Planning Practice & Research

We launched Planning Practice and Research in 1986 with a core mission to strengthen dialogue between those doing the planning and those investigating planning through academic research. In the early years, the editorial team had some success in forging links between practice and research with contributions from both academics and professionals. Over the years’ our interest in understanding practice continues, but the dialogue has become one-sided with almost all of our content written by academics.

This open call is to remind practitioners of all kinds that PPR can help them to share innovative cases from practice in a scholarly Practice Forum. The forum spans professional, academic and civil society sectors, and reaches across the world. It can generate extensive feedback, especially when linked to social media posts. We have published reviews of practice on many topics. Subjects of particular interest currently include innovative tools for citizen engagement, social justice, informal and unregulated development, accommodating the implications of digitalisation, adaptation to risks posed by climate change, affordable living, enhancing biodiversity, and city centres.

We invite submission of insightful, critical commentaries on state-of-art aspects of practice that contribute to our understanding of planning Cases should give a systematic explanation of the case set in its context. An extensive literature review, conceptual framework and methodology are not required. Critical overviews of the current state of planning in particular countries or regions are also welcome. Practice forum pieces are usually less than 5,000 words, and we welcome illustrations. Authors who publish in PPR and do not have full access to PPR will be given two months free access to all papers.

Practitioners who are interested in curating a collection of practice forum papers on a specific topic to be published in a special issue are also encouraged to contact the editor.

Practice Forum contributions should be insightful and critical reviews of practice suitably illustrated, and no longer than 5,000 words excluding references. We would also be pleased to receive short comments from practitioners in the form of a constructive response to papers already published in PPR or a personal reflection on a planning topic of current interest. They should be no more than 2,000 words.

Authors interested in submitting to the Practice Forum are encouraged to first send an outline or short abstract of the proposed contribution to the editor-in-chief, Vincent Nadin at [email protected]. The editor will advise authors about how to proceed after consulting other members of the editorial board if necessary.

Practice forum contributions are not generally subject to the double-anonymous peer-review system but are reviewed by the editors and editorial board. If the assistance of other independent reviewers with specialist knowledge is needed, anonymity will apply. Note that an invitation to submit a paper is not a guarantee that the paper will meet the quality threshold. However, if needed the editorial team will assist with editing the paper. Most papers benefit from revision in response to reviewers’ comments.

Final draft papers should be submitted via the Editorial Manager website via the link below. On the first page of the submission system, authors should select ‘practice forum’ as the type of paper. Please do not submit full papers prior to discussing the potential contribution with an editor.

This is an open call and there is no deadline. Accepted papers are published online within three weeks of acceptance by the editorial team. The inclusion of papers in specific hard copy issues of the journal is subject to the outstanding pipeline of articles at the time.

Instructions for AuthorsSubmit an Article