General Meetings of ISUF, 2003

The 2003 General Meeting of ISUF took place on 6 July 2003, at the end of the Conference held in Trani. As the weather was so hot, even at 7pm, the meeting was held in the shade of the courtyard of the Castello Svevo, the conference venue. This resulted in a somewhat less formal meeting than is usual.

Anne Vernez Moudon began her short President's Report by expressing thanks to the organizers of the conference, and to those who had been able to stay for the General Meeting itself. As ISUF approached its tenth anniversary it was clear that its business procedures required consolidation, although the aim was to avoid undue bureaucracy. A number of possibilities were under active consideration by ISUF's Council.

Three positions on the Council had fallen vacant, and the only three nominees were elected unopposed; these being Attilio Petruccioli, Michaël Darin and J.W.R. Whitehand. However, the possibility of expanding the Council membership was discussed, particularly to seek a more even geographical and disciplinary representation.

The ISUF web site had been upgraded considerably during the year, and Elwin Koster was thanked for his work on this. Further developments were still needed, for example to facilitate on-line conference registration, and ISUF would be seeking further assistance for the web site.

It had become traditional at this point for the President to announce the venue for the next large-scale ISUF international conference. However, Council had decided to draw up a more formal specification for the conference, and would be piloting a new bidding process from insti-tutions interested in hosting the 2005 event. The venue will be announced later this year. The President closed her report with a reminder that the Council meeting in mid-2004 will be held in conjunction with sessions on urban morphology organized as part of the International Geograph-ical Congress in Glasgow, UK, and a Post-Congress Symposium in Urban Morphology to be held in North-East England.

Michaël Darin gave a brief Treasurer's Report. The number of individual members, including those who had joined at the Conference, was approximately 300, each paying an annual subscription of £15; the number of institutional members was about 100, each paying an annual subscription of £35. The majority of individual subscriptions were now paid as part of the conference fee. The income since the Cincinnati conference in 2001 was about £11 000, most of which was spent on printing and distributing Urban Morphology.

This led directly to J.W.R. Whitehand's Editorial Report. He began by noting with satisfaction that the journal was now established in the main indexing and abstracting services which, he felt, would increase its visibility. Production remained `in house', with the exception of printing. Analysis of the content suggested that it was a truly international and multidisciplinary journal in terms of authors and topics. The rigorous refereeing process meant that only about one-third of the papers submitted were accepted for publication, which was about average for a refereed journal. However, the Editorial Board wished to encourage the submission of more good-quality papers, and particularly hoped that this conference would encourage contributors to submit papers.

There followed a substantial discussion on the journal's costs, the approaches that had been made by commercial publishers, and submission rates. Some useful ideas were suggested, which would be considered by the Editorial Board.

Peter J. Larkham, School of Planning and Housing, University of Central England, Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU, UK. E-mail: peter.larkham@uce.ac.uk