As a leading urban planning and regional planning journal, Town Planning Review provides a principal forum for communication between researchers and students, policy analysts and practitioners. We hear from the co-editors of the journal as two new appointments are made to the journal’s editorial team.

The co-editors of Town Planning Review (TPR) are delighted to welcome two new additions to the editorial team of the journal – Dr Sebastian Dembski and Dr Matthew Wargent. 

Dr Dembski takes over the role of International Policy & Practice Editor from Dr Olivier Sykes who is now focused solely upon his role of Viewpoints Editor as a result of the ongoing and growing success of the viewpoints section.  Mindful of the increasing Global South presence and focus of the journal, as well as the much valued contributions of European, North American, and Australasian colleagues to the journal, Dr Dembski is spearheading a new more internationalised outlook to this section of the journal.   

Alongside the appointment of a new International Policy & Practice Editor, we are delighted that Dr Wargent is joining our team as Book Review Editor. Dr Wargent will be focused on bringing more international books forward for review whilst seeking to promote gender and racial diversity among both authors and reviewers. The book reviews section will also be expanded to include greater dialogue between authors and reviewers alongside the traditional book review format. 

– Co-editors Daniel Hess (University at Buffalo), Alex Lord (University of Liverpool), and John Sturzaker (University of Hertfordshire).

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Introducing the new additions

Dr Sebastian Dembski

Sebastian is currently Senior Lecturer and Director of Teaching Quality in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Liverpool. He trained as a spatial planner at TU Dortmund University, Germany, and subsequently obtained his PhD at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He’s looking forward to working with the editors, bringing in his international expertise in Planning to produce an academic journal that has been at the forefront of international debates.  

His teaching and research focuses on the spatial transformation of city regions and the role of institutions in planning. He has published widely in leading journals in the field of urban and regional planning, including Town Planning Review. Examples of his work include several papers on the role of new planning strategies for city regions (published in Environment and Planning A, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Urban Studies), a comparative study on reurbanisation in northwest Europe (published in Progress in Planning), and most recently on the issue of urban densification (published in Town Planning Review).  

Sebastian currently leads the Liverpool team of a £1m ESRC-funded international project looking at suburban densification and the role of landowners, planners and strategies of land policy. He also worked on funded projects for the RTPI on National Development Management Policies, the Scottish Land Commission on Housing Allocation, Assembly and Delivery in Europe and Shelter Scotland on housing affordability. Sebastian is also part of an international working group funded by the German Academy for Spatial Research (ARL) on small towns in metropolitan areas.  

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Dr Matthew Wargent

Dr Matthew Wargent is Lecturer in Urban Planning and Development in the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, UK. With a background in political sociology, Matthew’s research now explores public participation and the role of communities in the governance of urban space, the increasing role of private sector expertise in planning and urban governance, and more recently, the rise of digital technology within planning. Matthew also has a keen interest in planning theory, and a new co-edited book on new directions in planning theory will be published by Routledge in 2024.

Matthew has been involved in several research projects into neighbourhood planning funded by the UK Government, most recently in 2020. More recently he received a grant from the Nuffield Foundation as co-investigator to research the experiences of under-represented communities in community-led planning across the UK. This will continue a research theme that explores the relationship between communities and the state and the ability of the planning system to achieve social justice at the local scale. Other recent research has explored the influence of privatised expertise in planning and urban governance based on a three year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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