Book review forums: reviving a platform

ABSTRACT The temporality of books runs counter to many changes in academic employment and publishing. Books are not only another metric of output, they convey a unique substantive authority as well. In the footsteps of a “radical openness” that embraces humility, ambiguity and the courage to go beyond the safety of established schools of thought, the journal is launching the book review forums as an exploratory space. The intention with forums is to provide more careful attention to books with frameworks and concepts not yet found recurrent in Urban Geography, or maybe also urban geography. The new submission guidelines include two suggested forum formats: book forums consisting of a single book with multiple reviews and topic forums consisting of a single topic in which multiple books are discussed. With forums, the hope is to supplant more utilitarian assessments of books with a space for generative debates.