The Urban Studies Conference will take place on 7th and 8th May 2026 in Tampere University, starting with a pre-event on 6th May 2026. The theme of the conference is City of Hope. We invite researchers, planners and all other interested to participate in the Urban Studies Conference.
Hope is especially important in times marked by unpredictability and growing inequality. Without hope, it is impossible to work toward the well-being and health of people, the resilience of natural ecosystems, and the vitality of society as a whole.
City of Hope looks to the future while remembering its history—thriving in the places where people and buildings, nature and culture, art and technology meet to create opportunities for new, sustainable, and inclusive solutions.
Digitalization, climate change, and global crises, together with political decision-making, bring new dimensions to this discussion. City of Hope is capable of recovering and renewing itself—from individual neighborhoods to entire metropolitan regions.
Hope is key to understanding how the voices and emotions of communities can shape the future of cities. The theme encourages us to reflect on what kinds of visions, future images, and narratives are being constructed for cities—and how these can guide anticipation, planning, and decision-making at different levels of urban development.
The theme also challenges us to a critical evaluation: whose visions, decisions, and narratives are being built and strengthened, and whose are sidelined? At the same time, it invites us to ask where hope arises, how it can be nurtured, and what means can be used to build cities that are sustainable, healthy, and diverse places to live.
We invite you—researcher, expert, planner, student, or friend of cities—to participate in Urban Studies Conference 2026 to share your own topic in the light of hope. Together, we can shape the diverse cities of the future—cities that are sustainable, just, and full of hope for what is to come.
The Call for Sessions is open until January 14th, 2026. We welcome sessions that employ theoretical approach on the theme as well as sessions that favour empirical approach. We encourage multidisciplinary sessions; therefore, proposals that nurture discussion between different disciplines are more than welcome.
The session proposal should contain the following information:
- The title of the session
- Name(s) and affiliation(s) of the organiser(s)
- Contact person email address
- The description and the objectives of the session (no more than 3,500 characters)
Please send your proposals to: kaupunkitutkimuksenpaivat@yss.fi
The event is organized by the Society for Urban Planning, the Finnish Society for Urban Research and the Society for Built Environment Research, in collaboration with Tampere University’s TURNS research platform and STUE profiling area.