Gerd Albers Award (GAA) was established in 1999 in honour of Professor Gerd Albers, a co-founder and past president of the Society, who placed a particular emphasis on the task of publishing as a means of elucidating both the current debate and practical achievements in the planning field. This reputable award is bestowed for the best publication (book, book chapter, journal article and/or published project report) of ISOCARP members.

Tianren Yang, Renlu Qiao, Zhiqiang Wu, Qingrui Jiang, Xiaochang Liu, Shuo Gao and Li Xia , 2024 GAA Winners for Best Paper

In 2024, a total of 13 GAA high academic standards entries (2 Books and 11 Papers) were submitted:

1. Averting the Existential Threat of the Planet: Islamic Environmental Ethics to Address the Contemporary Environmental Crisis by Adha Shaleh and Md Saidul Islam
2. Emergent temporary appropriation versus lockdown regulations: The case of Venice by Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez
3. Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form by Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Alessandro Melis and Telmo Pievani
4. A review of housing policy in post-war Yugoslavia and Kosovo A review of housing policy in post-war Yugoslavia and Kosovo by Gazmend Uka
5. Cooperative planning under pro-development urban agenda? A collage of densification practices in Zurich, Switzerland by Ana Peric, Sophie Hauller and David Kaufmann
6. Improving land-use-based urbanism through award-winning planning practice and scholarship: a North American case study by Carlos Balsas
7. Driving Urban Digitalisation through a National Mission– a multilevel governance perspective of India’s data smart cities strategy by Tathagata Chatterji and Aravindan Mukkai
8. Exploring the restorative environments in Bratislava using EEG and VR: a neuro-urbanism approach by Mirame Elsayed, Abeer Elshater, Dina Shehayeb, Maros Finka and Samy M.Z. Afifi
9. Cultural heritage tourism and urban regeneration: The case of Fez Medina in Morocco by Djamel Boussaa and Muhammed Madondola
10. Unravelling heterogeneity and dynamics of commuting efficiency: Industry-level insights into evolving efficiency gaps based on a disaggregated excess-commuting framework by Tianren Yang, Changlong Ling, Xinyi Niu, Jiawen Yang and Jiangping Zhou
11. The nonlinear influence of land conveyance on urban carbon emissions: An interpretable ensemble learning-based approach by Tianren Yang, Renlu Qiao, Zhiqiang Wu, Qingrui Jiang, Xiaochang Liu, Shuo Gao and Li Xia
12. Streets for People: Pathways of Chnage from India’s Smart Cities by Gargi Roy, Kunal Kumar, Aswathy DIlip, AV Venugopal, Kusha Goyal, Smritika Srinivasan, Rutvika Nivate and Rahul Kapoor
13. Roads (dis)connecting cities and neighbourhoods: a socio-spatial study of Abu Dhabi by Alexandra Gomes, Apostolos Kyriazis, Peter Schwinger, Clemence Montagne and Sepehr Zhand

The jury consists of three members of the ISOCARP Scientific Committee and the A&P Program Director: Prof. Sebnem Hoskara, Dr. Ulrich Graute, Dr. Dorota Kamrowska-Załuska and Prof. Ali A. Alraouf (A&P Program Director)

GAA 2024 – Best Book

Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form, by Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Alessandro Melis and Telmo Pievani

Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form focuses on the significance and the originality of the study of exaptation. It presents exaptation as an opportunity to extend architectural design towards more sustainable approaches aimed at enforcing urban resilience.
The use of exaptation’s definition in architecture supports the heuristic value of cross-disciplinary studies on biology and architecture, which seem even more relevant in times of global environmental crises. This book aims to make a critique of the pre-existing and extensive paternalistic literature. Exaptation will be described as a functional shift of a structure that already had a prior, but different, function. In architecture, a functional shift of a structure that already had a function may apply to forms of decorative elements embedded in architectural components, and to both change of function of tectonic elements and the change of use of an architectural space. The book is illustrated with examples from around the globe, including China, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and looks at different civilizations and diverse historical periods, ranging from the urban to the architectural scale. Such examples highlight the potential and latent human creative capacity to change the use and functions, something that cities and buildings could consider when facing disturbances. Exaptation is shown as an alternative narrative to the simplifications of evolutionary puritanism. It also offers an innovative perspective and presents an opportunity to re-think the manner in which we design and redesign our cities.
This book will be of interest to architecture, planning, urban design and biology researchers and students.

GAA 2024 – Best paper 

The nonlinear influence of land conveyance on urban carbon emissions: An interpretable ensemble learning-based approach, by Tianren Yang, Renlu Qiao, Zhiqiang Wu, Qingrui Jiang, Xiaochang Liu, Shuo Gao and Li Xia

This research examines the complex, nonlinear relationships between land conveyance and per capita carbon emissions across 104 major Chinese cities, employing ensemble machine learning models. It addresses critical gaps in understanding how government-directed land allocation influences emissions—a relationship not easily observable in market-driven systems. China’s unique land tenure system and rapid urbanisation provide an exceptional context to explore these dynamics, offering insights relevant to sustainable urban development globally.

The study leverages advanced machine learning techniques to overcome limitations of traditional linear models, enabling the detection of nuanced, nonlinear relationships. The SHAP algorithm is applied to interpret model outputs, providing actionable insights for urban planners and policymakers.

Key findings reveal that industrial land allocations below 35% help reduce emissions, while higher ratios increase them. Allocating over 8% and 33% to business and public land respectively also lowers emissions. Land prices demonstrate heterogeneity—higher residential land prices promote efficiency only when their relative level to comprehensive land prices is below 1.1.

These results highlight the importance of tailored policies balancing development and emissions reduction based on local conditions. The study quantifies emissions responses to specific land allocation thresholds and pricing strategies, enabling urban planners to devise targeted interventions that foster growth while curbing emissions.

This research contributes to urban planning literature by providing a novel methodological approach and evidence-based insights for sustainable policy-making. It is particularly relevant for urban planners, policymakers, and researchers focused on sustainable urban development, offering a sophisticated framework for analysing and managing the complex interplay between land use decisions and carbon emissions in urban contexts.

GAA 2024 – Special Mention (Book)

Streets for People: Pathways of Chnage from India’s Smart Cities, by Kunal Kumar, Rahul Kapoor, Gargi Roy, Aswathy Dilip, AV Venugopal, Kusha Goyal, Smritika Srinivasan and Rutuja Nivate

Designed to cater to citizens, city leaders, city managers, urban practitioners, government authorities, policy-makers, the Streets for People: Pathways of Change from India’s Smart Cities compendium intends to stimulate and promote people-friendly street design. This compendium provides a menu card of proven good practices of Smart Streets and Roads across several Smart Cities. All information related to these projects is gathered through partner deliberations, online discussions, and crowdsourcing from cities.

The compendium allows to pick up bits and pieces, or even the entire journey of the projects, and replicate them through contextualization and drawing local strategies. This compendium has 50 completed projects on streets that are categorized under three broad typologies- Transit Street, Neighbourhood Street and Market & Commercial Streets.

By providing these learnings in a comprehensive and accessible way, this compendium aimed to play a pivotal role in supporting the scale-up of street transformations and furthering the Mission’s goal of creating people-centric cities across India.

The publication sets the context by defining India’s urban streetscape and their challenges and then establish the role of Smart Cities Mission in transforming streetscapes across India. It then deep-dives into the 50 best practices and captures the project journey and its impact on the citizens. The project journey illustrates the stepwise process that includes the stakeholders’ meeting and decision stage, the design process and the on-ground hurdles during the implementation stage. This compendium is the first of its kind ever made in the history of planning literature of India, that illustrates the Streetscape projects of India in detail. Going ahead, it with a section on institutionalizing the people-centric streetscape approach with three chapters.
All these project journeys served as an invaluable resource to decision-makers and city officials.

GAA 2024 – Special Mention (Paper)

Driving Urban Digitalisation through a National Mission– a multilevel governance perspective of India’s data smart cities strategy, by Tathagata Chatterji & Aravindan R Mukkai

This article analyses the Data Smart Cities Strategy, a key policy component under India’s ambitious 100 Smart Cities Mission, to understand how a national government-driven urban digitalisation agenda is being implemented in a federal political system where urban development responsibilities are shared between different tiers. A review of the implementation progress shows wide city-to-city variation in digitalisation and data readiness. Using the lens of multilevel governance as the analytical framework, our study highlights the importance of state-level factors in shaping city-level outcomes. Governance capacities and administrative attention towards urban issues vary significantly from state to state. This, in turn, impacts city performances as the institutional architecture of smart cities is dominated by state-level actors. We flag concerns that the top-down digitalisation agenda may widen the regional divide. While seed capital provided under the central scheme helped cities in poorer states to build expensive digital infrastructure, there are uncertainties regarding how these will be managed once the scheme ends.

Congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to all authors who submitted a book or a paper!

We look forward to successful GAA submissions the next year, too.