Call for hosting 28th AESOP Congress in 2014
Published at: 3 November 2011

AESOP Congress Organisation Guideline
2^nd November 2011

General rules of applying for the organisation of an AESOP event:

• candidate institutions send in their proposals in the form of a brief note of 4 to 8 pages before a given deadline;
• the Council of Representatives of the AESOP, at the meeting following the proposal submission deadline, will examine the proposals and vote to elect the host;
• each candidate will be given a ten-minute time slot in the agenda of the CoRep meeting to present the proposal. It is strongly recommended for the candidates to use this opportunity to address the representatives directly. If a candidate institution does not choose to present its tender, it may settle for a paper submission or ask a member of the Council to do the presentation.

• information about the school:
  • the profile of the school,
  • the reasons for which the school wishes to organize the event,
  • the organisational capacity of the school to handle the event,
  • the financial capability of the school to support the event, as it is to be noted that:
    • despite collecting the event entrance fees, certain payments may have to be made very early during the preparation process and the fees are likely to cover less than 100% of the budget,
    • the AESOP is only able to provide financial support to a limited extent,
    • the host is responsible for local sponsorship and support;
• information about the location:
  • accessibility and accommodation capacity of the location,
  • attractiveness of the location from the perspective of planners (i.e. what can be seen there, especially with regard to various planning issues)
• information about the proposed congress topic:
  The congress topic should be both comprehensive and pertinent to the contemporary planning problems. A short statement introducing the theme is expected.
  The recent AESOP congresses had the following topics:
  • 2004: Metropolitan Planning and environmental issues (Grenoble),
  • 2005: The dream for a greater Europe (Vienna),
  • 2006: Diversity and multiplicity (World Planning Schools Congress, Mexico),
  • 2007: Planning for the risk society (Naples),
  • 2008: Bridging the divide : Celebrating the city (joint AESOP-ACSP Congress, Chicago),
  • 2009: Why can't the future be more like the past? (Liverpool),
  • 2010: Space is luxury! (Helsinki),
  • 2011: Planning in an Era of Global (Un)Certainty and Transformation (World Planning Schools Congress, Perth),
  • 2012: Planning to Achieve/Planning to Avoid (Ankara)
  • 2013: to be announced on the AESOP webpage by the end of November 2011

• the AESOP Congresses normally attract an audience of 500-700 people, and take place in the first half of July each year;
• the selected candidate will be asked to sign a contract with the AESOP describing full details of the organization of the congress. Part of the contract states that the hosting institution will forward to the AESOP 10% of the congress fees, after the Congress;
• the selected candidate will have to form a Local Organizing Committee and their representative will have to participate in several AESOP ExCo meetings one year before and two years after the Congress (transfer of experience);
• the selected candidate will have to secure with their institution the availability of the venue and all possible support by the administration of the institution.

• applications are to be sent by email to the AESOP Secretariat General at secretariat@aesop-planning.eu
• accepted file formats:
  • text files: .docx, .doc, .rtf, .pdf
  • image files: .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .tiff, .pdf
• the application will be included in the materials for the Council of Representatives meeting and printed in black and white.