The next edition of the Green European Journal will focus on the contemporary role of cities and their political contribution to shaping the 21st century political landscape in Europe. By looking at, amongst others, the increasingly important political, economic, and sometimes ecological role of cities in Europe, as well as their profile of primary vectors of globalisation, the Journal intends to connect analyses and experiences from the urban milieu around Europe to explore the potential transformative political role of cities and Green approaches towards these often progressive urban laboratories.
Cities have always played an important role in the history of Europe and its development. In recent decades, in Europe and elsewhere, cities and megacities have both become increasingly powerful and autonomous actors in political and economic – national, European, and global – life. Their profile as non-state and local yet political and global actors, their network-like constitution, and their position as the primary locus of globalisation’s unfolding and development have made them crucial actors of innovation, contestation, and change.
While cities also convey the image of inequality, insecurity, and heightened globalised cosmopolitan life, they can be spaces and laboratories for new ways of doing politics, democratic movements, and transformative policies and social experiments. Cities then can be seen as political actors, not only spaces for the implementation of urban policies. Yet, paradoxically, an increasing interconnectedness seems to be accompanied by a sharp divide between urban and rural zones, which threatens to accentuate social and political polarisations across Europe.
In the context of today’s deep social, political, and economic crisis in Europe, what can cities – as a prism through which to study and re-think the future of Europe – tell us? What can Greens learn from cities, their urban movements and dynamics, that can feed their progressive political proposals for a different, more sustainable, and reconciled Europe?
Approach
Contributions should provide perspectives from different levels and approaches that explore different facets of the role of cities in Europe as well as distinctive Green visions, measures, and lessons from and for European urban settings, whether in the present, past, or future.
Some of the central questions this edition of the Journal will seek to address are as follows:
- In what ways are cities spaces and laboratories for social, political, economic, and environmental experiments?
- What is the role of cities in the processes of globalisation?
- To what extent do cities foster cosmopolitanism, and how can they help progressive European forces to answer some of the resistance and insecurity citizens demonstrate towards globalisation?
- Are cities spaces of resistance to populism and nationalism, and from where do these impulses stem? Can the autonomy of cities to determine policies be a resort or a sanctuary in the fact of regressive national politics?
- What are distinctive urban policy fields and experiences that help further a Green European agenda?
- How are cities political actors? What is the evolution of the rural-urban divide in different parts of Europe?
- What can the history of European cities and city-states shed light on current developments and what lessons does it provide for a progressive European agenda and Green responses?
- What can cities tell about Greens and their policies? What can Greens bring to urban politics and policies? How have urban environments shaped the development of Green thinking and policies in various ways?
While the Green European Journal is a political journal that focuses on today’s realities, it is designed to look beyond daily politics. All types of contributions are welcome: analytical and global articles or interviews; political and policy articles or interviews; case studies, feature stories or forward-looking pieces.
Deadlines and Editorial Requirements
The 16th edition of the GEJ has no intention of publishing only theoretical and academic articles on the issue. Far from that, we want to publish lively texts and interviews, to stimulate thought and debate, and all kinds of contributions that pursue this aim while helping to go beyond daily politics and contribute to and understand a European and local Green vision or approach are welcome.
Potential contributions should be sent to laurent.standaert@gef.eu and gej@gef.eu
The articles in a language other than English should be sent before 16th of June 2017. Articles in English should be sent before 23rd of June 2017.
The GEJ currently accepts submissions in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, German, Greek, Finnish, Swedish, and Dutch. Articles in other languages should be accompanied by an abstract in one of the above languages.
We strongly advise you to send a brief summary, presentation of the author, and overall length in English of the proposed article, before submitting an article or a final draft.
Before submitting an article please read carefully our Editorial Guidelines.