Introduction: About This Issue

Abstract

This special issue of Asylum, guest edited by The Urban Advisory, is an opportunity to broaden the remit of the publication to be a curated collection of peer-reviewed and practitioner-led articles designed to challenge our collective thinking about a key urban topic. Specifically, the editors were challenged to bring together ideas commonly restricted to academic journals and share them more widely into the professional sphere. The theme of this issue is Rethinking Our Future Neighbourhoods, a concept at the essence of what the team at The Urban Advisory strives to do. As a result, this issue is focused on evolving the discourse in Aotearoa about the design and delivery of our future neighbourhoods. We have drawn together articles that explore ways to address our social, cultural and environmental challenges, opportunities for decolonisation, what embracing citizen-centric approaches to designing our neighbourhoods might look like, and how the built-environment professions might work together in new ways to deliver these wellbeing outcomes. The issue includes new, young voices, and some less-than-conventional ideas. The combination of peer-reviewed and practitioner articles asks the reader to imagine what a neighbourhood might be, and challenge their own preconceptions.