Submissions to Micropolis are Open!
Hello! Are you looking to release some published work, talk about your niche urbanism interest with others, or want to talk about how your discipline aligns with urbanism? You should submit to our Urbanism blog!
Mission
The Urbanism Blog seeks to highlight perspectives, create discussions, and share unique stories of our members pertaining to their interests and views on Urbanism. Our eventual goal is to create an anthology of writings that can help others explore urbanist principles.
Guidelines
There is no template for a submission but they should generally align with opinion or column pieces like you would see in other journals. All op-eds are different but many share some of these characteristics:
It should be complete works ranging roughly between 500-1,200 words.
It has a clearly defined point/thesis.
It has a clearly defined point of view.
It represents clarity of thinking.
It contains the strong, unique voice of the writer.
Your work should have a defined topic and theme. For example if your topic is Ann Arbor eliminating parking minimums, a larger theme could be density or accessibility. The theme should be reflective of one of our tenets of urbanism (See https://www.umichurbanism.com/about). Your theme is not bound to these tenets but should be ideologically adjacent or mirror similar thoughts.
Each submission should come with a cover photo or we can choose one for you. You are also more than welcome to use any amount of visual aids throughout your piece. Our platform is adaptive to photos, videos, and audio recordings. If you do not have the rights to whatever media is submitted, we recommend using unsplash (https://unsplash.com/) for copyright free photographs.
Please use proper citations throughout your work in MLA format including in paragraph citations.
Submission
Your work may be submitted at any time, but the e-board reviews submissions on a rolling basis at the start of each month and pieces will be posted throughout the same month. We will coordinate with our editor to give comments and ensure your piece is of its best quality before publishing. Even if the piece is unfinished and you would like opinions, or if you are still brainstorming topics, any e-board member would be willing and happy to assist!
Please send any questions and/or submissions to theomb@umich.edu. For submissions please use the subject line “FIRSTNAME LASTNAME Urbanism Blog Submission”
Thank you so much for your interest!