The slow urban blog is a research blog about collaboration in town / spatial planning and the built environment.

It is penned by Ian Babelon, an early career researcher and occasional freelancer/consultant.

The articles delve into urban planning, community engagement, local climate action, the craft of doing research, and interdisciplinary pathways and partnerships to nurture a sustainable built environment.

It is also about professional communities of practice and emerging trends in spatial planning and the climate transition. The approach is mostly ‘critical pragmatic’, and largely derived from my background in cultural geography, anthropology and spatial planning.

About the author

I am currently Research Fellow at Northumbria University at Newcastle (UK). Projects have included the digitisation of planning processes, low carbon retrofits in social housing, standardisation and compliance for offsite construction processes, and information requirements in BIM. My PhD thesis focused on digital participatory platforms (i.e. Civic Tech) used in a wide of urban planning projects across Europe and beyond.

You can find:

The research profile on ResearchGate

The LinkedIn profile

The tweets (all views are purely contingent)

The best blog in the field of spatial planning (AESOP Young Academics network), including my posts on that blog, and overviews of activity on the website (e.g. 2014-2019, and 2020). Do share your work and insight with the AESOP YA community to help make spatial planning ‘great again’.

And do get in touch to discuss opportunities for collaboration