Urban Governance

The official journal of Shanghai Jiao Tong University
The Article Publishing Charge (APC) fee will be covered by Shanghai Jiao Tong University for articles submitted by 31st December 2025.

Urban Governance seeks to advance knowledge of how to make cities more liveable, inclusive, and sustainable. We aim to provide a forum to address some of the most challenging issues facing cities and governance worldwide, to inspire academic research and debates, and to share knowledge, experience, and critiques on urban governance.

Contributors to and the readership of Urban Governance include academics, practitioners, and policy makers. We welcome rigorous studies that develop new theoretical and empirical insights on and/or innovative method for the research and practice in urban governance, especially those contributing new theories and solutions from public administration perspective.

Topics covered include: urban governance; urban studies; urban theory; urban policy; urban politics; urban economic development; urban development and planning; urban infrastructure; urban adaptation; urban regeneration; urban sustainability governance; local governance; government; local government; public administration; government budget; public policy; civil services; civil society; public-private sector cooperation; citizen participation; regional collaboration; community development; livability and quality of life; housing; community; greening; neighborhood conservation; immigration and labor migration; healthy city; friendly city; social and cultural dynamics; social innovation; smart cities ;technological innovation; digital technology

ARTICLE TYPES:

Research Articles

Research articles should be 7000-9000 words long, although submissions longer than 9000 words might be accepted on an occasional basis, if the topic demands this length of treatment. The submitted papers should make clear how they present broader impacts and significance theoretically, methodologically, practically and/or globally, for the governance of urban affairs. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary manuscripts with diverse methodological orientations, though we value research with high reliability, validity, and generalizability.

Practice Articles

Practice articles are expected to share practices in urban governance around the world and demonstrate innovative solutions adopted and developed in specific local contexts with strong potential for cross-jurisdictional learning. The length of the articles should be 3000-5000 words.

Viewpoints

Urban Governance also welcomes practitioners and policy makers to submit comments or make one argument on specific topics based on their experience in urban governance. The length of viewpoints should be shorter than 3000 words generally.

All submissions are reviewed by at least two anonymous reviewers with the identities of the authors concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa. Urban Governance's editors will make the final decision on a publication.

All new submissions should not be under review, in process or published by another other journal or in another form of publication. Publishers or authors who wish to republish or translate the published articles in Urban Governance should contact the editors directly.

Submission should be done via online Editorial Manager at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ugj Papers will be reviewed and accepted on a rolling basis. Accepted papers will be published online after it is formally accepted by the journal, and assigned a volume number later.

For detailed style guideline, please refer to the "Guide for Authors".