental search for ‘solutions’?
Evaluations and Assessments (4,000–6,000 words)
Refusing a clear and easy distinction between academic work and ‘grey literature’ (such as reports, project evaluation and implementation studies), this section invites writing about work in the field, not just as rich empirical fodder but a space for reflection on the complexity of proposition and intervention.
Visual Essay (3-5 pieces of original work, i.e. paintings/sketches and/or photographs)
These are visual narratives about the city, captured in painting, sketch work, photography and other similar mixed media representations. They are reflections of the urban condition, conveying statements of meaning about life in cities, transitions, moments, domestic spaces, as well as public and private conditions of being.
Poetry (3 poems or 1 long poem. Total length not exceeding three A4 size pages)
This is poetry about place, absence of place, connections, crossing borders and boundaries. This poetry builds bridges, finds emptiness and conveys a world on the page that cannot be found in other forms of writing.
Review (800–1,500 words)
We invite reviews of books, films, exhibitions and other forms of expression that engage with the city as a triggers of conversations, critiques and debates.