Call for Papers: “The New Urban Crisis”

Urban Affairs Review – Graduate Student Paper Competition 

The Urban Affairs Review is pleased to announce its inaugural graduate student paper competition. In this first year, our theme is the “The New Urban Crisis.” The concept of urban crisis has been explored by scholars since the 1950s and has been deployed to capture myriad city problems from traffic congestion to fiscal deterioration to putative moral decay. In this competition, we encourage authors to examine what might be new about the contemporary challenges facing cities in the U.S. and beyond. Topics may include the impact of budgetary austerity; rising inequality; the targeting of cities by the Trump administration and other authoritarian regimes around the world; climate change; or the intersecting crisis captured by the term, “polycrisis.” Alternatively, researchers might argue that there is no “new urban crisis” at all. 

In order to enter the competition, please submit an abstract of between 150 and 250 words. These abstracts will be reviewed by our editorial team, which will in turn invite successful candidates to make a full submission. Final submissions will be roughly 2,000 words in length and will be peer-reviewed. Between two and four winners will be published on the Urban Affairs Forum, our open access online platform. 

To submit, please include your name, current affiliation, paper title, and abstract in the body of an email to urban.affairs.review@gmail.com. Please use the subject header “Graduate Student Competition Abstract.”

Timeline 

Abstract submissions: November 21

Abstract decisions: December 1

Full submissions: January 15  

About the Urban Affairs Forum: the Urban Affairs Forum is the Urban Affairs Review's open-access website where a range of content is published, including: book reviews, online symposia, essays, and podcasts.