Critical Planning

Openness is an enduring urban ideal. The open city has long been associated with difference, freedom, creativity, and collaboration, as “a city that is life affirming, that reaches out to others who are not necessarily like us, and that acknowledges our common humanity and the pleasures of life lived among multipli/cities” (Friedmann 2002). From data points to migration patterns, “open” vocabularies are often employed in social movements and across urban planning efforts to express a range of democratic principles in pursuit of social justice in the city.

Embracing all the potentiality and pitfalls of this theme, the editorial committee also interrogated how the journal’s own administrative structure and operations might themselves become more open. From the call for submissions to the review process to publication, we considered how Critical Planning could amplify voices and perspectives underrepresented in conventional urban planning discourse. Building on the journal’s history of student-led creative inquiry, we endeavored to attract and publish contributions in a range of formats and to offer support and guidance to emerging scholars, activists, and artists.

These efforts come to life in volume 27, which contains articles, commentaries, poems, photo essays, and other artistic outputs from a diverse set of contributors, who together explore a great breadth of themes.