Emerging Territories gathers together scholars working at the interface of urban planning, urbanism, mobility planning, ecologies and architecture. It broadly focuses on the societal and environmental challenges faced by cities and territories in relation to climate change and social and environmental injustice, new understandings of decolonising architecture and planning, and new critical perspectives of international development, diversity and social inclusion, and health and well-being.
Members’ research activities are policy-led, design-led and/or knowledge-led and include research on:
- climate action and adaption
- mobility planning
- urban-rural linkages
- landscapes, green spaces and urban natures
- urban planning and sustainable and inclusive urban design
- hydro-citizenship
- biodiversity
- water ecologies and risks
- questions of social, environmental and climate justice
- territories of conflict
- decolonisation
Alongside strategic scale work that addresses city and regional challenges, the group has an underlying interest in urban politics and emerging forms of action, such as community activism and temporary and adaptive urbanism; whilst addressing questions of cultural regeneration, heritage and sustainability, and the impact on public realm and placemaking. We adopt a wide range of methodological diversity from planning and social science approaches to environmental humanities, architecture and urban design; we explore forms of co-design and inter- and trans-disciplinarity applied to the built environment. The group covers a wide geographical scope in relation to planning, sustainable urban development and architecture from the UK to the Global South.
Emerging Territories promotes dynamic ways of working. Two working groups have emerged in recent years to promote more focused research ideas and methodologies.
The Environmental Humanities Working Group is a small group of scholars developing ways of thinking and working collectively with landscapes, ecologies and more than human agency in spatial and material research and design praxis.
The Global Urban Unit is a small group of scholars exploring critical approaches to international planning, design, and development. Rooted in decolonial theory, it challenges extractive forms of knowledge production and advances alternative, community-engaged practices. Operating primarily across the Global South, its recent projects in Morocco, Brazil, China, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan address themes of climate adaptation, water urbanism, post-disaster transition and resilience, urban regeneration and conservation. Emerging in recent years, the Unit seeks to foster more equitable, situated, and reflexive understandings of global urbanism through collaborative and locally grounded research and practice.