We’re delighted to announce “The Future of Urban Studies” (FUS), a new initiative from the Urban Studies Journal dedicated to reflecting on the current state of urban studies and imagining where it might go next.

As one of the longest-standing and most influential journals in the field, Urban Studies has played an important role in fostering debate, advancing research, and connecting scholars across disciplines for more than six decades. At a time of rapid changes in academic publishing, shifting institutional contexts for research, and new intellectual agendas emerging across disciplines, we believe it is important to create space for collective reflection on how the journal can continue to play a leading role in shaping the field.

Running between May 2026 and November 2027, this initiative will convene a year-long conversation on the context and future of urban studies, focusing both on the discipline as an interdisciplinary field and on the strategic positioning of the Urban Studies Journal.

We will host a series of curated workshop discussions directly linked to tangible journal outputs and organised alongside major international conferences, while ensuring online engagement for those unable to attend. These meetings will involve members of the editorial team, selected authors from the journal, leading scholars from across the field, and emerging voices representing new intellectual directions in urban studies, and they will initially centre around three broad thematic areas:

1. The “field” of urban studies:

What are the intellectual contours of urban studies itself? How is the field evolving across themes, disciplines, methodologies, and empirical focus? How does interdisciplinary collaboration shape urban studies, and how does the field continue to intersect with geography, planning, sociology, political science, architecture, and other disciplines?

2. The “institutions” of urban studies:

What are the institutional environments that support and shape urban research? How are changes within universities (including funding pressures, evolving career structures, and shifting institutional priorities) reshaping the environment for urban research? How do urban scholars engage with policy, governance, and practice? How may the institutional landscape of urban studies evolve in the coming decade?

3. The “communication” of urban studies:

How is knowledge in urban studies produced, communicated, and disseminated?

These discussions will allow the journal to reflect critically on its own role within the broader publishing ecosystem and identify opportunities for innovation. Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing ideas on these themes, reflections from workshop discussions, and conversations and calls for engagement to help us think about the future direction of urban studies.

This initiative is not limited to the USJ collective: we welcome proposals and submissions for Debates and Critical Commentaries that tackle field, institutions and communication challenges and opportunities for urban studies, as well as proposals to co-host – along with the journal’s editors and international corresponding editors – conversations and debates that reflect on this state of the field.

The future of urban studies is a conversation. We invite you to join it!

For questions, please email our Editor-in-Chief Michele Acuto at michele.acuto@urbanstudiesjournal.com, or our Managing Editors Yingling Fan (yingling.fan@urbanstudiesjournal.com) and Jon Bannister (jon.bannister@urbanstudiesjournal.com)

Notes from the 13th World Urban Forum in Baku

May 19, 2026

Dr. Deen Sharp, LSE

At the 13^th World Urban Forum (WUF) in Baku, Urban Studies Journal convened a small, deliberately informal session in the WUF sponsored Academy “Schoolyard” under the title Who Speaks for the Urban? Addressing the Urban Science–Policy Interface. This session kicked off a series of convenings on the “Future of Multilateralism for the Urban” for the Urban Studies Journal’s upcoming special issue on the Future of Urban Studies. The next convening will be in-person at the London School of Economics on July 6, followed by another at the University of Bristol in November. There will also be two online convenings by the end of the year.

The hour-long conversation at WUF 13 took stock of a peculiar absence of such an interface and asked what, if anything, should be done about it. Unlike climate change, biodiversity, or food security, the urban has no permanent, intergovernmental body that produces regular, authoritative assessments of the field. There is no “IPCC for cities.” And yet an urban science–policy interface plainly exists. It is simply dispersed: across UN-Habitat’s normative work, the World Urban Forum itself, city networks such as ICLEI and C40, foundation-funded research, and academic publishing. The framing remarks set out this fragmented landscape and stressed the constraint that shadows any conversation about new institutions. With the multilateral system under acute financial and political pressure, and the UN itself contracting, there is little appetite and little room for new bodies or mechanisms. The question is therefore not only what an urban interface should look like in the abstract, but what is buildable at all.

Why does the absence matter? Because evidence and research are not an optional supplement to urban policy but the very basis on which it can be done well. Research underpins the case for funding. It is what allows findings to be translated into policy in the first place. It informs the inevitable trade-offs that urban decisions require, and, just as importantly, it can take account of those trade-offs rather than leave them buried. It tests the assumptions on which policy rests, and it generates new ideas. In climate, biodiversity, and food security, this evidentiary function has been given institutional form. In the urban, it has not. That is the real problem the session set out to address.

From there the discussion took up the harder problem beneath the framing: whether the urban can be spoken for at all in a single voice. The participants in the room came at the question from markedly different vantage points, one working on urban security, another on urban health, another on displacement, and it quickly became clear that each field carries distinct evidentiary needs and policy rhythms. What counts as relevant knowledge, and on what timescale it is needed, differs sharply across the things we group under “the urban.” This pluralism was named directly as both the strength and the central difficulty of the endeavour. It is a strength because the urban draws genuine analytical power from these many angles; it is a difficulty because it is not obvious that they can be assessed, or spoken for, through any single mechanism. A climate assessment can, with effort, converge on shared physical referents. The urban resists that kind of convergence, because it is less a domain than a bundle of overlapping domains held together by a word.

This fed naturally into a recurring theme of the hour, the limits of transferring the IPCC model. The appeal of the IPCC is obvious, but several contributors cautioned that the urban presents a fundamentally different kind of challenge. Climate science assesses a relatively bounded body of physical evidence; urban knowledge is heterogeneous, normatively loaded, and constituted as much by contestation over what the problem is as by measurement of it. A mechanism built for consensus around shared facts may be poorly suited to a field whose facts are themselves in dispute. It was here that an alternative reference point was introduced, less familiar to most in the room but one that drew evident interest: the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) model in the food security domain, a smaller and more deliberative expert panel embedded within an intergovernmental committee rather than a large standing assessment body. The discussion did not pursue it in depth but it served to open up the design space beyond the IPCC and to suggest that the urban interface need not be imagined at IPCC scale to be useful.

If the first half of the conversation concerned the supply of urban knowledge, the second half turned to its reception. A participant working on urban health raised what may be the most fundamental difficulty of all: governments frequently do not listen to advice, however authoritative its source. The problem is not principally a shortage of evidence or even of mechanisms to produce it, but one of trust and legitimacy.

The final intervention pressed this point into its political economy. A contributor noted that the financial interests bound up in urban land and real estate make the urban policy terrain unusually difficult for science to enter. One must also ask who bears the costs of taking urban evidence seriously, and who has an interest in ensuring it is never produced. If the session concentrated on the production and reception of urban knowledge, there was a third axis that was also touched upon: the relations of engagement between those who produce research and those who use it. In some research settings, scholars are expected to communicate beyond the academy and to render their work in plain terms but not everyone has the institutional support or cover to do so.

In the session, no consensus was sought and none emerged through the session. The case for an urban science–policy interface is yet to be coherently articulated, and the comparators from other domains, the IPCC and IPBES at scale, the smaller and more deliberative HLPE-FSN model, offer not a template to copy but a set of trade-offs to reason through. As Agenda 2030 approaches its horizon and the New Urban Agenda reaches its mid-point, the question the session posed remains open, and usefully so: who speaks for the urban, how, on whose authority?

IIHS is pleased to announce the first edition of its Early Career Researcher (ECR) Workshop, which will take place in-person from 3–5 June 2026 at the IIHS Sadashivanagar campus in Bengaluru.

Building on the extensive experience of IIHS faculty, a decade of delivering PhD workshops, and IIHS’ annual research conference Urban ARC, this three-day workshop offers a dedicated learning space for urban scholars navigating the post-PhD professional life.

It is structured around plenary sessions and smaller group sessions organised along two tracks: a Pedagogy Track focused on interdisciplinary teaching-learning, and a Research/Applied Research Track focused on interdisciplinary research.

Researchers awarded their PhD from 2021 onwards are eligible to apply. PhD scholars who have submitted their dissertation may be considered in exceptional circumstances.

Candidates should submit an application along one of the two tracks — a teaching statement and/or draft syllabus (Pedagogy), or a research statement and/or grant proposal abstract (Research/Applied Research). Apply here.

The fee for the course is INR 5,000 + 18% GST.

For queries, write to research@iihs.ac.in. More information is available on the website.

In 2024, Urban Studies launched a pilot initiative to deliver a high-quality, first-of-a-kind podcast miniseries to explore the opportunities and challenges of podcasting for urban research. This has led to a successful release of the two-part series “Walking the City With..”. It deployed immersive podcasting methods and tested how to peer review podcast material, to take our readers (and listeners) beyond the paper, into the lives and experiences of our editors and authors. Now, it’s up to you!

While continuing journal-curated episodes, Urban Studies is offering a £10,000 grant to produce a new miniseries modelled on “Walking the City With..”, to be published on the Urban Studies Podcast by the journal, with the aspiration to continue innovating, by taking listeners to diverse urban settings, voices and theories. We are soliciting proposals from our readership by 30 March 2026.

What are we looking for?

A proposal to deliver a miniseries between 5 to 8 episodes of approximately 30 mins length each, produced by November 2026 in either single release or two-part release (like “Walking the City With…”), ideally by a group of urban researchers or an established urban research centre, able to feature diverse themes, voices and contexts from those we have already been tacking, submitted in the format below.

What are we offering?

A £10,000 grant; journal editorial and administrative support to peer review episodes and publish the podcast through the journal; guidance (if useful!) on recording and producing practices, tools and approaches; dissemination via journal channels; a chance to be part of a unique(ly peer-reviewed and visible) innovative approach to urban podcasting.

What do we need from you?

A proposal, no more than 2 pages long (A4, 12-pt font) of the miniseries content, timeline and approach; CVs of the main hosts, producers (2 pages max, including relevant socials, podcasting and media experience).

How will we evaluate?

Proposals will be assessed by the journal’s editorial team along with input from relevant subject-matter reviewers, and a grantee will be selected by 30 April 2026, with a view to a project start no later than 1 June 2026, with a maximum 8-month duration.

Proposals should be submitted, with the subject “Podcast Grant Proposal – (lead submitter surname)” to admin@urbanstudiesjournal.com

Queries are welcome to Prof Michele Acuto, Editor-in-Chief, at michele.acuto@urbanstudiesjournal.com

IIHS invites applications for Research Week 2026, which will be held online and in-person at IIHS, Sadashivnagar, Bengaluru from 12 -17 January, 2026. The IIHS Research Week holds the annual PhD Workshop and annual research conference, Urban ARC.

The PhD Workshop offers an enabling, cross-learning space for doctoral scholars in urban research and practice. Designed for candidates from a wide variety of disciplines, the Workshop brings together emerging researchers for in-depth exploration, personalised mentorship, and interdisciplinary dialogue on urban issues across the Global South. Interested applicants can apply here.

The tenth edition of Urban ARC explores ‘Contested Terrains: Space, Place and Scale.’ This year, we are asking what happens when we look at space, place, and scale not as fixed, but as alive, debated, and fought over – shaped by power, everyday practice, and imagination. Join us as we unpack how urban life is remade by politics, environment, technology, and questions of belonging and care. More details here.

The last date for submissions for both is 10 November, 2025. For queries, write to research@iihs.ac.in.

When we think about moving through a city, either commuting, running errands, or picking up groceries, we rarely stop to consider just how much of that movement is tied to care. Whether it’s taking your child to daycare, dropping off medicine for a grandparent, or checking in on a neighbour, these acts of care are everywhere in our daily routines.  

Traditionally, transport research relies on origin-destination surveys or time-use diaries. These tools are useful, but they miss a lot of the complexity in care-related mobility. They often don’t capture the relational and emotional weight of caregiving, the diversity of tasks involved, or the ways gender, income, and access to digital tools shape how people move (or can’t move). 

Our research focused on caregivers in Chile, a country where almost 90% of people live in urban areas. We surveyed residents in Santiago, Concepción, and other cities, asking about their caregiving tasks and how these changed from just before the pandemic to the early response phase. The aim? To go beyond basic trip counts and dig into the real lived experience of care mobility. While many people were adapting to remote work and limited travel, caregivers were often forced to continue moving—bringing groceries to parents, taking children to health appointments, or simply trying to juggle household tasks with paid work. We wanted to understand these challenges in more detail and highlight the factors that shaped them. Understanding how caregivers navigate cities means looking beyond destinations to consider whom they care for, the resources they have, and the social roles they are expected to play. 

We found four distinct profiles of caregivers. On one end, there are high-income households where caregiving duties are shared fairly equally between partners. These folks had access to good internet, flexible jobs, and lived in areas with services nearby. Unsurprisingly, they reported lower stress and found it easier to work from home. On the other end of the spectrum were caregivers with fewer resources, often managing everything on their own. Many cared for young children or people with special needs, had lower incomes, lived in overcrowded housing, and lacked good internet connections. For them, stress levels were high, mobility was restricted, and balancing paid work from home felt nearly impossible. 

The study also confirmed what many women already know from experience: caregiving remains a deeply gendered issue. Even after accounting for income, education, and other factors, women consistently reported more stress and greater difficulty navigating caregiving and remote work. This isn’t unique to Chile, since similar patterns have been found in the UK, France, and the Netherlands. 

Digital exclusion also played a big role. Without reliable internet, remote work simply didn’t work. This added another layer of inequality, especially in low-income neighborhoods or smaller cities. In places like Washington state, faster internet access helped support remote work. In Chile, the opposite was true—those without connectivity were left behind. 

All of this matters because urban policy should move beyond movement analyses from point A to point B. Mobility is relational. It’s about who you’re with, who you’re responsible for, and what options you have. And if cities are going to become more equitable, they need to recognize and support caregiving as a vital part of urban life. 

So what can be done? We need better data that actually reflects the complexity of care. We need policies that reduce the burden on low-resource caregivers, like improving access to local services, investing in digital infrastructure, and making cities more walkable and connected. 

Caregivers keep our cities running. It’s time transport and urban policy started running with them in mind.