This article looks at older gay male homemaking experiences of engaging with domestic material objects. Using London as a case study it draws from 11 in-depth semi-structured interviews. These narratives are used to argue that the homemaking practices of older gay men can advance a queer theorised goal of queering heteronormativity. Throughout the article, domestic materiality and participants' relationship to their sexual minority identity forms the central focus; the empirical analysis highlights the obvious, subtle and even hidden ways interviewees subvert heteronormativity through relating to possessions in the home. On top of this, the article also looks to transcript excerpts to show that some interviewees consciously avoid relating their sexuality in the process of engaging with material objects in the home; this too, it is argued, can be understood as a political act challenging normative understandings of home. The article aims to complement a small but growing body of literature situated at the intersection of feminist work on domestic materiality, geographies of gerontology, ageing masculinity and queer theory.

A stimulating body of work, which sits at the intersection of feminist and queer geographies, argues that embodied performativity can not be separated from the study of home. This paper seeks to expand on this work by looking closely at spatial mobility and homemaking imaginaries of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) Londoners. Specifically, I focus on two separate yet related locations in the production of home: the parental home and the home established in adulthood. The paper argues that for LGBT Londoners, both sites play an important, complex role whereby homemaking identity is shaped through the tension or push and pull of these two locations. The parental home can be an isolated space where one's sexual identity remains, if not closeted, then modified. Often, one flees the home in the process of 'coming out', and identity is expressed differently in the new home. Given this departure, arrival, and return (to visit), how does the parental home relate to one's current identity and homemaking practices? The research for the paper is drawn from eight semi-structured interviews conducted with Londoners. Using this research and the physical and emotional embodiment framework, I also draw parallels with Blunt's theme of 'productive nostalgia', whereby both the physical spatial embodiment as well as the narrative of imagination -in past (as in conventional understandings of nostalgia), present, and future -act as a lens to understanding the homemaking of LGBT Londoners.

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EDITORIAL Energy in the locality: a case for local understanding and action Context for considering energy in the locality We live in an urbanising world occurring on the background of rapid population growth. Both these phenomena contribute to an ever-expanding and changing built environment, which draws heavily on the existing energy and resources. Today's buildings use about 40% of the world's energy and are responsible for nearly the same amount of carbon emissions -more than that in the transportation or industrial sectors (WBCSD 2009). Buildings are also highly dependent on finite resources that will be depleted in the near future with most of their energy coming from fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas -over 80% of world's energy comes from fossil fuels and a fair share of this goes into our buildings (EIA 2012). Furthermore, energy is used throughout the life cycle of buildings. First, the construction materials that are used embody energy, since energy is needed for the extraction, manufacture and transport of raw materials. The modern building and construction sector is very steel, cement and glass intensive. All of these materials embody a considerable amount of energy -for example, steel can have 24 times the embodied energy of wood, while aluminium 124 times more (UN Habitat 2012). Second, energy is used in the construction phase of the project, as all the drilling machines, pumps, tractors, etc. need energy for their operation. Third, energy is needed for the use and maintenance of the building (in lighting, air conditioning and cleaning); in fact, the single largest use of energy in buildings has been attributed to heating and cooling -in 2012, 67% of the domestic energy consumption in the EU was for heating purposes alone (OECD 2013). Finally, energy is needed for demolishing the building and removing the debris.All these global trends show how "energy hungry" our built environment is and, as a result, less resilient to problems related to energy security and energy price increases. This has a significant impact on the way we live our lives given the existence of three energy challenges: carbon mitigation (energy must be safe for the environment), energy security (energy should be secure for nation-states) and combating fuel poverty (energy should be affordable for all). This so-called energy trilema (WEC and Wyman 2012) has become today's dominant energy paradigm. It involves complex intertwined links between public and private actors; governments and regulators; economic, political, social and technological factors; national and local resources; combined with wider environmental concerns and patterns of individual behaviours. "No country is an energy island" (HoL 2013), however, in the absence of a universally accepted framework for energy policy, the ways these links are understood and pursued have important implications for energy in the "locality".First, it has become evident that carbon emissions derived from human activity and, in particular, energy consumption challenges the environmen...

The Association of European Schools of Planning -AESOP -is the largest academic organisation on spatial planning in Europe, and its annual conferences are the most important events throughout the year. 'From control to co-evolution' was the theme of this year's AESOP congress in Utrecht (Netherlands) from 9-12 July, 2014. It was hosted as a joint project by the University of Utrecht, the Delft University of Technology, and the University of Ghent under the supervision of Luuk Boelens, Vincent Nadin and Thomas Hartmann. Almost 700 researchers across all planningrelated areas from Europe and beyond gathered to present, listen and discuss within seventeen parallel tracks, from 'planning in stressful places' to 'ethics and justice in planning'. Four related papers were presented in each session, followed by lively discussions about ideas, approaches and even connections between them.Traditionally, those paper sessions form the core of AESOP congresses, but additionally, several innovations have been introduced in Utrecht to the established AESOP conference procedures. In particular, pitch sessions were new for AESOP at this year's gathering: presenters had a time slot of five minutes each to present new research ideas or work in progress. Those sessions turned out to be very lively and appealing platforms, in which not only younger academics presented preliminary findings but also eminent professors, such as Klaus Kunzmann (TU Dortmund) and Luuk Boelens (University of Ghent). VenueBert van de Zwaan, the rector magnificus of Utrecht University, opened the congress. Utrecht University is one of the oldest and nowadays the second-largest university in the Netherlands. The campus is an architectural highlight of the city and contains works of famous Dutch architects, like Rem Kohlhaas, Wiel Arets and Herman Hertzberger. Spatial planning at Utrecht is integrated into the geoscience department. The education of planners (Bachelors and Masters) is strongly linked with the field of human geography. The opening reception took place at the Dutch National