from Lisa Schweitzer, University of Southern California and Associate Editor, JAPA

I am working on a proposal for a JAPA special issue on Planning Ethics, and we are shooting for a publication date in 2016. The more interest I can demonstrate, the more likely it will be approved. We could use ACSP to develop and work on some of our papers this year. I am also going to send a call out to APA, as practitioners have developed interesting ethics cases just about every year.

If you have a manuscript on ethics you’d like to try to get into the special issue, would you mind emailing it to me and letting me know if you would like to be part of a panel at ACSP? I think we might be to put together a nice group of papers for the planning theory track.

Please email me your abstracts by March 2 (to lschweit@usc.edu) and let me know if you want to be included in a panel. Even if you don’t want to be on a panel, feel free to send an abstract to get it on my radar. If we get the go-ahead from JAPA, I’ll send out a formal call for abstracts later this year with a timeline for paper submission.

Practitioners, students, and new scholars are particularly welcome to submit.

Some example themes may help illustrate what I’m looking for. Potential manuscripts:

—Develop the models, frameworks, and theoretical perspectives under which professionals can assess ethical problems in planning,

—Evaluate emerging ethical trends and controversies in planning, such as ethical uses of media to market projects and ideas and becoming an ally to those fighting social exclusion;

—Identify the scope and power of professional roles within private, nonprofit, and public institutions;

—Track the interdependence between political, social, economic, and technological variables in planning ethics; and

—Analyze or reconsider a significant case that helps scholars and practitioners think differently about ethics in the profession.