Cities journal has published over 100 of its innovative City Profiles since 1983. When Cities was first launched in that year, the new journal's aim was to provide a "medium for the exchange of data and opinion across boundaries", perceiving as it did then a "relative functional isolation of the major groups involved in the development process". City Profiles were mentioned as one of "a range of editorial opportunities" to be offered, along with short viewpoint articles, technology articles, letters, book reviews and conference reports. While our aim today stays essentially the same, the word "boundaries" has been dropped: we are no longer so concerned about isolation, having seen since then a large degree of convergence in interests, approaches, training and skills, as between academics and professionals.

The City Profiles series has evolved reflecting this convergence. Contributors to the series have been, from the start, predominantly academics but practitioner contributions continue to be very welcome. Planning and development have remained to the fore: they tend now to be treated rather more broadly than in earlier days, in the context of larger and more diverse policy issues and within new frameworks of city promotion and management. Development concepts and models have of course changed with the times. In the particular case of cities in the 'developing' world, early profiles reflected understandings of, and approaches to, rapid urbanisation, urban development and shelter still rooted to a large degree in the paradigms of 1970s, although certainly beginning to be modified by new concerns around market liberalisation, the limitations of the public sector, enablement and participation. In almost all recent profiles, globalisation and its impacts have received attention and in some they have been the main focus. But older concerns too, such as with conservation and with the environment, have been a constant running through the series from the start. A constant of a different kind has been the wide geographic spread of the series’ coverage. Of the 115 City Profiles published to up to August 2006, Asian and European cities lead with 32 and 30 Profiles respectively, followed by Africa (16), Latin America (15), North America (14), and the Australia-Pacific region (8).

Turning to the future, our core purpose continues to be to publish interesting, informative and critical profiles of cities and their management - around the globe. We have a particular preference for profiles of cities which have recently undergone, or are undergoing, rapid change. Although demographic and social change will continue to be important, we refer here also to changes such as those brought about by radical political transformations or crises at national level. They may be linked with shifts to market-oriented policies and the opening of economic frontiers. Or they may, at the extreme, form the aftermath of internal or external conflict. We are interested especially in cities which have learned, or may be learning, to cope with such new and often uncertain conditions through innovative institutional arrangements for local governance, management and planning.

In 1996-97 we published a small cluster of Profiles of Eastern European cities. We would like to see more, especially now that new policies and forms of city management may have had time to mature since the events around the start of the 1990s. Similarly we would welcome Profiles of transforming cities in Russia and the many other new republics born out of the former Soviet Union.

The pace and scale of change in China also offers much potential – here, as elsewhere, we would like to see Profiles which focus on urbanism and social/environmental issues as well as economic ones. The Pacific Rim area may perhaps have receded a little from the limelight since the late 1990s but continues to interest. In the 'developing world', we are especially keen to profile cities affected by globalisation. In the particular case of Latin America, we have achieved some coverage of major cities but those arguably undergoing globalisation effects most strongly - such as Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Santiago - have so far eluded our grasp. There are of course other absorbing areas. We would like to build further on a recently renewed interest to profile North American cities. And there is a clear case for recording and analysing the impacts of change, adversity and uncertainty in the cities of Africa.

Proposals for series of two or more city profiles linked by a common category, theme or perspective are welcome: linked profile series may be offered by a single contributor, or as two or more with a co-ordinating guest editor. We are ready too to consider repeat profiles: we expect normally ten years to have passed since the previous profile but the pace of change may well justify a lesser interval.

To discuss ideas for a new City Profile or series of Profiles, please contact John Leonard, City Profiles Editor, e-mail:  jbl@jbleo.plus.com

All City Profiles can be accessed through Cities on ScienceDirect, either through an institutional license, or via pay-per-view access to individual articles.