Cities & Health is establishing a new submission section to encourage deeper reflections that go beyond standard research outputs, enabling a wide range of voices to be heard.

For the attention of: Architects, landscape architects and urban designers. Practitioners in politics and policy, planning, urban transport and housing development. Communities working for local well-being, and those conducting action research.

The problem: The Cities & Health journal has as a mission to support co-generation of new knowledge for urban and planetary health, this new route for voices to be heard contributes to that goal.

Are we hearing enough genuine reflections from experience as we work towards healthier cities and towns for the benefit of people and planet?

To strengthen our understanding, and act more effectively, we need to hear a wide range of professionals, practitioners and communities, in addition to stories from research. Currently there is little support for reflecting on, and then disseminating, these experiences. We all have valuable lessons to share that lie outside funded and commissioned remits and project reports.

What we are doing: We are establishing a new section in the Cities & Health journal to publish the stories from experiences that all too often don’t get heard. These are the narratives from people who would not normally publish in such a journal. We welcome and encourage a wide range of authors to write for this new section of the journal. We also encourage researchers to write in a different way, going beyond their research outputs, sharing the lessons learnt.

Why we are doing this: This initiative is based on previously published analysis and debate calling for an urgent need to widen the range of voices that are heard and the nature of what is being voiced. Promoting health through city governance, planning and development is a complex field, and as such is particularly well suited to this multi-voiced approach.

Implications for city policy and practice: The new journal section is designed to benefit city policy and practice:

  • Allowing practitioners to share their practice based reflections.
  • Encouraging researchers to publish their learnings beyond academic outputs.
  • Reaching out to communities to hear reflections on their own experiences.

Healthier outcomes, for people and planet, are best served by collaborative knowledge leading to joint action. We hope that this new, accessible section of Cities & Health will help by aiding clearer communication between all stakeholders.

Full descriptions of this new ‘Type of Contribution’ can be found in the ‘Instruction to Authors‘ on the journal website. 

Please tweet comments to @CitiesxHealth.

Full open access research article: Reflective Praxis: accelerating knowledge generation through reflecting on our research and practice

Authors: Marcus Grant (@marcusxgrant),and Susan Thompson (@UNSWCityFutures)
Editor: Marcus Grant