Green infrastructure (GI) sits at the intersection of planning theory and practice, offering nature-based solutions to pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges. Yet GI lacks a coherent epistemic base. Key claims cannot be justified in consistent ways or evaluated using shared standards. This paper traces the evolution of GI knowledge across its first 30 years (1995–2025), drawing on a Scopus dataset of 10,573 publications. Using longitudinal bibliometric analysis alongside a Sociology of Knowledge framework and boundary work theory, we examine how GI knowledge is socially constructed, how power and influence are distributed among competing epistemic communities, and what this means for planning's capacity to mobilise GI in policy and practice. Our findings reveal three main disciplinary clusters contributing to GI framings — Ecological, Urban, and Hydrological. Each is diverging rather than converging. GI thinking began as a field with interdisciplinary promise but increasingly is exhibiting growing multidisciplinarity: joint puzzle-solving is giving way to parallel problem-solving. As disciplines work together in different ways, so hierarchies come into play. Ecologically-oriented researchers hold structural primacy. Urban and Hydrological researchers are epistemically distant. Boundary organisations play a crucial but underexplored role in synthesising knowledge across these divides and translating it into actionable planning frameworks.These developments raise concern that GI risks becoming a panacea concept, vulnerable to political co-option and resistant to the kind of coherent, evidence-based planning that long-term, place-based approaches demand. We conclude with a research agenda calling for a more clearly demarcated GI ontology to strengthen planning's intellectual and practical foundations.

This contribution uses Animal Rescue Centres (ARCs) as an unconventional but revealing lens through which to examine how planning theory, methods, and disciplinary identity are evolving. ARCs sit at the margins of planning: essential infrastructures of multispecies care, yet largely absent from policy frameworks, sustainability agendas, and academic debate. Their marginality exposes deeper tensions in how planning defines “development,” allocates legitimacy, and imagines its publics.

Drawing on ongoing doctoral research that combines spatial analysis, site assessments, planning case studies, and qualitative engagement with ARC operators, this contribution reflects on what ARCs reveal about planning’s conceptual blind spots. Their experiences of regulatory invisibility, land-use precarity, and inconsistent decision-making highlight how planning practice continues to privilege human-centric, service-oriented infrastructures while overlooking forms of care, labour, and environmental value that fall outside established categories.

The discussion considers how multispecies perspectives, welfare‑oriented infrastructures, and informal sustainability practices challenge planning’s methodological assumptions and open new avenues for research–practice dialogue. It asks what planning becomes when its objects of concern expand beyond human needs, and how such expansion might reshape long‑term spatial futures, policy design, and public understandings of what planning is for.

By foregrounding ARCs, the contribution invites a broader conversation about how planning can build itself up, conceptually, ethically, and methodologically, to engage with emerging forms of urban and rural care that currently sit beyond its field of vision.

Pavement parking has emerged as a critical site of contestation, representing a growing dilemma in the design of places, amidst a challenging socio-political context. While a recent policy shift in England empowers councils to address the issue, effective responses remain constrained by a lack of data, evidence, and tools.

Framed within broader scholarship on mobility justice, this research investigates pavement parking within the South Yorkshire Combined Authority (SYMCA) geography, covering the four constituent Local Authority areas. The research team, led by CRESR, are analysing the issue across diverse urban contexts—ranging from short-term obstruction near schools and high streets to persistent, long-term parking in residential areas.

Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research combines structured pavement audits using a bespoke audit methodology, qualitative research on the lived experiences of residents, interviews with Local Authority officers, and GIS mapping. This allows us to draw insights into the spatial nature of obstructive parking and its impact at a time of increased interest in policy and planning responses.

A primary output will be a light-touch, scalable pavement parking audit methodology/tool. By identifying how environmental constraints—such as housing stock and trip generators—relate to obstruction, the tool will better enable evidence-informed responses. For example, influencing local planning policy, design standards, and decision-making within the planning and built environment professions more broadly.

This shifts the focus beyond enforcement towards more strategic planning, design and placemaking to foster accessible, inclusive design, and ensure that the needs of pedestrians are prioritised in shaping existing and future places.