Urban Policy and Research – A New Chapter

Urban Policy and Research has extended its scope. A modest beginning saw the journal focus entirely on research related to Australia and New Zealand cities. However, being awarded the status of an ISI journal in late 2010 meant that Urban Policy and Research was no longer solely an Australian and New Zealand journal. It was now international in its reach with a regional scope extending out to south-east Asia. The Journal began to welcome research papers about urban planning and urban policy in this region and in doing so the Journal was also starting to reflect more directly the changing diversity of the Australian and New Zealand urban planning student cohort. Our undergraduate, post-graduate and research-higher degree programmes were now attracting hopeful students from countries including China, Indonesia, Japan and India. Despite this extension to cities beyond Australia and New Zealand the Editorial Team and the International Advisory Board (IAB) remained committed to this Journal being an Australasian regional journal at its heart. This focus meant that papers would continue to speak to the planning and urban policy issues specifically and uniquely faced by cities in this region.

A growing recognition that cities across the Pacific, namely those along the western seaboard of the United States and Canada, were similar in the sense that they were “New World” cities and that much could be learned through comparative analysis with Australasian cities prompted the Editorial Board to revisit the scope of the journal more recently. Thus, the geographical reach of Urban Policy and Research has extended again. Today we accept papers about North American west coast cities and the planning and policy conundrums, innovations and conceptual challenges through which parallels with Australian and New Zealand cities can be drawn.

As stated on the Journal’s website, Urban Policy and Research is a celebrated international journal with a readership that continues to grow along with its impact factor. The Journal is now international in two main ways. First, it presents to a worldwide readership a view of the urban policies of particular countries, and second, it encourages dialogue among researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the Australasian region. While a theoretical and/or empirical contribution must be made with some bearing on policy, practice and knowledge about Australasian cities, the journal welcomes academics from as far afield as the UK, the EU, Canada, United States to provide comparative analysis between cities in those countries and regions with those in Australia, New Zealand and the Asa-Pacific.

The extension of the Journal’s scope is also reflected in the composition of the International Advisory Board. In recent years we have welcomed new faces. They are Fulong Wu from University College London, Dominic Stead from Delft University of Technology, Wendy Guan Zhen Tan from Western Norway University of Applied Sciences/Wageningen University and Research, Roger Keil from York University (Canada), Sue Brownill from Oxford Brookes University, and Laurence Murphy from Auckland University, New Zealand. We also saw some longstanding IAB members move on including Nicholas Low and Margo Huxley. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their very important contribution and to say thank them for their immense commitment to Urban Policy and Research.