During the recent symposium ‘ Is Planning Past Politics?’, the notion of postpolitics and the question what the proper political could be in relation to planning became the main topic. The issue concerning the practices of politics in planning is pertinent, particularly when democratic politics is not necessarily seen to derive its legitimacy only through institutional and procedural arrangements. However, this article identifies a danger in the binary of postpolitics/proper political that it might develop into a kind of ‘postpolitical correctness’.

The paper presents the requirements and challenges of urban transitions towards sustainability from the perspective of the SAB of the JPI Urban Europe. Critical reflections on the achievements and identification of gaps in the activities of JPI Urban Europe, based on the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda SRIA (2015–2020), reveal advanced research questions, tasks, and approaches that influenced the development process of the SRIA 2.0 (released in February 2019). The authors emphasize the dilemma approach, the local context and the co-creation concept to pursue urban transitions in real-world context. Considering this frame, they propose specific domains for further research on urban transitions.

No abstract

Urban living labs (ULLs) can be an important way to approach multi-stakeholder co-creation with regard to urban transitions and transformations. They have become a common type of co-creative experimentation, offering the opportunity to research and innovate on a wide variety of challenges in everyday settings. They test hypotheses to create pathways for a transition to sustainable urbanisation. However, there is mounting concern from practice, innovators, and research that there is little systematic integration of practical outputs. Moreover, the question of how ULLs should be designed, and by whom, requires comparative longer-term assessment. Implementation and operation requires knowledge of the risks involved. The long-term impacts of ULLs on particular places, and the general understanding of how they contribute to urban transformations, are not well theorized. Thus, intended and potential contributions to urban transformations could remain unrealized. Based on experience from a series of stakeholder dialogues and co-production formats at various ULL related conferences and workshop, this paper offers policy recommendations and directions regarding the future direction for JPI Urban Europe its main programme for 2021–2027, the European Partnership Driving Urban Transitions to a Sustainable Future in the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. It may also help other urban research and innovation funders and programming actors support sustainable transformations through urban living labs.

What could the addition of a variegated spatial approach contribute to planning studies? Planning studies, by and large, rely on Euclidean space as a 'reality' to be planned. However, Euclidean space may only be one of many spaces enacted in planning practice. Thus, this article proposes that most urban planning practice features at least a severe spatial imaginative challenge to our understanding of it. First, there is the problem of how to manage at a distance, which is solved by a translation and hence mobilization of place. Second, there is the problem of how mobilized place is done ex situ, which suggests that it must become somewhat fluid and be translated into plassein. These features are discussed in light of brief empirical illustrations drawn from a study of urban waterfront redevelopment in Swedish cities. In concluding the argument, a note is made on the relevance of plassein with a suggestion that fluidity is a requirement for achieving democracy in planning practices.