This year, 18 outstanding articles were nominated by journal editors for the AESOP Best Published Paper Award. From these, AESOP’s Best Published Paper Committee shortlisted the following five articles:
- Brookfield Katherine (2022). Planned Out: The Discriminatory Effects of Planning’s Regulation of Small Houses in Multiple Occupation in England, Planning Theory & Practice, 23:2, 194-211.
- Cox Savannah (2022). Inscriptions of resilience: Bond ratings and the government of climate risk in Greater Miami, Florida. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54:2, 295–310.
- Coblence Alena, Sýkora Ludek (2022). The performativity of metropolization: how material-discursive practices institutionalize the Prague Metropolitan Region. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 46, 502-521.
- Sager Tore. (2022). Advocacy planning: were expectations fulfilled?, Planning Perspectives, 37:6, 1205-1230.
- Xue Jin. (2022). A critical realist theory of ideology: Promoting planning as a vanguard of societal transformation. Planning Theory, 21:2, 109–131
The committee is delighted to announce that this year’s Best Published Paper Award goes to Katherine Brookfield for her paper entitled ‘Planned Out: The Discriminatory Effects of Planning’s Regulation of Small Houses in Multiple Occupation in England’ published in Planning Theory & Practice
Katherine Brookfield’s paper addresses the discriminatory effects of planning on disadvantaged groups. It does so by analysing the disproportionate effects of regulation of small houses in multiple occupations in England on young, lower-income adults. The conceptual framework of planning as social control is employed to explore the discriminatory effects of planning’s regulation of small shared houses, shedding light on the resulting social, political and economic effects. Through the perspective of the housing sector, the paper places itself in the broader discourse on planning’s responsibilities in increasing levels of inequality between generations. Many planning activities have winners and losers, making discrimination somehow an inherent aspect of planning. But Brookfield’s paper brilliantly shows how state-sponsored social exclusion can result from apparently progressive ideals facilitating measures that control and exclude the most invisible voices.
With a very thorough, theoretically-informed and well-documented methodological approach, eloquently selected for addressing the research question, the paper raises significant questions as to the challenges and implications of planning practice. The convincing research design makes it an innovative paper providing a particularly insightful contribution to planning debates. All committee members wish to congratulate the author on receiving this year’s award.
AESOP Best Published Paper Committee
Elisabetta Vitale Brovarone, Committee Chair (Politecnico di Torino, Italy); Lauren Andres (University College London, UK); Antonio Ferreira (University of Porto, Portugal); Mennatullah Hendawy, YAN Representative (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany); Anna Hersperger (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Switzerland); Mark Scott (University College Dublin, Ireland).
