How are young planning academics responding in their research to the grand economic, societal and environmental challenges posed by globalization, megacities, resource scarcity, rapid shifts in technology, increasing urbanization and climate change? At the same time, how is the planning discipline responding to the rapid transformation of cities and urban regions in contexts where spatial scales are increasingly blurred and sectoral planning has in some places largely supplanted national planning systems? Some of the answers emerge in the seven articles contained in this special theme edition of Planning Practice and Research. They comprise a storyline suggesting that urban and regional planning is under constant change, increasingly grasping innovative tools, technologies and stakeholder engagement, all of which push into new disciplinary areas while providing alternative insights into the inherent complexity of planning issues. If nothing else, this selection of articles serves to illustrate the need for researchers, educators and practising planners to cross-fertilize each other's domains of expertise. This will help to counter disciplinary tunnel vision and keep planning relevant in age where many of the new ideas and visions are emerging from non-traditional planning areas such as behavioral economics, ICT, biology, physics and media studies.
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