Announcements

Forthcoming Special Issue: Turkey, Urbanism and the New Habitat

2021-03-12

In the last century, Turkey has undergone many urban issues as a consequence of the increasing urban population and heterogeneous quality, the expansion of urban areas, the intensification of developments within existing cities and towns, and the continued proliferation of the high rise and other intensive building types which have compelled the deterioration of overall character in cities along with the loss of natural and social-cultural resources. The multiplicity and complexity of the design and planning issues found in Turkish cities and the emerging challenges of different natures have stimulated us to compose this special issue. I am delighted to put it in order as the first issue of Ekistics and the New Habitat following a pause of thirteen years in the journal’s history.

The current special issue, following a thorough evaluation process, has compiled seven articles that address different planning and urban design issues around the generic themes of urban and landscape development, sustainability, urban public spaces, liveability and imageability, with varied research methods and case studies on Turkish cities.

Read more about Forthcoming Special Issue: Turkey, Urbanism and the New Habitat

The new online double-blind, peer-reviewed international journal of  Ekistics and the New Habitat, publishes scholarly insights and reflective practice of studies and critical writing concerning the problems and science of human settlements.  The field of study is mapped against a classification of settlement scale, from the remote village to the rural township, to dense smart cities, and increasingly the challenges of on-and-off world sustainable habitats.  In broad terms, papers in Ekistics and the New Habitat  seek to grow scholarly insights and application knowledge of the relationship between people, our human settlement designs and systems, and our natural biosphere.  

Call for papers to Ekistics and the New Habitat

There are few scholarly journals whose papers archive a history of development and thought evolution tracing back to 1957 - excepting Ekistics.  This makes for an extraordinary historical collection of research and practice documenting how humans have colonised the planet and transformed our built habitats.  The journal seeks papers from students, post-graduate candidates, academics and practitioners. We seek papers, typically of a cross-disciplinary nature, that:

  • targets any aspect of the United Nations New Urban Agenda, in Habitat III,  including reference to the Sustainable Development Goals.
  • critiques local, regional and global policy of human settlement development, design and planning, and urban transformation
  • offers a critical description of core elements that define the liveability of human settlements such as:

    • NATURE: Habitat foundations. How settlements rely upon, interact with, alter, or produce living ecologies, biodiversity, and climate.
    • PEOPLE: Physiological/biological and social-psychological needs and constraints. How settlements rely upon, interact with, or affect people's livelihood, safety, knowledge, security and well-being – whether they are transiting visitors, settlers (citizens), or neighbours of settlements.
    • SOCIETY: Social, economic, and political organisation.  How settlements rely upon, interact with, or are affected by governance, vicarious or present communities, groups, markets, and economics. 
    • SHELLS: The envelopes that contain settlement functions. How the design, technologies and spaces created or removed in settlements affect the functions and amenity of the settlement from the scale of personal shelter, to the home, and to urban business districts and precincts.
    • NETWORKS: Node-to-node systems and flows of resources, waste, data, people and information. How the design, technologies and flow of goods, waste, resources, data, people and information affect a settlement's functionality and amenity.
    • SYNTHESIS:  Combined, coherent design and knowledge.  Physical design and planning; Ekistic theory expressed through evolving models and principles. How systems of systems may differ from small and remote to large and urban-dense settlements.

 

The journal invites and accepts three types of submissions, all peer-reviewed for their type:

  1. Scholarly articles/topic reviews (full papers, double-blind review): typically, with title, authors, institutional affiliations, abstract, keywords, body text (5000-7000 words), and APA 6th References at the end of the article. Body text typically includes:
    • an introduction to a problem or topic outlining the need for the research,
    • the key prior papers in Ekistics and other sources that relate to the topic,
    • the methodological or conceptual framework and methods used,
    • the summary of key results or findings, 
    • a critical concluding discussion.
    • The Editor assigns the paper to its appropriate location in the Ekistics grid index for classification continuity with past papers. 

  2. Scholarly abstracts only (extended abstracts, double-blind review):  typically, with title, authors, institutional affiliations, keywords, body text (1000-1500 words), and APA 6th References at the end of the article. These shorter submissions are well placed for academics and practitioners seeking to share a critical reflection of an issue, or for first-time students seeking to publish an academic submission (with often a mentor as co-author). They may focus on a think piece critique, or a project, or a state of play of a regional and geo-locational issue.

  3. Practitioner, industry or citizen think-piece (short article only, peer review): typically, with title, authors, regional/organisational affiliations, keywords, body text (500-1000 words). Where appropriate, APA 6th References at the end of the article may be included. These shorter submissions are well placed for practitioners, industry or citizen to raise issues to which we invite the research community to respond. 

In addition, we welcome book reviews. Book review submissions are copy-edited, normally 300-500 words, designed to share with the readership community interesting or provocative volumes, monographs, or edited books that may be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of human settlements, the New Urban Agenda, and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.