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Apologies for cross posting.
Book project: Public Space Design and Social Cohesion – Call for Chapters
An interdisciplinary group of researchers from the Department of Urban studies and Planning, The University of Sheffield are currently working on a book project on Public Space Design and Social Cohesion: a Comparative Perspective between the Western World and Global South to place it in the Routledge series on Planning and Urban design. Initial contacts with the publishers have indicated a strong interest, and we are now at the stage of putting together a list of authors and abstracts to finalise an agreement with Routledge.
This book is intended to shed new light on the ongoing debates on public space design and social cohesion. Many current researches across the world particularly undertaken by governmental agencies have attempted to identify the places and qualities that build social cohesion and to propose solutions to improve them. However, these researches either focus more on the social rather than the spatial qualities, in this way have not deeply reflected on the role of public space design, or mainly foreground the Anglo-American dominated sociological literature. This knowledge gap provides the impetus for this book and takes a global view in understanding how these attributes manifest in the western world and global south.
To do so, we aim to gather research from a number of both leading and young promising scholars and practitioners from the global south and western world to share their knowledge and experience on these issues. By adopting a comparative perspective, we expect to discuss various case studies in different cultural and social contexts with distinct planning and design ideals and by doing so to uncover emerging perspectives in terms of theories and practices that can expand our knowledge on the topic.
For those interested in contributing with a book chapter, please take note of the following submission guidelines:
- An abstract of 300 words should be submitted by email to the editors Patricia Aelbrecht ([log in to unmask]) and Bobby Nisha ([log in to unmask]) by 15 April, 2016.
- Prospective authors are encouraged to write a chapter specifically for the volume. However, it is also possible to draw on already published work, adapting this to address the volume theme.
- Chapters need to be written in English, and language editing is the responsibility of the authors.
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- The editors will choose the most promising abstracts from those submitted: the criteria that will be used here are: relevance to the goals set out for the volume, originality of scope, theoretical sophistication, and empirical grounding of the material.
- We will be aiming to have a broad representation of authors from different contexts within the western world and global south, using a range of methodological and theoretical approaches. Prospective authors will be informed of our editorial decision by 1 June 2016. Feedback will be provided so as to ensure that selected chapters are written in ways that contribute organically to the volume planned.
- The first draft of the chapter is to reach the editors by 1 September 2016. Editorial comments will reach authors by 15 December 2016, and final drafts will need to be submitted by 15 February 2017 for onward transmission to the publishers with the ultimate aim to publish the book in December 2017.
- Chapters will need to be around 7,000 words in length, an essential prerequisite to be eligible for the REF. The style sheet for references and bibliography will be forwarded to all authors whose abstract has been selected for the volume.
Best wishes,
The editors