Call for Proposals for the RSA Regions & Cities Book Series
Published by Routledge
Regional Responses to a Changing World
Our planet is currently experiencing significant overlapping realignments, and the regional scale is more vital than ever for understanding the emerging and geographically contingent responses to these global changes and challenges. In the political realm, electoral ruptures are creating new coalitions and underlining the discontent felt by the many communities left out of the opportunity economy. In the economic realm, new requirements of the AI economy are reshaping land use and infrastructural networks while the local consequences of economic globalization are as unevenly distributed as ever. Meanwhile, the environmental implications of global capitalism are generating new externalities that link the lived experiences of communities and ecosystems worldwide.
This moment of polycrisis demands regional scholarship that mediates between local experience and global realignment. Whether policy oriented, critically situated, or empirically grounded, there are essential questions to be asked, including:
- How are emerging technologies and industries influencing regional development?
- How are geopolitical realignments influencing global value chains and labour markets?
- What new peripheralities (both spatial and social) are being created by new waves of technological change and economic development?
- How can regional responses offer spaces for hope in increasingly polarised times?
- Can just transitions and regional resilience withstand the energy demands of the data-driven economy?
The Editor and Editorial Board of the Regions and Cities book series invite proposals for monographs or edited volumes that address regional responses to our changing world through these and related questions.
Issues may include: infrastructural regionalism, networks, and corridor development; regional inequalities, populism, and governance responses; innovation ecosystems and regional development; the AI economy and related data center landscapes; regional development in developing and emerging economies and in comparative perspective; environmental governance in an age of scientific skepticism.
Please send proposals to Michael Glass, Editor-in-Chief, glass@pitt.edu and Kristina Abbotts, Routledge Commissioning Editor, kristina.abbotts@tandf.co.uk by 30th September 2026.
With over 300 series authors and 150 titles, the Regions & Cities book series brings together incisive and critically engaged international and interdisciplinary research, addressing the interest of geographers, economists, sociologists, political scientists and cultural scholars, as well as to policy-makers involved in regional and urban development.
The Regional Studies Association (RSA) is the global community for regional and urban research, development and policy. As a learned society for regional studies, it provides an authoritative voice for researchers, students and practitioners from disciplines including economics, geography, political science, planning, urban sociology, transport planning and other fields. The RSA delivers its charitable aims through knowledge exchange and policy engagement activities, its portfolio of journals and publications, its programme of conferences and events and its worldwide territorial and research networks. The RSA also runs a grant funding programme and recognises good practice in regional studies through its awards. It is an inclusive, diverse and environmental responsible organisation.