20. Co-creating urban futures: Digital technologies, urban visions, and expanded planning practices

Urban planning is at a crossroads where digitalization meets participatory practice, offering new tools and imaginaries for shaping cities with rather than for communities. Against the backdrop of the City of Hope theme—where visions, future images, and narratives shape anticipation, planning, and decision-making—this session explores how emerging technologies and co-creative approaches can deepen participation and foster collective urban futures.

We situate our discussion within the concept of expanded urban planning, which emphasizes inclusive knowledge building that brings together diverse, often fragmented data from both digital and lived sources. This approach not only broadens the scope of participation but also situates planning within community development and shared governance. Expanded planning resonates with the optimistic ethos of City of Hope: it invites proactive engagement, care, and value-based involvement in urban processes.

At the same time, meaningful participation involves two intertwined challenges: supporting citizens to understand proposed changes and helping them to act on that understanding. Digital visualization and immersive environments—such as extended reality (XR) technologies (augmented, virtual, and mixed reality)—offer novel ways to experience, interpret, and negotiate urban data, simulations, and design alternatives. These technologies can make complexities tangible, spark collective imagination, and open space for speculative but grounded conversations about futures we want to build together.

This session invites contributions that investigate:

• Digital and immersive technologies as tools for co-creation, deliberation, and inclusive planning.
• Urban visions and imaginaries that emerge from participatory processes powered by visualization, simulation, and XR.
• Case examples of participatory partnerships, including speculative design, planetary health frameworks, and community-engaged planning practices.

By bringing together theoretical insights and empirical experiences, we aim to reflect on how innovative technologies and co-creative methods can support hopeful and just urban futures. We welcome multi-disciplinary perspectives that connect technology, participation, planning, and social and ecological justice in urban research and practice.

We invite presentations preferably in English.