The GPEIG Globe October 2026
From The Co-Chairs’ Desk
Dear GPEIG Community,
October is a month for convening, reflection, and looking ahead. As we prepare to meet at the ACSP Annual Conference in Pittsburgh, we are also carrying forward the momentum of the 2026 World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) from Helsinki: a reminder that conferences can and should serve as authentic and deliberate spaces, and durable infrastructure, to support the relationships and shared inquiry that strengthen research and education.
At ACSP, please join us for two events on October 9: the Breakfast Business Meeting, 8–8:40 a.m., in Grand Ballroom 4, and the Global Urban Research Accelerator workshop, 3–4:30 p.m., in King’s Garden 5. The conference schedule is tight, but the opportunity to make cross-border connections and mutual support more intentional is real. Because the conference breakfast window is limited, our deeper governance, planning, and community-building work will continue through our four quarterly virtual Business Meetings and ten monthly listserv digests. We welcome your ideas for what those spaces should make possible.
This issue highlights the breadth of GPEIG participation across WPSC and ACSP, introduces the next steps for Project BRidGE, and invites you to help build the communications and community infrastructure that will carry this work through the year.
With gratitude and momentum,
Shruti Syal & Susmita Rishi
GPEIG Co-Chairs
GPEIG at WPSC and ACSP: Global Connections in Practice
The World Planning Schools Congress comes only once every five years (follow WPSC on LinkedIn), and WPSC 2026 brought the planning scholars community together around the theme Peripheral Visions: Rethinking Planning. More than 100 ACSP members participated, as ACSP’s GPEAN Representative Deden Rukmana reflected, in a congress that exhibited thoughtful organization, intellectually energizing exchanges, and engagement with social, environmental, and geopolitical challenges. We would especially like to highlight the 35 current or recent GPEIG members who animated WPSC 2026 as paper presenters, speakers, convenors, session chairs, track organizers, and roundtable participants. See the participant table (please reach out if your work isn’t listed!). GPEIG colleagues engaged questions and convened dialogues around climate change, critical infrastructure, land and property rights, public libraries, food, peripheral urbanization, planning pedagogy, migration, and planning justice, while also creating space for early-career scholars and students. That mix of topics, roles, and regions is the global planning community in practice.
A recent AESOP reflection on WPSC highlights the active ACSP–AESOP partnership: the AESOP–ACSP roundtable, From Reflection to Transformation, on preparing planners for emerging societal challenges; and a global young-academics roundtable focused on cross-regional exchange and lasting connections. The AESOP Young Academics Network roundtable is where GPEIG Co-Chair Shruti Syal launched Project BRidGE—Building Regional and Global Engagements in Planning. Project BRidGE is an open, interactive network map that makes visible the international projects, partnerships, and mentoring & collaboration possibilities already taking shape across planning. It began with GPEIG Student Rep Yuye Zhou listing GPEIG members’ projects wherever we could find information; now it needs the community to make it accurate, expansive, and useful. While ACSP did not fund the initiative because the scale required exceeded available funding, the project can grow through collective contribution. Help grow the map: explore Project BRidGE, add your project or partnership through the submission form, and share it with collaborators who should be part of this global community. Following the WPSC launch, we are reaching out to the other 10 associations in the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN) to make Project BRidGE a genuinely shared global digital knowledge commons. We left Helsinki encouraged by an informal closing call for North American planning associations to come together to host WPSC 2031 on this continent. We hope this is the start of a collective effort worthy of that invitation.
Next up, Pittsburgh. The ACSP 2026 schedule cross-lists the ACSP, GPEIG, and FWIG Breakfasts from 7–8:30 a.m. on October 9 due to their scheduling constraints, so GPEIG has planned a short 40-minute agenda for business matters, 8:00–8:40 a.m., allowing our members to be part of both communities. We will use the time for a focused welcome, awards, and incoming Co-Chair announcements—and keep building our deeper conversations through this digest and our bimonthly virtual meetings. Sixty-eight GPEIG members are presenting at ACSP this year; see the participant table and find your/your colleagues’ work (please reach out if your work isn’t listed).
We also invite you to the Global Urban Research Accelerator: A GPEIG Workshop. This structured, experimental speed-networking session brings junior and senior ACSP scholars working on global projects into a mutual forum for idea exchange—not a one-way advising session. Participants will choose two preferred discussion tables: Grand Challenges, Methodology, Pedagogy, or Action / Implementation. Come ready with two-minute pitches, a question or idea you are working through, and a willingness to exchange. With seven rounds across four tables, the workshop can accommodate 28 participants—14 junior and 14 senior scholars. Interested? Email Shruti Syal.
GPEIG In Focus: Call For Volunteers
GPEIG’s new communications and engagement structure depends on a distributed community of contributors. The annual schedule is meant to give members a predictable rhythm of connection, visibility, and participation:
Ten monthly listserv digests across the year, with messages from the Co-Chairs, spotlights on GPEIG committees, GPEIG updates, and contributed member news, opportunities, and blogs.
Four quarterly Networking + Business Meetings as recurring spaces for connection and governance: February, early May, late August, and November.
Three key annual-cycle activities: a member survey in Fall and the resulting Annual Report in January; awards calls and announcements from April to July; monthly blogs with LinkedIn and website updates for which we seek volunteers (read below).
Committees with defined roles in keeping GPEIG active, transparent, member-led, and consistently evolving (see monthly Meet the GPEIG Crew updates).
Conference events at expected avenues like ACSP, UAA, WPSC, like the GPEIG Breakfast and Workshop sessions on October 9 at Pittsburgh this year.
Our website and LinkedIn page are the places where GPEIG’s work can become more visible between conferences. GPEIG Student Rep Samira Bashar has already completed pages updates for Home, Mission & History, and Committees, and we now need member volunteers to keep the momentum moving. Can you submit or help write a monthly blog post? We are looking for short, accessible updates on courses and studios, research, publications, awards, events, case studies, fieldwork, and planning initiatives. These posts will feed the website, this monthly listserv digest, and our LinkedIn presence. Tag GPEIG when you share your own news on LinkedIn so we can amplify it. One update can travel farther when the community helps carry it.
We also need you to contribute your projects and collaborations to Project BRidGE. GPEIG Student Rep Yuye Zhou monitors the submissions form monthly. This is our opportunity to turn the connections visible at WPSC 2026 into an open global resource for projects, partnerships, mentoring, and collaboration.
These monthly listserv digests are also an experiment in continuity. Are they timely? Useful? Too long, too short, or missing something essential? Please tell us. Your feedback will help us shape the cadence and content of this space.
Meet the GPEIG CREW
The people behind the planning - get to know our committees.
Student Representatives
Yuye Zhou
Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Berkeley
Yuye focuses on urban spatial analytics and human–environment interactions, focusing on urban heat, 3D built and natural environments, and environmental equity. She has been supporting Project BRidGE since January 2026.
Samira Bashar
Ph.D. Candidate, The University of Texas at Austin
Samira studies environmental and climate justice through community lived experiences, from the Chattogram waterscapes to participatory park design in Austin to incarcerated women in Texas. She has been updating GPEIG's website and managing GPEIG's LinkedIn communications.
Nifty fact: In her rare downtime, Samira is on a relentless quest to conquer Slay the Spire.
Stay Connected & Get Involved
GPEIG runs on the energy of its members — here’s how to plug in this month:
Follow us on LinkedIn
Get real-time updates, member news, and global planning conversations.
Visit the GPEIG Website
Updates ongoing all Fall 2026 — check back often!
Tell Us What You Think: Member Survey
Please complete the survey by December 31, 2026.
Share Your News
Submit one contribution per Google Form - monitored monthly.
Join Project BRidGE
Explore our living network map of global planning collaborators, and enter your information here to join the map.