Scholars of urban design are invited to present their work at the fourth Symposium of Urban Design History and Theory, entitled ‘Beyond Repair: Extended Histories and Theories of Urban Design’ which will be held at the University of Sheffield on 15-18 September 2027.
The fourth edition of the Symposium on Urban Design History and Theory welcomes sessions and papers that connect to questions of urban design history and theory. Within this broad call, we particularly welcome submissions linked to the 2027 theme – Beyond Repair – that address urban design’s relationship with damaged places and people, and the positive uses, but also abuses, of narratives of repair. The symposium asks what histories and theories can tell us about urban design’s promises in the face of planetary crises.
Three symposia on Urban Design History and Theory have been organized since 2021, first at ETH Zürich (2021), then TU Delft (2023), and most recently the University at Buffalo (2025). These events have constructed a growing community committed to elaborating the field of urban design, considering the spatial and morphological qualities of cities and other human settlements within contexts of urban politics, ecologies, and historical events. This fourth edition in Sheffield tightens the focus to urban design ‘Beyond Repair’.
While reparative agendas tie to postcolonial and decolonial debates, they also predate the official coining of Urban Design in the 1956 Urban Design Conference at Harvard. Earlier reparative agendas can be found in the writings of Ebenezer Howard and the Garden City movement, Patrick Geddes’ and Octavia Hill’s interventions in congested residential areas, and access to nature through the Trespass movements. These strands tied the emerging field of urban design to reparative agendas. Beyond Europe and North America, as oil economies have driven urbanization, practices of “urban repair”, including the rehabilitation of heritage structures, the greening of open space, and mixing uses have made some cities more liveable while reducing affordability.
The fourth SUDHT conference thus considers urban design itself as being a field that extends the concept of repair by exploring places, actors, movements and ontologies that contextualise and balance its positivistic representations. With its long history of model pit villages, ports, new towns, post-war reconstruction, cooperatives, immigrant sanctuary, urban greening, speculation and volunteer-led rewilding, Sheffield and its region offers a good setting for addressing questions of urban design in relation to repair.
The symposium now invites proposals for thematic sessions, followed by a call for papers. The call for papers will invite proposals for papers within the selected thematic sessions as well as proposals to be presented in non-thematic (open) sessions.
Call for sessions
We call for those interested in the history and theory of urban design to submit a thematic session proposal for the 2027 symposium. The selected sessions will be advertised and open for paper proposals in September 2026. At that point we will also welcome papers that fall outside of thematic sessions (to be considered for open sessions). We anticipate all sessions will have four to five papers and run for two hours.
Session proposals must be submitted online by 11:59 pm GMT, on Friday, 31st July 2026. Session organizers must complete the Session Proposal Form with the following:
- A session title not longer than 65 characters, including spaces and punctuation
- An abstract of the session (300-word maximum)
- Contact information, including affiliation and email address for organizers/session chairs
- Current CV (2 pages max) for session chairs
Deadlines for submission
- 31 July 2026: Deadline for session proposals
- 28 September 2026: Call for papers opens
- 18 December 2026: Call for papers closes
- 29 January 2027: Session chairs notify speakers
- 5 February 2027: Symposium organisers notify speakers for open sessions
- 8 March 2027: Session chair and speaker registration opens
- 3 May 2027: Session chair and speaker registration closes
- 15-17 September 2027: Symposium at the University of Sheffield
- 18 December 2027: Tours
Symposium hosts
Isabelle Doucet, University of Sheffield
Hannah le Roux, University of Sheffield
Scientific committee
Tom Avermaete, ETH Zürich
Thomas Chapman, University of Cape Town
Jiaxiu Cai, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Janina Gosseye, TU Delft
Matthew Heins, Independent Scholar
Zeynep Kezer, Newcastle University
Conrad Kickert, University at Buffalo
Duanfang Lu, University of Sydney
Otto Saumerez Smith, University of Warwick
Email: sudht2027@sheffield.ac.uk
Conference Website: https://sudht.org