THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF

PLANNING THEORY

The Routledge Handbook of Planning Theory presents key contemporary themes in planning
theory through the views of some of the most innovative thinkers in planning. They introduce
and explore their own specialized areas of planning theory, to conceptualize their contem-
porary positions and to speculate how these positions are likely to evolve and change as new
challenges emerge.
In a changing and often unpredictable globalized world, planning theory is core to under-
standing how planning and its practices both function and evolve. As illustrated in this book,
planning and its many roles have changed profoundly over the recent decades; so have
the theories, both critical and explanatory, about its practices, values and knowledges. In the
context of these changes, and to contribute to the development of planning research, this
handbook identifies and introduces the cutting edge, and the new emerging trajectories, of
contemporary planning theory. The aim is to provide the reader with key insights into not
just contemporary planning thought, but potential future directions of both planning theory
and planning as a whole. This book is written for an international readership, and includes
planning theories that address, or have emerged from, both the global North and parts of the
world beyond.

Michael Gunder FNZPI is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning,
University of Auckland, New Zealand. From 2011–2015, he was Managing Editor of Planning
Theory and remains an editor. His research draws on poststructuralism to analyse the ideological
dimensions of built environment public policies and related narratives.

Ali Madanipour is Professor of Urban Design and a founding member of the Global Urban
Research Unit at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University,
UK. His four-volume edited collection, Planning Theory, was published in 2015 in Routledge’s
Critical Concepts in Built Environment series.

Vanessa Watson is Professor of Planning in the School of Architecture, Planning and

Geomatics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, holding a PhD from the University
of Witwatersrand, and is a University Fellow. She is a founder and on the Board of the African
Centre for Cities at UCT.
‘From Habermas and Lefebvre to Rancière and Mouffe this handbook captures the zeitgeist of
planning theory with contributions from some of the most innovative thinkers in their fields.’
Professor Phil Allmendinger, Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Cambridge, Fellow of Clare College
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF PLANNING THEORY

Edited by Michael Gunder,

Ali Madanipour and Vanessa Watson
 First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2018 Taylor & Francis
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identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
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and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gunder, Michael, editor. | Madanipour, Ali, editor. | Watson,
Vanessa, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of planning theory / edited by Michael
Gunder, Ali Madanipour and Vanessa Watson.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011547 | ISBN 9781138905016 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: City planning. | Regional planning. | Land use—Planning.
Classification: LCC HT166 .R696 2018 | DDC 307.1/216—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011547

ISBN: 978–1–138–90501–6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978–1–315–69607–2 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo Std

by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
 CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors viii

1 Planning Theory: An Introduction 1

Michael Gunder, Ali Madanipour and Vanessa Watson

PART I
Contemporary Planning Practices 13

2 Spatial Planning: The Promised Land or Rolled-Out Neoliberalism? 15

Simin Davoudi

3 Strategic Planning: Ontological and Epistemological Challenges 28

Louis Albrechts

4 Growth Management Theory: From the Garden City to Smart Growth 41

Jill L. Grant

5 Planning in the Anthropocene 53

William E. Rees

PART II
How Meaning/Values Are Constructed in Planning 67

6 The Public Interest 69

Stefano Moroni

7 Rethinking Scholarship on Planning Ethics 81

Tanja Winkler
v
 Contents

8 Communicative Planning 93
Tore Sager

9 Neoliberal Planning 105

Guy Baeten

10 Neo-Pragmatist Planning Theory 118

Charles Hoch

11 Urban Planning and Social Justice 130

Susan S. Fainstein

12 The Grassroots of Planning: Poor People’s Movements,

Political Society, and the Question of Rights 143
Ananya Roy

13 The Dilemmas of Diversity: Gender, Race and Ethnicity

in Planning Theory 155
Suzanne Speak and Ashok Kumar

14 Postcolonial Consequences and New Meanings 167

Libby Porter

15 Postpolitics and Planning 180

Jonathan Metzger

16 ‘Cultural Work’ and the Remaking of Planning’s ‘Apparatus of Truth’ 194

Andy Inch

17 Countering ‘The Dark Side’ of Planning: Power,

Governmentality, Counter-Conduct 207
Margo Huxley

18 Co-Evolutionary Planning Theory: Evolutionary Governance

Theory and Its Relatives 221
Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld

PART III
Networks, Flows, Relationships and Institutions 235

19 The Governance of Planning: Flexibly Networked,

Yet Institutionally Grounded 237
Raine Mäntysalo and Pia Bäcklund

vi
 Contents

20 New Institutionalism and Planning Theory 250

André Sorensen

21 Conflict and Agonism 264

John Pløger

22 Insurgent Practices and Decolonization of Future(s) 276

Faranak Miraftab

23 Hegemonic Planning and Marginalizing People 289

Yosef Jabareen

24 Actor-Network Theory 302

Yvonne Rydin

25 Spatial Planning and the Complexity of Turbulent, Open Environments:

About Purposeful Interventions in a World of Non-Linear Change 314
Gert de Roo

26 Assemblage Thinking in Planning Theory 326

Joris Van Wezemael

27 Lines of Becoming 337

Jean Hillier

Index 351

vii
 CONTRIBUTORS

Louis Albrechts is a Professor Emeritus at Leuven University, Belgium, and founder and
editor of European Planning Studies. Current research and writings focus on the practice and
nature of strategic spatial planning, diversity and creativity in planning, co-production in plan-
ning and bridging the gap between planning and implementation.

Pia Bäcklund is a senior researcher at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her research inter-
ests concern the limits and role of participation, connections between democracy and plan-
ning theories and especially the knowledge base of planning practices and public administration
in general.

Guy Baeten is Professor of Urban Studies at Malmö University, Sweden. He has previously
worked at the universities of Lund, Oxford, Leuven and Strathclyde. Guy Baeten is interested
in urban development projects and urban sustainability. He is the principal investigator of the
Strong Research Environment CRUSH – Critical Urban Sustainability Hub.

Raoul Beunen is Assistant Professor of Environmental Governance at the Open University,

the Netherlands. His research explores the potentials and limits of environmental policy and
planning in the perspective of adaptive governance and sustainability. It focuses on the processes
that drive evolution and innovation in governance.

Simin Davoudi MRTPI, FAcSS, FRSA is Director of GURU (Global Urban Research
Unit) at Newcastle University and past President of AESOP (Association of European Schools
of Planning). Her recent books include: The Resilience Machine (2017, Routledge), Justice and
Fairness in the City (2016, Policy Press), Reconsidering Localism (2015, Routledge).

Gert de Roo is Professor of Spatial Planning. He heads the Department of Spatial Planning
& Environment, at the University of Groningen. He was President of AESOP. De Roo is the
editor of A Planner’s Encounter with Complexity (2016, Routledge) and Complexity and Planning
(2012, Routledge), and author of numerous articles on complexity and planning.

viii
 Contributors

Martijn Duineveld works at the Cultural Geography group at Wageningen University. He

focuses on urban governance, planning and design. He is especially interested in the dynamics of
power and places, inspired and influenced by Michel Foucault and Niklas Luhmann.

Susan S. Fainstein is a Senior Research Fellow in the Harvard University Graduate School of
Design. She received the Distinguished Educator Award and the Davidoff Book Award for The
Just City, both from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning. She focuses on planning
theory, urban redevelopment, and comparative policy.

Jill L. Grant FCIP LPP is Professor of Planning at Dalhousie University. She has authored
dozens of articles, chapters, reports, and five books, including Seeking Talent for Creative Cities
(2014, University of Toronto Press) and Planning the Good Community: New urbanism in theory
and practice (2006, Routledge).

Michael Gunder FNZPI is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning,
University of Auckland. From 2011–2015, he was Managing Editor of Planning Theory and
remains an editor. His research draws on poststructuralism to analyse the ideological dimensions
of built environment public policies and related narratives.

Jean Hillier is Emeritus Professor of Sustainability and Urban Planning at RMIT University,
Melbourne. Her main research concern is with poststructural theory. Books include Deleuze and
Guattari for Planners (InPlanning e-book in conversation with Gareth Abrahams, 2013) and the
Ashgate Research Companion to Planning Theory (2010) edited with Patsy Healey.

Charles Hoch has taught urban planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1981.
He studies how professional planners and others make spatial plans and the kind of work plans
do. He has taught courses on the history, theory, organization and practice of planning using
pragmatist ideas.

Margo Huxley has worked in local and metropolitan planning departments in Melbourne, and
held posts at various Australian and UK Universities. Drawing on and developing the works of
Foucault, she researches in the fields of cultural, historical and postcolonial urban geography and
planning, and planning theory.

Andy Inch is a Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa,
Portugal. From 2010–2016 he was a Lecturer in Urban Studies and Planning at the University
of Sheffield, UK. His research interests include the politics of planning, planning cultures and
relationships between citizens and the state.

Yosef Jabareen focuses on the nexus between planning theory and practices in two realms:
sustainability and climate change, as well as justice and urban rights. His book The Risk City
(2015, Springer) presents a new theory regarding contemporary city plans around the world and
the evolving risk and uncertainties.

Ashok Kumar is Professor of Physical Planning in the School of Planning and Architecture,
New Delhi. His research interests include Politics of Inclusive City Planning, Collaborative

ix
 Contributors

Planning, Capabilities and Spatial Justice. He is a member of the Indian Institute of Town
Planners and edits the ITPI Journal.

Ali Madanipour is Professor of Urban Design and a founding member of the Global Urban
Research Unit at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University,
UK. His four-volume edited collection, Planning Theory, was published in 2015 in Routledge’s
Critical Concepts in Built Environment series.

Raine Mäntysalo (D.Sc., architect) is Professor of Strategic Urban Planning at Aalto University,
Department of Built Environment, Finland. He is also Adjunct Professor at University of Oulu,
Finland, specializing in planning theory and communicative planning. His research interests
concern strategies, trading zones, democracy and power in spatial and land use planning.

Jonathan Metzger is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies at the KTH Royal
Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Most of his work concerns decision-making
processes relating to complex environmental issues – often with a focus on urban and regional
planning, policy and politics.

Faranak Miraftab is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her work, empirically based in cities of Latin America, Africa, the
Middle East and North America, concerns the global and local development processes involved
in the formation of the city and citizens’ struggles to access dignified livelihood.

Stefano Moroni is Professor in Planning at the Polytechnic University of Milan (Italy). He

teaches ‘Land use ethics and the law’ and ‘Planning theories and practices’, and works mainly
on planning theory and applied ethics. He is a member of the editorial board of Planning Theory.

John Pløger, Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Agder, Norway, conducts
research on planning theory and practice and urban studies. In 2015 he published The Ephemeral
City (Danish) and The Vital City (with Jonny Aspen, School of Architecture, Oslo) (Norwegian),
and is currently writing a series of articles on ‘the presence city’.

Libby Porter is Vice Chancellor’s Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research,
RMIT University. Her work concerns the processes and politics of displacement and disposses-
sion as a consequence of urban planning and development. Her current activities are focused on
the possibilities of decolonizing urban geography and planning.

William E. Rees, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, is a human ecologist,

ecological economist and former Director of UBC’s School of Community and Regional
Planning. He researches the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability and cognitive/behavioural
barriers to progress. His work as the originator/co-developer of ecological footprint analysis is
globally recognized.

Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare and inaugural Director of The
Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA. Her latest
book, Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World, was published in 2016 by
the University of California Press.

x
 Contributors

Yvonne Rydin is Professor of Planning, Environment and Public Policy at University College
London’s Bartlett School of Planning. She specializes in urban planning, governance and sus-
tainability. A collection on ANT and planning studies Actor Networks of Planning (co-edited with
Laura Tate) was published by Routledge in 2016.

Tore Sager is Professor Emeritus at NTNU, Norway, where he teaches strategic planning.
His latest book is Reviving Critical Planning Theory (2013, Routledge). Recent research concerns
transport policy packages and neoliberal urban planning policies. Besides, Sager studies activist
planning as resistance to neoliberalism, and the activist planning of intentional communities.

André Sorensen is Professor of Urban Geography at the University of Toronto. His research
examines planning, property and temporal processes in urbanization and urban governance
from an institutionalist perspective. His paper ‘Taking Path Dependence Seriously’ published
in Planning Perspectives won the Association of European Schools of Planning Best Paper Award
in 2016.

Suzanne Speak is Senior Lecturer in International Spatial Planning at Newcastle University,

England. Her research explores issues of urban poverty, homelessness, housing and informal
settlements in the Global South. She works particularly in India and South Africa, seeking to
understand how contemporary urban policy impacts on the poor.

Kristof Van Assche is Professor in Planning, Governance & Development at the University of
Alberta. He is interested in evolution and innovation in governance, with focus areas in spatial
planning and design, development and environmental policy. He has worked in many parts of
the world, as researcher, teacher and consultant.

Joris Van Wezemael is an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture, ETH

Zürich. His research focus is the sustainable transformation of urban landscapes in a strongly
networked world. He teaches at the Department of Architecture (ETH Zürich) and at the
Centre for Urban and Real Estate Management (UZH).

Vanessa Watson is Professor of Planning in the School of Architecture, Planning and

Geomatics at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), holding a PhD from the University
of Witwatersrand, and is a University Fellow. She is a founder and on the Board of the African
Centre for Cities at UCT.

Tanja Winkler is based at the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics at the University
of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interests include community-led planning initiatives,
critically assessing ‘the voice of the poor’ in public decision-making processes, exploring the
values of meta ethics for situated planning actions, and planning education through engaged
scholarship.

xi
 1
PLANNING THEORY
An Introduction

Michael Gunder, Ali Madanipour and Vanessa Watson

Aims of This Book

In a changing and globalizing world, planning theory is core to understanding how planning
and its practices both function and evolve. As illustrated in this book, planning and its many
roles have changed profoundly over the recent decades; so have the theories, both critical and
explanatory, about its practices, values and knowledges. In the context of these changes, and
to contribute to the development of planning education and research, this handbook seeks to
identify and introduce the cutting edge, and the new emerging trajectories, of contemporary
planning theory. This will provide the reader with key insights into not just contemporary plan-
ning thought, but potential future directions of both planning theory and planning as a whole.
This handbook’s objective is to present the most important themes of planning theory through
the views of some of the most innovative thinkers in planning thought. We have invited them
to write new chapters for this book, in which they introduce and explore their own specialized
areas of planning theory, to conceptualize their contemporary positions and to speculate how
these positions are likely to evolve and change as new challenges emerge. Further, given that
this book speaks to an international readership, we have sought to include planning theories
that address, or have emerged from, parts of the world beyond the global North. We have also
encouraged authors, where possible, to consider how their particular theoretical and practical
focus has manifested itself differently in various contexts around the world. We do not claim
comprehensive coverage in this respect and we recognize that our choice of theorists who write
and publish in the English language inevitably limits the scope of our endeavour.
This introductory chapter briefly maps out the contemporary evolution of planning theory.
It documents the profound change that planning and the theories of planning have undergone
over the last third of a century so as to lay the foundations for the following chapters that
comprise contemporary planning theory. Commencing with the public loss of traditional con-
fidence in instrumental rationality, technical authority and positivistic predication from which
planning historically advanced a progressive future, the introduction documents the emergence
of new strands of both critical and explanatory theoretical understanding and resultant planning
practices that arose in place of planning’s earlier modernist rationality.
After this introductory chapter, the book will comprise three specific sections. The first section
provides theoretical understandings and critical observations pertaining to the contemporary state

1
 M. Gunder, A. Madanipour and V. Watson

of planning’s diverse practices. The second section draws on multiple intellectual perspectives
to consider how meanings and values are constructed in planning. The final section theorizes
the contemporary and emerging structures and functions that underlie planning. It considers the
networks, flows, relationships and institutions that constitute the planning frame and the inher-
ent consequences that these frameworks produce. In aggregate, the book provides the reader
with a clear view of the current established state, as well as the latest exploratory perimeters, of
knowledge in planning theory.

The Changing Landscape of Planning Theory

As Nietzsche famously put it, philosophies are narratives told from a perspective. They are
the products of particular times and places, rather than timeless truths valid for everywhere.
Planning theories, therefore, need to be contextualized and localized, as they are narratives
developed in the context of particular circumstances and in response to certain concerns. To
map out the current state of planning theory, therefore, these theories need to be located in the
context of their historical evolution, and in reference to the changing conditions of the socie-
ties in which they emerge. They reflect the structural challenges of our time, which are driven
by social, economic, political, cultural and technological change, with direct implications for
society and environment (Madanipour 2015a, 2015b).
As the instrument of managing change in the built and natural environments, planning
clearly reflects the changing relationship between the institutions of power and the society
and environment. The recent history of planning theory in the Western countries parallels
the rise and fall of the welfare state, which advocated an increased level of intervention by the
democratic state in managing the economy and society. At the peak of the welfare state, during
the three decades after the Second World War, planning enjoyed its highest level of popular-
ity and activity, which was supported by theories for its legitimacy, rationality and efficiency.
As the welfare state declined, however, planning came under attack and its rationale and its
performance in the previous period were severely criticized. Since then, the last three decades
have witnessed a period of increased restrictions on the idea and the activities of planning,
and a proliferation of theories that are critical of this decline, searching for ways of revitalizing
planning in new forms.
Outside the Western context, with a wide range of completely different experiences in the
relationship between the state and society, the history of planning played out in a number of
different ways. In the socialist countries, planning was an integral part of the state, and planning
theories were at the heart of the state’s ideology. The collapse of the Soviet system, which was
symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, heralded a radical divorce from the idea of
planning in Eastern European countries. Where the socialist political structure was entwined
with market economics, as in China, which experienced perhaps the largest wave of urbani-
zation in human history, planning combined an ideology of the state with a framework for
capitalist modernization. In the colonized countries around the world, planning had been an
instrument of colonial power to control the colonized society. The process of decolonization
after the Second World War transformed the nature of the state, which now faced the chal-
lenges of institutional renewal, rapid urbanization and modernization. Where the country had
not been directly colonized, meanwhile, planning had become a vehicle of the local elites to
foster modernization and Westernization, which now faced severe criticisms for their failure to
pay sufficient attention to the local context.
The test for planning theory in these post-socialist, postcolonial, and post-modernist contexts
has been articulating new forms of relationship between the transformed state and society, and

2
 Planning Theory: An Introduction

developing ideas that would respond to local specificities rather than an uncritical transmission
of ideas from the Western context. With the intensification of globalization and urbanization,
and with the scale of problems such as climate change, some of the challenges for planning and
its theories are also becoming increasing global. While the strength and capacities of local insti-
tutions to address these problems vary widely, a significant range of problems are increasingly
shared across countries and continents.
In this changing landscape of planning and its theories, the post-war planning of the Keynesian
welfare state has profoundly transformed into planning for the contemporary entrepreneurial
neoliberal state, with considerable spatial, temporal and institutional implications (Madanipour
2010). In this transformation, the primary bases of public planning – its instrumental rationality,
claims to representing the public interest, to objective scientific knowledge, democratic legiti-
macy, comprehensive coverage of problems and long-term future orientation – have all been
questioned. In the new atmosphere, in which market considerations and modes of practice have
taken priority, the character of planning theory and practice has largely changed, and the ‘legiti-
macy of the profession and public trust in its institutions have both been challenged’ (Laurian
2009: 369). Planning has come under numerous challenges as an outcome of a range of often
inter-related issues. These include: the loss of faith in predictive certainty and positivistic science
in a world increasingly understood to be dynamically non-linear in its complex multiplicity of
flows and behaviours (de Roo 2015); the loss of ‘notions of exclusivity of knowledge’; the ‘dis-
placement of the power of the bureau-professions by managerial[ism]’; the ‘de-professionalising
tendencies of government through the imposition of performance management techniques’;
and, also, ‘increasing specialisations within the domains of practice’ (Vigar 2012: 363).
With its roots in the European Enlightenment, planning emerged in the early 20th cen-
tury as ‘a technique for guiding social progress’ for territorial management that sought societal
improvement (Friedmann 1987: 53). The explicit term ‘planning theory’ can be first attributed
to the University of Chicago’s Program of Education and Research in Planning in the late 1940s
(Hillier and Healey 2008: 3). Planning theory has since evolved as the theorization and contex-
tualization of spatial management practices, often with an ethical or critical dimension, as well
as a means for introducing alternative knowledge perspectives from other fields into the wider
planning discipline (Friedmann 2008). Planning initially arose largely from an architectural and
engineering background. At least in the United States, planning emerged after the Second
World War, in alignment with Keynesian economic theory, as a social science discipline of
public policy. This was largely attributable to planning’s successful pre-war deployment as a tool
of Federal government regional economic development policy during the Great Depression and
its subsequent war-time accomplishments in national logistics and related public management
(Friedmann 1987).
Andreas Faludi (1973: 1) summarized this social science planning perspective as being ‘the
application of scientific method – however crude – to policy-making’. Central to this scientific
method of policy planning was the application of rational choice, where the best, i.e. most
efficient, means were identified within known constraints to achieve a desired goal or end
state, often called instrumental rationality (Banfield 1959; Davidoff and Reiner 1962). These
long-term goals/objectives and the efficient means to achieve them were then incorporated
into comprehensive master plans for future settlement development reflecting the achievement
of an ‘overall public interest’ (Altshuler 1965: 186). Arising from mounting dissatisfaction with
Western governments and their social policy failures, the limitations of this approach, however,
were pointed out by questioning the notion of public interest; planning’s ability to set and
achieve long-term, comprehensive goals; the impact of its prescriptions on people’s lives; and
its ability to address major problems in changing societies (Jacobs 1961; Lindblom 1959; Rittel

3
 M. Gunder, A. Madanipour and V. Watson

and Webber 1973). A series of critical and alternative theories began to emerge from the 1960s
onwards: political economy, social diversity, environmentalism, post-positivism, pragmatism
and poststructuralism, all vying to offer a clearer understanding of what planning was and what
it could become.
The political economy critique drew attention to the substantive components of planning and
sought to shape a new form of urbanism founded on social justice (Castells 1977; Harvey 1985,
2009; Lefebvre 1991, 1996). It appealed for a new approach to planning ethics (Marcuse 1976),
where ‘the consequences for the lower classes of solutions proposed by monopoly capital’ were
minimized (Fainstein and Fainstein 1979: 399). In parallel, planning was urged to pay attention
to the reality of social diversity, where the issues of difference in gender, age, race and ethnic
groups were often absent from the planning agenda (Ritzdorf 1992; Sandercock and Forsyth
1992; Young 1992). It was argued as well that planning could have a potentially adverse impact
on minorities, or even on suppressed majorities, in any nation state (Yiftachel 1998). The envi-
ronmental crisis, meanwhile, was found to be a major omission of traditional planning, as the
serious consequences of development on the natural world had often been ignored. The emerging
themes of sustainable development, smart growth and new urbanism signified this new awareness
(Beatley 1989; Campbell 1996; Hebbert 2003).
The critics of technocratic planning advocated the transformation of planning through pub-
lic participation, displacing instrumental rationality with communicative rationality, avoiding
conflict and aiming at the creation of social consensus. Inspired by the work of the German
philosopher Jürgen Habermas, by the American pragmatist tradition, and by the linguistic turn
in social analysis, new calls were made for communication and collaboration to become the
basis of planning theory and practice (Forester 1989, 2013; Habermas 1984, 1987; Healey 1992,
1997; Innes 1995, 1996; Sager 1994). By the 1990s, in many parts of the world, communicative
and collaborative theories had occupied the centre stage in planning. As the liberal theory of
incremental planning had argued before (Lindblom 1959), this pragmatist trend questioned the
value of abstract theories and gave priority to practice and interaction (Hoch 1988). In parallel,
the post-positivist critics of planning theories refuted the claims of rational planning to scientific
knowledge. Following the philosopher Karl Popper, they argued that planning theory should
produce empirically testable theory that is open to refutability (Scott and Roweis 1977).
As a critique of the pragmatist call for collaborative planning, and of the political economy’s
emphasis on the distribution of resources, a poststructuralist trend analysed planning in alterna-
tive ways. A key inspiration was the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1980, 2002) and
his analysis of power and knowledge. The normative idealism of liberal planning came under
attack, found to be an instrument of state power, an expression of ‘governmentality’, masking
the real differences and conflicts by turning arguments into knowledge and enforcing it through
seeking consensus (Flyvbjerg 1992; Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002; Gunder and Mouat 2002;
Huxley 2002; Pløger 2004; Richardson 1996). Another inspiration was the French psycho-
analyst Jacques Lacan (2006 [1966]), whose work was used to question the Habermas-inspired
search for ideal speech and consensus, as well as to explore the role of desire and fantasy in plan-
ning policy formation (Gunder 2003; Gunder and Hillier 2009; Hillier 2003).
As a consequence of the supremacy of public choice, free-market economics and the rise
and global acceptance of a dominant and extensive neoliberal ideology that undermines the
role of public institutions, faith in the efficiency and legitimacy of public planning has degraded
to being, at best, a poor alternative to market-based solutions. In this context, the planner’s
role has been restricted to that of a ‘designer of efficient and democratically acceptable market
institutions’ (Sager 2009: 66). Indeed, within our contemporary neoliberal world, rather than
the traditional welfare state promoting its role of pastoral care for its Foucauldian obedient and

4
 Planning Theory: An Introduction

docile masses while promising a ‘better’ future for all, a new imaginary has emerged of the state
enabling the market to facilitate socially competitive and mobile individualism. The ‘symbolic
prohibitive norms’ of the prior welfare state have been ‘increasingly replaced with imaginary
ideals’ constituting individual success (Žižek 1998: 480; emphasis in original). Now the neo-
liberal subject is driven by an ideologically imposed injunction to no longer simply ‘obey’, but
rather to ultimately ‘enjoy’ in his/her consumption. This contemporary world is no longer one
of government, but rather one of governance, and the ideological task of planning is no longer
one of control so as to guide balanced development for a collective interest, but rather to ensure
the success of a polity by guaranteeing the correct environment for the competitively achieved
market-derived enjoyment for its inhabitants (Gunder 2010, 2016).

Theories of Planning Practice

The 26 chapters of the book are structured in three parts: theories of planning practices, plan-
ning meanings and planning frameworks. The first part of the book, on theories of planning
practice, explores how planning is currently done. In four chapters, it investigates the theories
of spatial planning, strategic planning, smart growth and environmental planning.
Over the last two decades spatial planning has emerged as the dominant planning paradigm
in much of Europe and has been implemented in many other parts of the globe. While it has
numerous formal definitions, it is generally concerned with giving spatial governance expression
to the economic, social, ecological and cultural dimensions of a geographically defined polity. In
Chapter 2, Simin Davoudi argues that the revival of spatial planning in the 2000s was a belated
response to the growing realization that place matters, coinciding with and informed by rela-
tional concepts of space and communicative and normative aspects of spatial planning processes.
Certain interpretations of spatial planning and its theoretical underpinnings, however, have led
to its alignment with neoliberal policies and practices.
Strategic planning acts as a coordinating mechanism to frame actions between diverse
organizations and authorities in the achievement of desired shared societal outcomes, often of
a territorial nature at the metropolitan or larger spatial level. While strategic planning often
functions as a mechanism to produce aligned policy consensus, this often occurs as an artefact
of global competition. In Chapter 3, Louis Albrechts critically explores the competitive tension
that underlays this set of planning practices. The chapter focuses first on the roots of strategic
planning, its aims, logic and some critiques, followed by an exploration of the dimensions that
would explain the strategic nature of planning. Albrechts argues for revisiting strategic planning,
which requires an in-depth reflection on key concepts (envisioning, becoming, legitimacy), on
the path dependency of resources and on space-time geographies.
Growth management might be considered the overarching aim of the planning function at
the urban and regional governance levels in many parts of the world today. Urban planning’s
core mission is linked to managing the location, amount and character of growth. Growth
management includes strategies for preventing sprawl and attempting to encourage and accom-
modate steady and efficient development in appropriate locations. In Chapter 4, Jill L. Grant
presents a brief history of growth management theories, paying special attention to smart growth,
which has dominated North American urban planning approaches in recent years. Advocates
of smart growth adopted many strategies from new urbanism and the language of sustainable
development to generate a persuasive paradigm to rally diverse interests in support of growth.
As smart growth became increasingly popular, however, it faced increasing critiques about its
assumptions, implementation failures, and inappropriateness for cities in developing countries or
for Western regions experiencing decline.

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 M. Gunder, A. Madanipour and V. Watson

The loss of ecological biodiversity and climate change, with the resultant need to minimize
the human ecological footprint in the face of continued demographic and economic growth
are, for many, the greatest challenges facing the planet. William Rees in Chapter 5 asks how
urban and regional planners might address humanity’s cumulating ecological predicament. He
argues that the biophysical foundations of planning, particularly pertaining to urban ecosys-
tems, are seriously underdeveloped; the prevailing neoliberal framing of economic planning is
dangerously misguided; resolving the ecological crisis requires reasserting the common good
and the public interest over selfish individualism and corporate privilege; and the ‘disjointed
incrementalism’ characterizing typical development planning is woefully inadequate for the
Anthropocene. Contrary to popular wisdom, he argues, some developing countries have an
advantage over advanced high-income countries in addressing the threat if they can organize
to use it.

Theories of Planning Meaning

Part II is concentrated on how meanings and values are constructed in planning. Its 13 chapters
explore the themes of public interest, planning ethics, communicative planning, neoliberal plan-
ning, neo-pragmatism, social justice, right to the city, gender and race, postcolonial planning,
post-political planning, discursive formations, governmentality and co-evolutionary planning.
Stefano Moroni broadly interrogates the concept of the public interest in Chapter 6, consid-
ering if the concept actually exists so as to map out different positions for and against it in the
literature. This questioning is deployed to prepare means for rehabilitating the concept of the
public interest. Moroni contends that while we may delete this concept from public debate, in
so doing we will simply have to develop a new concept to take its place. Moroni articulates a
reconstruction of the concept that calls for a nomocracy predicated public interest that is ‘ends
independent’ and serves as a meta-criterion for institutional design in the decision-making
process. His main conclusion is that it is important to reconstruct the concept of public interest
in ways that prove useful and relevant for today’s urban environments, with all their inherent
complexity and diversity of values perspective.
The positivist claims about value-free knowledge and action were rejected to show the
value-laden nature of all planning ideas and practices. Values, therefore, became a subject of
intense interest in planning theory, to the extent that some planning theorists consider ethi-
cal considerations to be the defining feature of planning theory. In Chapter 7, Tanja Winkler
explores how engagements with meta-ethical questions might offer scholars alternative bases
for theorizing and operating at the interface of knowledge and action in situated contexts. In
order to begin to understand why scholarships on planning ethics are rooted, almost exclusively,
within normative ethical frameworks, the chapter first sets out critically to analyse (via a dis-
course analysis) some of planning’s dominant epistemologies of ethical actions. This is followed by
briefly turning to the potential relevance of meta-ethics in Southern contexts.
In Chapter 8, Tore Sager overviews the participatory and dialogical democratic practice
called communicative planning. He documents the rise of communicative planning during
the 1980s and how it advances on the practice of citizen participation. Sager then considers
the planner’s role as a facilitator, rather than just a technocratic expert, when undertaking
communicative planning processes, although this role in itself requires a skilled voice. The
chapter then considers the importance of legitimacy when undertaking communicative plan-
ning. Sager then considers the debates and criticisms of communicative planning, especially
how it has been argued that this form of consensual planning has been captured as a powerful
tool of neoliberal hegemony. Sager defends communicative planning from these assertions,

6
 Planning Theory: An Introduction

arguing for the need of meta-consensus rather than outright consensus when a polity agrees
to a plan. The author concludes the chapter with a consideration of communicative planning
from a global perspective.
In Chapter 9, Guy Baeten considers the historical rise of neoliberal planning and its even-
tual spread around the globe. He documents the shift of urban management to one of urban
entrepreneurialism and planning’s inevitable conformity with this new market-orientated ethos.
The chapter overviews planning’s new neoliberal practices from city marketing, through the
formulation of competitive cities attracting the creative classes for economic development,
through governance and private-public partnerships, as well as entrepreneurial public urban
development projects. Baeten is optimistic of planning’s continued role under neoliberalism,
but cautions that under this dominant ideology planning might have to pull back from its
traditional roles of promoting equity, social justice and sustainability under the post-political
conditions of neoliberalism. That is, until new utopian values can displace those of neoliberalism
and its inherent consumptive enjoyment in the popular imaginary.
Charles Hoch, in Chapter 10, interrogates neo-pragmatism and planning and its use by plan-
ning theorists over the last 30 or so years. Pragmatist theorists consider the relevance of social
knowledge for arising situations so as to deal with the complexity of contemporary issues and
problems. Hoch considers the pragmatic theories of John Forester on power, Tom Harper and
Stan Stein on resolving facts and values, Hilda Blanco’s deployment of abductive reasoning to
address complex issues and resolve plausible possible actions in response to them, as well as Patsy
Healey on relational pragmatism. The chapter considers poststructural critiques of pragmatism
and calls for an unbounded and cosmopolitan pragmatism that binds together knowledge and
action through social learning for democratic inquiry.
The procedural nature of much post-war planning theory has been questioned on the
basis that it does not engage with what planning aims to achieve, i.e. the substantive issues
about the social and environmental consequences of planning. The quest for equality and
justice, therefore, occupies a primary place for critical planning theorists, who reject the
idea that good procedures necessarily lead to desirable outcomes. In Chapter 11, Susan
S. Fainstein investigates the use of spatial justice as the foremost criterion by which to
develop approaches to urban and regional growth and decline. She acknowledges that plan-
ning for spatial justice cannot overcome economic inequality but argues that it can help to
improve the quality of life of lower-income populations. In this chapter Fainstein uses the
case of Singapore to show how planning can increase equity, because of the way the state
is able to protect certain economic groups from market pressure through mechanisms that
include intervention in the built environment.
Drawing largely on the writings of Henri Lefebvre, the language of rights and the ‘right to
the city’ has found its way into planning theory. With widely varying definitions of the con-
cept and more or less radical explanations of what ‘right to the city’ might mean, the concept
has been used in planning theory to promote positions that are both spatially and socially more
equitable. In Chapter 12, Ananya Roy voices concerns with ‘right to the city’ positions and
suggests that, instead, postcolonial and poststructuralist theory offers new understandings of the
relationship between the urban and the political. She takes Castells as a starting point rather
than Lefebvre as this allows her to emphasize the importance of a theory of the state, which for
Castells is also a theory of the city, for an analytics of planning and politics.
Much of traditional planning theory was criticized as having been written by elite males,
disregarding the needs and demands of people who were different from them by gender, age,
race and culture. How has planning theory addressed this quest for diversity? In Chapter 13,
Suzanne Speak and Ashok Kumar explore the achievements and frustrations of planning theorists

7
 M. Gunder, A. Madanipour and V. Watson

who have raised these issues for a generation but with little impact and with still limited clarity
on how to respond to diversity. Taking just three aspects of social diversity – gender, race and
ethnicity – they consider the state of current planning theorization and practice, focusing on
these issues in global South contexts. However, they also note the growing trend toward right-
wing politics and social tensions in Europe and the USA which will undoubtedly pose major
challenges for planning theory and practice.
Libby Porter engages the postcolonial consequences of planning in Chapter 14. She contends
that planning is a Western, or Northern, concept concerned with the imagination of the future
and the use and control of land. As a consequence, it is central to the production of colonial
space and the alienation of land from colonized peoples. Accordingly, postcolonial planning
theorizing provides a critical perspective from which to deconstruct the contemporary situation
and provide understanding about planning’s role in the normalization of that alienation. Porter
also contends that postcolonial theorizing can act as a praxis of struggle as the colonized ‘speak
back’ to their oppressors.
In Chapter 15, Jonathan Metzger considers the current debates on post-political planning,
where planning procedures are deployed to at best ‘window-dress’ democratically deeply
deficient governance processes. Drawing on the political philosophy of Mouffe, Žižek and
Rancière, Metzger considers the suppression of the political by mere managerial apparatus
that defines what is sensible, hence in Žižek’s conceptualization foreclosing the political in
the symbolic order. The chapter considers a range of ways that planning practices have been
deployed to foreclose political contestation. Critiques of the post-political concept are also
explored, including how an acceptance of the concept facilitates its very intent of neutering
the political. Metzger also proposes directions for further researching the concept, via further
defining and specifying the post-political, and especially contesting its actual existence as a state
of oppression.
In Chapter 16, Andy Inch draws on the work of Foucault which explored the ways social
practices are shaped by ‘regimes of truth’ that powerfully circumscribe what can and cannot be
said, done and considered truthful at different times. Using the example of planning in Scotland,
Inch explores how neoliberal and managerial agendas are transforming the discipline and prac-
tice of planning. He suggests that examining the micro-practices (the ‘cultural work’) through
which change is negotiated renders visible some of the subtle reworkings and transformations
that this can prompt.
Margo Huxley continues the exploration of Foucault in Chapter 17 from the perspective
of power and governmentality and especially counter-conduct, for it addresses the ‘dark side’
of planning. After exploring the deployment of Foucault in planning theory, Huxley considers
Foucault’s engagement with how culture produces its subjects through governmentality via the
power shaping the ‘conduct of conducts’ and resultant subjectification. Huxley then considers
counter-conduct: the right to question and contest. She then proposes how theory can study
counter-conduct in relation to planning, in a manner that should consider all applications of
power as potentially dangerous and consequently in need of continued questioning.
In Chapter 18, Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen and Martijn Duineveld analyse the ori-
gins and the potential of co-evolutionary perspectives in planning theory and they particularly
engage with their own conception of evolutionary governance theory (EGT). EGT is a theory
predicated on poststructuralism, institutional economics and social systems theory. The authors
develop a co-evolutionary understanding of society into a co-evolutionary theory of govern-
ance, administration and planning. They contend that this is a theory of organization, steering,
and planned change. EGT is partly rooted in planning research and aims to delineate planning
and its possibilities in different governance paths. Planning within this perspective is understood

8
 Planning Theory: An Introduction

as a political activity that can and does take many forms that change over time, in evolutions that
alter both the structures and elements of planning systems.

Theories of Planning Framework

Part III investigates the networks, flows, relationships and institutions that are involved in plan-
ning. In eight chapters, it analyses the theories of governance, new institutionalism, agonism,
insurgency, conflict, actor networks, complexity, assemblage and becoming.
As the state withdrew from some activities, to be replaced by market forces, the traditional
role of the government in planning went through considerable transformation. The multipli-
cation of non-state actors, however, often created fragmented governance. To be effective,
therefore, public policy and planning needed to overcome this fragmentation through the
formation of collective action. The relations of governance, therefore, became a subject of
theoretical scrutiny and empirical research. In Chapter 19, Raine Mäntysalo and Pia Bäcklund
analyse the role that planning has played as part of the relations of place-based governance. They
first take a broad look at how the change from government to governance has taken and is tak-
ing place, utilizing especially discussions within administrative studies. They then focus on the
uses of governance as an analytical concept, and conclude that it would be fruitfully employed
in the planning theoretical discourse.
In the last few decades a number of disciplines in the social sciences have been marked by
the development of an ‘institutional turn’ in intellectual thought, and this has influenced strands
of planning theory as well. Theorists have seen ‘institutions’ as both generative and constitu-
tive reflecting a suspicion of any form of binary separation, especially that between structure
and agency. Theorists in this field have attempted to develop analytical frameworks to help
understand contemporary forms of governance as well as trying to identify the transformative
potential embedded within dynamic, multi-layered and fragmented governance environments.
In Chapter 20, André Sorensen introduces the core concepts and major areas of agreement
and disagreement between the main new forms of institutionalism, analyses its three strands of
rational choice, sociological and historical institutionalism and how these have been incorpo-
rated into planning theory, and suggests an institutionalist approach to planning theory.
The critics of consensual planning theory argue that the reality of social relations in diverse
and unequal societies is based on the conflict of interest between different groups. Rather than
harmony and consensus, which could suppress some voices, the differences of interest have
to be recognized and integrated into planning from the beginning. Inspired by thinkers such
as Michel Foucault and Chantal Mouffe, agonism has become a new keyword in planning
theory. In Chapter 21, John Pløger examines agonism and whether it can offer a future alterna-
tive for planning theory. The chapter explores how planning praxis can work with conflict as
agonistic conflict; what challenges this gives planning, which is positioned within and relying
on political legitimacy, consensus processes, and political decisions. A key question is: how can
planning praxis acknowledge contestation and inadmissible difference as key forces of a multi-
verse democracy; a democracy of many interpretations?
In Chapter 22, Faranak Miraftab defines the ways in which the concept of insurgency
has been imported into planning theory, starting as a notion of radical planning for the 21st
century that acknowledges the socio-cultural as well as economic dimensions of globalization
and the culturally diverse landscapes these produce. While earlier ideas of insurgent planning
were seen as a response to globalization in which new forms of progressive, bottom-up, plan-
ning began to emerge, in more recent times the term has been used to describe how a very
wide range of social actors can shape planning intervention through counter-hegemonic or

9
 M. Gunder, A. Madanipour and V. Watson

transgressive actions. The chapter argues for acknowledging the value of insurgent planning
not as a set of blueprints for action but as a conceptual and normative construct to guide
planning theory and practice.
Conflict and violence over land and resources pose a growing challenge for planning theory
and practice. In these contexts ethno-nationalistic states use space and (ethnocratic) planning as
a tool of political repression against ethnically marginalized castes, races, religions or cultures. In
Chapter 23, Yosef Jabareen argues that planning cannot always be regarded as ‘a good thing’ and
that it can also have a ‘dark side’ which can have highly negative consequences. In this chapter
Jabareen aims to theorize the role of planning as an instrument of marginalization and domina-
tion, drawing on examples from various parts of the world and on Lacanian, Žižekian, Laclauian
concepts of fantasy, lack, and desire.
Yvonne Rydin begins Chapter 24 with the history of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as
initially a social constructionist contribution to scientific studies. Rydin then outlines ANT’s
relational ontology and considers the metaphor of the network. She then explores the work
involved in bringing elements into association with each other in a network; the stages of
translation; the radical symmetry of the social and the material; and other key ANT concepts.
Following a brief discussion of ANT’s distinctive mode of research and argumentation, Rydin
considers criticisms posed around issues of ANT’s structure, inequality, power and change,
together with possible responses to these criticisms. The chapter concludes with some pos-
sible trajectories for planning research around materiality and developing a normative ANT
planning approach.
With the growth of the information and communication technology, and with the deepening
of the environmental crisis, systems theory has returned to the agenda of planning theory. By
envisaging society and environment as complex systems, the emergence of new phenomena
is analysed and explained through the way these systems adapt in a dynamic and non-linear
way to their environment. In Chapter 25, Gert de Roo explores how complexity theory has
been applied to the understanding of planning’s traditional ‘wicked problems’ and the resultant
notions of agency, interaction, feedback, and contextual specificity under conditions of uncer-
tainty and non-linearity. The concepts of non-linearity, complexity and uncertainty, which
represent the complexity sciences, processes of discontinuous change and evolutionary pathways
through time, are explored. The chapter argues for the relevance of a non-linear, transformative
and dynamic understanding to the planning debate.
Manuel Delanda drew on the philosophical understandings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari to develop assemblage theory. Planning theorists have drawn on assemblage theory
to demonstrate how a collection of diverse elements may come together in a relationship of
exteriority that constitutes a temporary selective coding and territorialization of elements so as
to stabilize the distinctiveness and function of an assemblage into a particular identity, such as
a city or neighbourhood, or even that of a more ethereal spatial concept such as a positive or
negative ‘sense of place’. As such, Chapter 26 by Joris Van Wezemael demonstrates that assem-
blage theory has considerable potential in providing understanding in both planning theory and
practice. He argues that it can help to deal with the critique of collaborative approaches toward
rationalist planning, and help to fix shortfalls identified in collaborative planning approaches. He
acknowledges, however, that the contribution of this perspective to normative foundations of
planning has yet to be developed.
Jean Hillier’s Chapter 27 engages with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of ‘becoming’ and
contends that this concept positively resonates in a world marked by uncertainty. Following
a brief discussion of uncertainties and essentialisms in planning, Hillier introduces ‘becoming’
as a transition-affecting encounter between elements. She then considers specific becomings:

10
 Planning Theory: An Introduction

becoming-minor, becoming-woman and becoming-animal. Hillier explores the potentiali-

ties of a DeleuzoGuattarian-inspired pragmatics regarding emergent forms of law and strategic
spatial planning before engaging a discussion of critical ‘revolutionary-becoming’. Hillier com-
pletes the chapter with the assertion that by undermining the essentialist identities and fixed
terms of majoritarian planning cultures, becomings offer us ways to think and act differently in
dynamic worlds.

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12
 PART I

Contemporary Planning Practices

 2
SPATIAL PLANNING
The Promised Land or Rolled-Out Neoliberalism?

Simin Davoudi

Introduction
The new millennium marked the revival of strategic spatial planning in many parts of the world
(Albrechts et al., 2003, Sartorio, 2005; Healey, 2007; Davoudi and Strange, 2009; Friedmann,
2004; Watson, 2002; Gunder, 2010). In defining what spatial planning is and promoting its vir-
tues, commentators often contrast it with traditional land use planning, master planning, and/or
project-based planning. They argue that spatial planning is a long range and strategic approach
to place-based integration of sectoral policies. Some suggest that the revival of spatial planning
marks a paradigm shift, while others argue that it has introduced a slippery concept. For the
former the spatial planning approach is ‘the Promised Land’, while for the latter it is a ‘mirage’
(Cullingworth et al., 2015: 4). Concerns are also raised about having ‘too little or too much’ of
spatial planning and ‘the dangers of spatial planning’ particularly when ‘the question of space and
spatial organisation is treated separately from other considerations, or when it assumes primacy
over these’ (Parr 2005: 120). The terminology itself has been subject to debate, too, and seen
as an example of ‘Euro-English’, referring variously to l’amenagement du territoire, Raumordnung,
pianificazione territoriale, and urban and regional planning (Salet and Faludi, 2000).
In this chapter I would argue that first, the revival of spatial planning in the 2000s was a
belated response to the growing realisation that place matters. Second, it coincided with and
was informed by two sets of theoretical developments. One is relational space and deals with the
object of spatial planning and its substantive focus. The other is communicative action and deals
with the normative aspects of spatial planning processes. In practice, while the latter has influ-
enced the discourses of spatial planning, at least at a rhetorical level, the former has been hardy
taken up. Third, I would argue that certain interpretations of spatial planning and its theoretical
underpinnings have led to its alignment with neoliberal policies and practices.

Place Matters: The Ascendance of Spatial Planning

The latter part of the 20th century saw a renewed interest in the critical role played by places
and localities in the understanding of social, economic, environmental and cultural relations
and in policy decisions. However, as I have argued elsewhere (Davoudi and Strange, 2009), this
realisation was interpreted differently by different disciplines. Economic geographers considered

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 Simin Davoudi

the turn to spatiality as the outcome of transition from the Fordist mass production to the
post-Fordist flexible specialisation whereby place adds (or takes away) value to new cycles and
patterns of productions and consumptions. They argued that place-quality could be an asset for
pinning down footloose globalised capital. For political scientists, the trend epitomised the tran-
sition from the universal Keynesian welfare states to the competitive Hayekian neoliberal states
in which places and territories become key sites of localised service delivery and political contes-
tations. For cultural analysts, the turn to spatiality was a sign of transformation from modernism
to post-modernism and the growing diversity of lifestyles and identities. Here, place-quality
becomes an important component of the quality of everyday life. Ecologists put the emphasis on
the significance of locales in responding to global environmental crises and adapting to climate
change. A parallel debate highlighted: the profound restructuring of the state; the move from
government to governance; and the emergence of multi-level and networked governance. In
this perspective, place is seen as a site for integrating fragmented policy sectors and governance
networks and as an organising device for institutional coordination (Nadin, 2007).
All these highlighted how the shifts in social, political, environmental and institutional con-
texts were challenging the traditional sector-based policy making and implementation, and
calling for place-based policy formulation. Similar ideas about ‘the defence of locale, of their
meaning, of their uses’ were stressed by scholars such as Manuel Castells who considered the
role of planning as being the making of ‘new spaces, meaningful places with connecting capa-
bilities’ (Cuthbert, 1996: 8). By the 2000s, the call on planning to become ‘more spatial’ had
become pervasive. In response to the disillusionments with land use, master and project-based
planning, it was argued that the traditional ways of preparing plans were being replaced with
proactive place making (Healey et al., 1997). In Europe, an important mobilising force was the
processes that culminated in the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective
in 1999 (Faludi, 2007). In the UK, the growing attention to spatiality was reflected in and
reinforced by the Royal Town Planning Institute’s change of corporate identity to: ‘making of
place and mediation of space’ and the redefinition of its ‘basic discipline’ as ‘spatial planning’
(RTPI, 2004: 1).
Thus, by the end of the 20th century spatial planning became à la mode (Parr, 2005). However,
the extent to which its ideals and progressive intents managed to change planning practices is
questionable. Indeed, in many parts of the world (including some countries in Europe) mas-
ter planning remained the dominant mode (UN-Habitat, 2009; Watson, 2002; Cerreta et al.,
2010). For example, Hajer and Zonneveld (2000: 350) argue that in the Netherlands ‘the old
idea of “survey, analysis, plan” still looms large in the style of planning’. Others caution that
attempts to find evidence that match spatial planning ideals can result in ‘shifting our gaze too
far from current realities of planning practice’ (Newman, 2008: 1372). More importantly, there
is a growing concern that spatial planning has become the carrier of neoliberal values, a point
to which I will return.

Theoretical Contexts of Spatial Planning and Their Critiques

Two sets of theoretical developments provided the intellectual contexts of spatial planning.
One was planning scholars’ belated engagement with the substantive theories of planning
and particularly the theorisation of absolute and relational space. The other was their long
established interest in procedural theories of planning. I will discuss these in turn but, before
that, it is important not to conflate the theories about space and place (i.e. the substantive
question of what) with the theories about planning processes (i.e. the procedural question of
how). Also, the critique of these theories should not be confused with the criticisms of the

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interpretation and implementation of spatial planning in practice, while acknowledging that

aspects of these theories have unintentionally helped the appropriation of spatial planning into
neoliberal practices.

Relational Space and Place-Bundles

A significant theoretical contribution to the spatial turn in planning came from a relational
conceptualisation of space and place which, although new to planners and geographers, has a
history that goes back to modernity and its origin in the Enlightenment project (Agnew, 2005).
In the 17th century a radically new worldview emerged that was premised on Cartesian duality
and its attempt to split the concerns about why the world exists from how it works. The latter
became the domain of scientific endeavours that started with discovering the physical world and
expanded into exploring the social world in the 18th century. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of
modernity is its focus on conceptualising space with the help of foundational contributions from
philosophy, physics and geometry and by intellectual giants such as Descartes, Newton, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Kant, Minkowski and Einstein. Geometry and the work of Euclid, in particular, played
a defining role in the conception of space as absolute. The absolute space enjoyed a long uninter-
rupted currency and was seen as a leading example of how a priori intellectual intuition can be
the main source of scientific knowledge; an idea that was strongly supported by Emanuel Kant.
Space, defined by the Euclidean dimensions of ‘height, depth, size and proximity’ (Murdoch,
2006: 12), was seen as the container of the objects. The longstanding influence of Euclid’s
geometry was due to its incorporation into Newtonian physics (Scruton, 1996: 361). Newton
portrayed space as an infinite container in which objects could be positioned at any point. As
Agnew (2005: 83) put it, ‘in the Newtonian view, space is absolute in the sense that it is an
entity in itself, independent of whatever objects and events occupy it, containing these objects
and events, and having separate powers from them’.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Euclid’s geometry was challenged on a number of grounds by
scholars such as Riemann, Minkowski and Lobachewski, but it was not until Einstein’s space-
time theory that space was firmly conceptualised as interdependent with objects and events, and
that space is not an abstract entity out there but is socially and culturally produced. As Harvey
(1996: 53; original emphasis) suggests:

Space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes but are contingent and
contained within them. There are multiple spaces and times (and space-times) impli-
cated in different physical, biological and social processes. The latter all produce – to use
Lefebvre’s (1974) terminology – their own forms of space and time. Processes do not
operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define distinctive scales
for their development.

What gave the relational space a new salience in the 1970s was the work of Henri Lefebvre who
rejected the structuralist readings of absolute or abstract space and argued that every society and
every mode of production produces its own space. He advocated a multi-dimensional space
(which he called ‘trialectic’) consisting of: conceived spaces of cartographers, planners and prop-
erty speculators, perceived spaces of artists’ and writers’ imaginations, and lived spaces of everyday
life (Lefebvre, 1974 [1991]). However, it took nearly 20 years for Lefebvre’s pioneering ideas
about relational space to be translated into English and, hence, influence the work of geogra-
phers such as David Harvey and Ed Soja. This partly explains why the legacy of Euclid and the
Newtonian view of spatiality remained the dominant spatial imaginary in planning well into

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the second half of the 20th century (Davoudi, 2012). Indeed, Friedmann (1993: 482) cautioned
that ‘the conventional concept of planning is so deeply linked to the Euclidian mode that it is
tempting to argue that if traditional model has to go, then the very idea of planning must be
abandoned’.
As mentioned above, geometry played a critical role in the debate about space. A promi-
nent critic of Euclid was Minkowski and his theory of n-dimensional (as opposed to three
dimensional) geometries. His work was a source of inspiration for Einstein’s theory of relativ-
ity which is often considered as the foundation for the relational view of space. However, the
idea that space is relative, and not absolute, has a longer history and played a major role in the
development of Leibnitz’s philosophy. He suggested that ‘spatial properties are relational, and
the position of any object is to be given in terms of its relation to any other objects’ (Scruton,
1996: 362). This implies that space does not exist independent of objects and events but is
constructed from the relations between them. Harvey’s above suggestion that space is not a
container but made of processes and substances is, in some ways, a reflection on Leibniz philoso-
phy. Furthermore, in rejecting the structuralist understanding of space, Harvey also asserts that
space is not made by underlying structures but by diverse social, economic, cultural and physical
processes which, themselves, are ‘made by the relations established between entities of various
kinds’ (quoted in Murdoch, 2006: 19).
One of the important differences between the Newtonian absolute space and the
Leibnitzian relational space is their conceptualisation of place. For the former, space and place
are either synonymous or binaries. For the latter, their relationship is dialectical. They rep-
resent ‘simultaneity of multiple trajectories’ (Massey, 2005: 61). The relational perspective
underpinned the postmodern consciousness of the LA School of geography and particularly
the works of Michael Dear and Ed Soja who rejected the absolute nature of space and place
and their binary oppositions and instead promoted notions of ‘fluidity, reflexivity, contin-
gency, connectivity, multiplicity and polyvocality’ (Davoudi and Strange, 2009: 37). Doreen
Massey, a significant contributor to the rise of relational thinking, suggests that, ‘instead of
thinking of places as areas with boundaries around them, they can be imagined as articulated
moments in networks of social relations and understanding’ (Massey, 1993: 66). This way of
knowing places affirms that people live not ‘in a framework of geometric relationships but a
world of meaning’ (Hubbard et al., 2004: 7). Places are both real and imagined assemblages of
material, events, discourses and practices. Space and place are socially and culturally produced
and their production is infused with power and politics. Although sense of place and affec-
tive experience of being here and now play a significant role in framing and making places,
affective experiences are themselves iteratively created through social and political processes
(Martin, 2003). Relational places are ‘bundles of space-time trajectories’ that individuals bring
together through systemic, cognitive and emotional processes (Massey, 2005: 119). These
individually made and multi-scalar ‘place-bundles are socially negotiated, constantly chang-
ing and contingent’ (Pierce et al., 2011: 58). Harvey’s description of place making and its
ephemeral character is apt.

The process of place formation becomes a process of carving out ‘permanences’ from the
flow of processes (that are) creating spaces. But the ‘permanences’ – no matter how solid
they may seem – are not eternal; they are always subject to time as ‘perpetual perishing’.
(Harvey, 1996: 261)

Drawing on a number of case studies, Pierce et al. (2011: 67) affirm Harvey’s temporary
permanences by suggesting that, ‘all places are relational, and are always produced through

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networked politics’. It is this inherently political nature of place formation that, at best, over-
looked and at worst ostracised, certain interpretation and implementation of spatial planning
and, hence, formed the basis of its criticisms, as discussed later.

Critiques of Relational Spatiality

Embracing relational space in practice even after the revival of spatial planning has not been
easy. The difficulties are evident from a number of empirical studies. For example, a study of
six spatial strategies produced in the British Isles after the revival of spatial planning shows that
‘new ideas about relational geography have rarely erased the previous paradigms’ (Davoudi,
2009: 241). It reveals the difficulties of translating relational space into planning practices
whose spatial imaginary is still dominated by fixities and certainties of absolute space and
bounded place. It concludes that ‘planners’ conceptual interpretations of the socio-spatial
processes have remained surprisingly similar to the ones formed in the mid-twentieth cen-
tury by a positivist view of the world’ (Davoudi, 2009: 243). Jensen and Richardson (2003)
draw similar conclusions in their analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspectives
(ESDP). Furthermore, a study of regional plans and interviews with planners in Finland also
confirms the mismatch between absolute and relational space in everyday planning practices.
It demonstrates that ‘despite the current emphasis on networks, flows and connectivity, plan-
ning occurs in many respects in a “regional world” that is perpetually characterized by a sort of
boundedness and a certain degree of fixity’ (Paasi and Zimmerbauer, 2016: 90). It shows that
‘while borders may be porous or even fuzzy in certain cartographic representations as well as in
planning rhetoric, they are often less porous in planning practice that is embedded in statutory
contexts’ (ibid.).
There are multiple reasons for the persistence of absolute and bounded spatial imaginaries in
planning practices. Some commentators blame planners’ limited engagement with theorisation
of space and place. Others blame the difficulties of disentangling the absolute from the relational
space in planners’ imaginaries. Regarding the former, although social theorists, sociologists and
cultural geographers have engaged with spatial theories since the middle of the 20th century,
planning scholars have been slow and missed a number of opportunities to do so. One historical
opportunity came about in the 1920s when Patrick Geddes offered to the utopian idealism of
the time an underpinning of social philosophy and a sociological, rather than merely physical,
reading of the city. Another was the introduction of systems theory which led to the so called
‘paradigm shift’ in planning in the 1970s. The shift had two dimensions: one was the positiv-
ist view of space and place and the other was the perception of planning (and policy making
in general) as a rational process. While the former is about the object of spatial planning and
relates to the ‘substantive’ planning theory, the latter relates to ‘procedural’ planning theory and
is about the processes of spatial planning and the role of planners in it. Although the rational
planning process attracted considerable criticisms from planning theorists (discussed below),
the positivist view of spatiality crept almost uncritically into planning thoughts and practices.
This led to decades of theoretical disengagement with spatial theories and a disjunction in the
development of planning thoughts and practices in which ‘a predominantly positivist planning
content stands alongside an emerging poststructuralist planning process’ (Davoudi, 2009: 242).
A more recent example of a missed opportunity in the UK was when ‘critical thinking about
space and place as the basis for action or intervention’ (RTPI, 2004: 1) was misinterpreted as re-
introducing physical design into planning rather than a conceptual engagement with relational
space. Therefore, the intellectual and practical challenges of embedding relational space into
spatial planning practices have not been fully developed.

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The second line of reasoning for the limited uptake of relational space in daily spatial plan-
ning practices highlights the necessary entanglement of relational and bounded (territorial)
space. While the boundedness is temporary, contingent and always becoming, it nevertheless
produces powerful spatial imaginaries and shapes the ways in which relations are understood and
acted upon. Cochrane and Ward (2012: 7), therefore, argue that,

Policy making has to be understood as both relational and territorial; as both in motion
and simultaneously fixed, or embedded in place. The conventional distinction that is
often made between the two misses the extent to which each necessarily defines and
is defined by the other.

A similar argument is put forward by Passie and Zimmerbauer (2016: 90) who suggest that:

Despite the new planning lexis accentuating fluidity, fuzziness, and connectivity, neither
the networks of governance nor the planning itself are able to escape the penumbra of the
politico-administrative units. […] Relational and territorial should therefore be viewed
not as entirely commensurable categories, but as sometimes, but not always, mutual and
intertwining, contextual, dynamic, and contested dimensions in planning practices.

Communicative and Collaborative Planning

The second theoretical contribution to the spatial turn in planning came from the communicative
conceptualisation of planning processes. Procedural planning theories have a long history dating
back to the introduction of systems theory into planning in the 1970s and its subsequent criti-
cisms. Systems theory introduced scientism to the understanding of not only space and place,
but also policy making itself (Taylor, 1998). It conceives of planning as a rational process of
decision making in which technical experts follow a cycle of logical steps to reach an optimal
rational decision. The critics of rational instrumentalism were quick to highlight the mismatch
between how decisions ought to be made and the disjointed, incremental and partial processes
that characterise how decisions are actually made in practice (Lindblom, 1959). They argue that
the ‘messy’ world of planning does not match the neatly defined and sequential steps of compre-
hensive rational planning in which planners are portrayed as value-neutral and objective experts
(Davoudi, 2006). In the 1990s, a new wave of criticisms of rational planning emerged which,
although it was inspired by multiple sources of philosophical inspirations, shared a common
affinity to Jürgen Habermas’ communicative action. Planning theorists drew on Habermasian
deliberative democracy and pragmatist tradition to develop the communicative/collaborative
planning theory (CPT) which by the 2000s dominated planning literature and discourses.
At the heart of CPT is Habermas’ deliberative democratic response to an age old question:
how to reconcile competing agendas, contrasting interests, conflictual objectives and aspirations
of different factions of the governed and the governing in liberal democracies (Horowitz, 2013).
Habermas’ response is to establish a system of governance whose aim is to achieve consensus,
not through trade-offs and compromises but through convergence of preferences toward a
socially optimal decision. Such convergence would be achieved through argumentation and
opinion/will formation in the public domain. To make such deliberation and consensus possible
he advocates ‘communicative action’ defined as: ‘freedom of access, equal rights to participate,
truthfulness on the part of participants, absence of coercion in adopting positions, and so on’
(Habermas, 1993: 31). This ‘ideal speech situation’ would arguably enable participants to work
together ‘in a cooperative search for truth, where nothing coerces anyone except the force of

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the better argument’ (Habermas, 1990: 198). In this rational argumentation process ‘ear, voice
and respect’ are guaranteed for all participants (Dryzek, 1990) who themselves are not ‘primarily
oriented to their own individual successes’. Instead they ‘pursue their individual goals under the
condition that they can harmonize their plans of action on the basis of common situation defini-
tions’ (Habermas, 1984: 286). The consensus achieved in this way has ‘a rational’ basis because
the ‘reflexive’ participants are able to ‘overcome their, at first, subjectively based views in favour
of a rationally motivated agreement’ (Habermas, 1987: 315). By minimising what Habermas
(1984) calls ‘communicative distortions’ (such as acts of manipulation or misinformation), the
power of ‘better argument’ prevails and participants are able to ‘make sense together’ (Forester,
1989: 119), create a ‘shared language’ (Healey, 1997), act in a ‘shared-power-world’ (Bryson
and Crosby, 1992) and reach consensus.
Drawing on these ideas, CPT has criticised the instrumental rationality of modernist plan-
ning in which reasoning is based on scientific, empiricist knowledge. Instead, it has promoted
communicative rationality in which reasoning is generated reflexively through intersubjective
argumentation and deliberation. The normative aim is to democratise spatial planning processes
by empowering the discourses communities and values that are excluded from the decision
making over a particular place. The role of a communicative planner is that of a broker, a
mediator, or a ‘critical friend’ who enables the process of consensus building. Planners are seen
as ‘arbiters of normative standards and guardians of value’ (McGuirk, 2001: 198). Their ultimate
aim is to remove power and conflict so that consensual ‘ways of thinking, ways of valuing and
ways of acting’ (Healey, 1997: 29) can be created. The influence of CPT in defining spatial
planning is evident in the writings of both its proponents and critics for whom the essence of
spatial planning is its participatory processes. For example, with regard to the former, Albrechts
(2006: 1152) argues that, ‘strategic spatial planning is [. . .] a set of concepts, procedures, and
tools’ for achieving ‘desirable outcomes’. It is ‘as much about processes, institutional design, and
mobilization as about the development of substantive theories’. The emphasis on process is also
evident from a study of Italian strategic spatial plans. Sartorio (2005: 36) concludes that the plans
refer ‘primarily to the process and that somehow the spatial dimension [. . .] has disappeared’.
Similarly, the critics of CPT suggest that, ‘the failure to find evidence [of spatial planning]
in practice is the outcome of the normative direction of the work [referring to CPT] and
weaknesses in the theoretical underpinnings of this approach’ (Newman, 2008: 1372).

Critiques of Communicative Planning

Critiques of CPT have been diverse, focusing on its: theoretical grounding (Huxley, 2000);
idealistic perspective (Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger, 1998; Gunder, 2003); normative pre-
scriptions (Fraser, 1990); separation of rationality, knowledge and power (Flyvbjerg, 1998;
Pløger, 2004); attempts to reason away powers, interests and inequalities (McGuirk, 2001; Fox-
Rogers and Murphy, 2014); presupposed consensus which risks becoming ‘an instrument of
discipline and a rather unbearable group pressure’ (Foucault, 1986: 247); portrayal of planners
as ‘people of good-will [. . .] blessed with unusual reflexivity and insight into the constraints on
their own and other people’s understandings and actions’ (Huxley, 2000: 376); and confinement
of communicative action domain to opinion formation in everyday life which is assumed to be
outside the system and the state (ibid.).
Despite their diversity, these criticisms share an emphasis on theoretical and practical impos-
sibilities of creating an ideal speech situation in which communicative rationality prevails and
consensus emerges. Adding to these is a more radical critique of Habermas’ communicative
action by scholars such as Chantal Mouffe and those drawing on Jacques Lacan. They question

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not just the possibility of consensus building, but also its desirability. Mouffe challenges the power-
blind model of deliberative democracy and argues that the idea of ‘dissolving’ power relations
‘through a rational debate’ is not only illusive, it can also ‘endanger democratic institutions’
(Mouffe, 2000: 17). This means that the problem with communicative action is not just that it
cannot be delivered but that it is harmful to liberal democracy if it is pursued. Because ‘every
consensus exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony, as a stabilization of power’, and
‘it always entails some form of exclusion’ (ibid.).
Referring to the contested nature of politics and the political, Mouffe (2005: 73) questions
the ideal of a consensus-based politics and argues that ‘there is no consensus without exclusion,
no we without a they, and no politics is possible without the drawing of a frontier’. She, there-
fore, advocates a form of ‘agonistic pluralism’ which keeps the democratic contestation alive and
acknowledges ‘the dimension of undecidedability and the ineradicability of antagonism, which
are constitutive of the political’. In this way, democratic citizenship can be envisioned by putting
‘the emphasis on the type of practices not the forms of argumentation’ (Mouffe, 2000: 21; origi-
nal emphasis). Thus, a consensus-oriented democracy risks becoming radically undemocratic
because the search for consensus risks the evacuation of the political, de-politicisation of par-
ticulars, elimination of genuine political space for disagreement and contestation, renouncement
or displacement of social conflicts, and foreclosure of ‘proper political framing’ (Swyngedouw,
2010: 2019). To avoid this, critics argue for the creation of agonistic arenas (Hillier, 2003), for
‘radical politicisation of planning’, and for ‘a reorientation of planning theory from normative
to a political basis’ (McGuirk, 2001: 214).
It is worth stressing that although CPT has been influential in defining spatial planning, the
two are not the same. Some recent critiques of spatial planning tend to conflate it with CPT
(e.g. Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012). This not only ignores the contribution of spatial theo-
ries to the revival of spatial planning, it also perpetuates the over-emphasis on procedural aspects
of planning and undermines its substantive aspects. Although, like relational space, communica-
tive planning uses the poststructuralist language of fluidity, difference and place specificities, it
should not be confused with spatial theories because the former is essentially a normative pre-
scription about how to do planning, while the latter is a substantive theory about the object of
planning, i.e., space and place. As Huxley and Yiftachel (2000: 334) suggest:

The communicative planning field […] shares […] a tendency to see planning as
a mainly procedural field of activity […]. There is the same sense of searching for
the right decision-rules be they rational-comprehensive or rational-communicative,
universal or local.

In fact, the two theories are so far apart that Harvey was surprised to see that CPT has taken
its inspiration from Habermas because, ‘Habermas has, in short, no conception of how spatio-
temporalities and “places” are produced and how that process is integral to the process of
communicative action and of valuation’ (Harvey, 1996: 354).

Neoliberalisation of Spatial Planning

The saying goes that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Planning theorists
should therefore not ignore critique suggesting that their well-intentioned reforms are
being transformed and perverted by economic-political forces only to end up making
society less rather than more democratic.
(Sager, 2005: 7)

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The history of planning is not short of examples of ‘the high-sounding ideals of planning theory’
being ‘translated to grubby practices on the ground’ (Harvey, 1985: 184). Spatial planning ide-
als appear to have followed such a destiny. There is growing evidence from different places
(Cerreta et al., 2010; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012; Murray and Neill, 2011; Olesen and
Richardson, 2012; Van den Broeck, 2008; Waterhout et al., 2013) that shows how the progres-
sive ideas that underpinned the revival of spatial planning have been ‘hijacked and misused to
promote neoliberal models of spatial development’ (Olesen, 2014: 289). In attempts to under-
stand why and how spatial planning has become a carrier of neoliberal agendas, commentators
have drawn on the above mentioned critiques of its theoretical contexts and particularly that
of CPT. It is argued that neoliberalisation of spatial planning is manifested in (a) the shift in the
purposes and values of planning, and (b) the de-politicisation of the planning processes, with the
latter enabling the former.
In many western countries spatial planning was a constitutive part of the post-war welfare
state and its social democratic ideals. It was born out of the belief in governments’ right and
duty to intervene in and regulate the free markets and use redistributive measures to seek effi-
ciency, equity and socio-spatial cohesion. The purpose of planning was, therefore, to regulate
the land and property markets, counteract their negative social and environmental impacts, and
improve the quality of places and people’s lives. These social democratic intentions, however,
were undermined by the formulaic routines, bureaucratic procedures and the shoehorning of
diverse identities into universal prescriptions. In the midst of a widespread disillusionment with
these overpowering tendencies, the revival of spatial planning was celebrated from across the
political spectrum. However, the motivations for change and the prescriptions for the way for-
ward differed considerably. Those drawing on relational spatiality and communicative planning
were advocating a more creative, imaginative, transformative and democratic planning, while
those with neoliberal mentalities were seeking further market freedom and toothless planning
systems. For them, the purpose of planning is not to regulate the market and correct its failures
and its excessive socio-spatial injustices but to enable it, to pave the way for it, and to become
the delivery mechanism for pro-market strategies.
Despite their radically different motivations, it appears that the progressive critiques of land
use regulatory planning have been unintentionally aligned with neoliberal strategies and unwit-
tingly provided the intellectual grounding for their regressive agendas. As mentioned above,
neoliberalisation of spatial planning has been rolled out in many countries, albeit in differ-
ent forms and with different intensity and speed. For example, in Nordic countries a ‘hybrid
between traditional welfare state spatial planning ideas and growth-oriented neoliberal strategic
planning approaches’ is emerging (Olesen, 2014: 289; Ahlqvist and Moisio, 2014; Andersen and
Pløger, 2007; Galland, 2012; Mäntysalo and Saglie, 2010). However, perhaps nowhere was the
alignment between the progressive and regressive agendas as pronounced as in the UK. Here,
the collaborative planning’s emphasis on consensus mapped conveniently onto government’s
‘joined-up’ approach to policy and ‘Third Way’ approach to politics. The former echoed the
definition of spatial planning as an integrative activity, yet one whose purpose was to enable and
deliver market growth. The latter promoted a form of politics that, like communicative action,
aimed at achieving consensus among traditionally opposite political perspectives by bringing
them under a ‘big tent’ in the centre. Such alignments were probably helped by the fact that
the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens, a key intellectual advocate of the Third Way
politics, provided an influential input into some accounts of CPT (e.g. Healey, 2007). CPT’s
emphasis on consensus, interpreted as a search for win-win solutions to contested planning
problems, seemed to have unintentionally legitimised the de-politicisation of the planning pro-
cesses. Therefore, ‘carefully stage-managed processes with subtly but clearly defined parameters

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of what is open to debate’ (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012) have been pursued in the name
of consensus building. Similarly, the ideals of relational space and its representation in the form
of ‘fuzzy maps’ (Davoudi and Strange, 2009: 38) have been misused to ‘blur or camouflage the
spatial politics [. . .] and depoliticise strategic spatial planning’ (Olesen, 2014: 297).

Conclusion
The early 2000s witnessed the revival of spatial planning which was triggered by a growing
recognition of the significance of place in understanding economic dynamics, environmental
sustainability, social justice, and governance practices and processes. This was informed by two
theoretical perspectives: one related to the object of planning and the other to the planning
process. The former promoted a move from the understanding of space and place as absolute,
bounded, fixed and neutral containers of people and activities, toward a relational, fluid, con-
tingent and socially constructed spatiality infused with power relations. The latter advocated a
move from instrumental to communicative rationality and from exclusive to inclusive planning
processes aimed at consensus seeking through deliberative democratic dialogues.
Both the theoretical underpinnings and the implementation of spatial planning in practice
have been subject to criticisms. At the theoretical level, in line with a long established trend in
planning theory of focusing predominantly on planning processes, CPT has attracted more cri-
tiques than relational space. The first wave of critiques focused on the practical impossibility of
undistorted communicative rationality and informed consensus formation. The second wave has
drawn on post-political literature to stress the undesirability of consensus seeking and communi-
cative action. Both have raised concerns about the perceived role of planners as ‘super human’,
well-intentioned mediators and facilitators of deliberations. As regards relational space, Nyseth
(2012: 41) summed up the key arguments by suggesting that, ‘Too much fluidity, or fluidity
going “wild”, would mean not only losing control, but also, in a sense, giving up the ambition
of steering, which would certainly give other forces more room to maneuver’.
At the level of practice, the ideals of spatial planning have not lived up to their expectation,
and their implementations are increasingly distanced from the good intentions of their theoretical
underpinnings. Planners find it difficult to translate the relational space into the administrative,
legal confines of planning practice. The ‘fuzziness’ of relational space has become a mechanism
for de-politicisation of competing and conflictual territorial claims. Similarly, the desire for col-
laboration and win-win solution has tended to circumscribe debate and depoliticise the politics
of place making. The role of planning has changed from the regulator of the market to its facili-
tator. It is more about delivering economic growth and competitiveness than ameliorating social
and environmental injustices. In many ways the consensus seeking collaboration appears to have
worked against the idea of relational space as being socially produced through the inherently
political processes that planners are part of.
Finally, in criticising spatial planning practices, we should be careful not to ‘throw the baby
out with the bathwater’. The term ‘spatial’ provided planners a way of breaking free from the
theoretical rigidities of using bounded geographical units and binary concepts such as ‘urban’
and ‘rural’ or ‘local’ and ‘global’. The focus on spatiality has triggered debates about the produc-
tion of space and politics of place making. So, there is nothing wrong with ‘spatial planning’
per se. Spatiality matters, and planning as a specifically spatial practice is deeply embroiled in
the politics of place making. Similarly, communicative action has provided an opportunity
to challenge the idea of planning as an instrumentally rational process of decision making and
advocated inclusive and democratic processes, even though its emphasis on consensus has been
used to foreclose political debates. Therefore, the critique of spatial planning should further

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focus on its misuses which (a) portray it as a process that disciplines the adversaries toward a
consensus and shrink the political space, and (b) attempt to replace its social democratic values
and purposes with a neoliberal agenda of facilitating market transactions. It is this co-option of
spatial planning into the dominating neoliberal agendas of economic boosterism, and the strip-
ping away of planning’s welfare values that should be the focus of critique.

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 3
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Ontological and
Epistemological Challenges

Louis Albrechts

Introduction
In a surprising number of countries, planning systems have changed little from the traditional
models of the 1970s, and even where the nature of plans have changed, the basic principles of
the regulatory system tend to remain. This is cause for serious concern given the nature and
scale of problems and challenges that places all over the world are now facing: problems involv-
ing poverty, persistent inequality, environmental issues (global warming, flooding), the right
to mobility and so on. Secchi and Viganó (2011) frame the current condition of cities all over
the world as raising new urban questions in connection with globalizing markets and finan-
cial systems. They argue that new principles, concepts and theories are required that can act
as guides for finding reliable solutions for complex problems. Statutory planning instruments,
such as master plans and land-use plans, seem to be ineffective because their focus is often on
maintaining the existing social order rather than challenging and transforming it. They are
designed for situations of stability, certainty and reasonable clarity of problems to be addressed,
traits that are lacking in contemporary cities. In this way, they fail to capture the dynamics and
tensions of relations coexisting in particular places (Albrechts and Balducci, 2013). Traditional
spatial planning becomes less focused on the visionary and imagining the impossible, and more
concerned with pragmatic negotiations around the immediate in a context of the seeming inevi-
tability of market-based forms of political rationality (Haughton et al., 2013: 232). Some urban
transformation narratives become hegemonic because they are in line with wider discourses
such as the rise of neoliberalism. The rollout of neoliberal policy privileges urban and regional
competitiveness, mainly through the subordination of social policy to economic policy, allows
for more elitist forms of partnerships and networks (Jessop, 2000; Allmendinger and Haughton,
2009: 618) and limits the scope for genuinely innovative development. City governments are
lured to adopt an entrepreneurial style of planning in order to enhance competitiveness. As a
result, planning faces major ontological and epistemological challenges. These may include the
scope of planning, approaches, use of skills, resources, knowledge base and the involvement
of a wider range of actors. It is therefore argued that spatial planning is in desperate need of a
critical debate that questions the political and economic processes of which existing planning
approaches are an integral part (see Sager, 2013: xviii), as well as a need for fresh ideas and
approaches (see Allmendinger and Haughton, 2010: 328). Within the architectural/urbanism

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discipline an approach to land-use regulation emerged through a new generation of strategic

(mainly urban) projects – especially for the revival of rundown parts of cities and regions – such
as the French ‘Projet de ville’ (see Secchi, 1986). In addition to traditional sectoral and technical
knowledge, design operations provide a specific and original body of knowledge (see Viganó,
2010). In this approach urban design, as an instrument to analyze and to read places, uses images
and representations to reveal qualities of existing spaces and places and their possible futures.
The influential Barcelona model provides a link between an urban design component involving
small-scale interventions to upgrade neighborhoods and improve the image of the city, and a
strategic planning component.
In the 1990s, strategic approaches, frameworks, and perspectives for cities, city-regions,
and regions became fashionable in Europe, Australia and, mainly through the impact of the
Barcelona model and UN-Habitat, in Latin-America and Africa (see Borja and Castells, 1997;
Healey et al., 1997; Albrechts, 1999; Salet and Faludi, 2000; Borja, 2000; Tibaijuka, 2005,
UN-Habitat, 2009; Gonzáles, 2011). This chapter focuses first on the roots of strategic plan-
ning, its aims, logic and some critiques. In a second part I focus on four dimensions that aim to
explain the strategic nature of planning. I hereby rely on theoretical literature (Healey, 1997a,
2009; Gonzáles, 2011; Balducci et al., 2011; Haughton et al., 2013; Albrechts, 2013, 2015), a
dissection of planning processes all over the world (Albrechts et al., 2017) and my experience
in practice.

Strategic Spatial Planning: History, Logic, Aims, Critique

Patsy Healey, together with other authors (see Albrechts, 2001, 2004; Balducci et al., 2011),
has gradually developed a definition. She defines strategic planning as: ‘a social process through
which a range of people in diverse institutional relations and positions come together to design
plan-making processes and develop contents and strategies for the management of spatial change’
(Healey, 1997a: 5). For Healey (1997a) strategic planning provides an opportunity for building
new ideas and building processes that can carry them forward. Strategic planning is looked upon
as ‘self-conscious collective efforts to re-imagine a city, urban region or wider territory and to
translate the result into priorities for area investment, conservation measures, strategic infrastruc-
ture investments and principles of land use regulation’ (see Healey, 2000: 46). Interpreted in
this way, strategic planning deploys one of its most interesting potentials, its capacity to produce
action frameworks and interpretative images capable of mobilizing people to action and, in
some cases, of constructing a new governance culture (Albrechts et al., 2003). Just as in plan-
ning, generally speaking, there are different traditions of strategic spatial planning and as these
different traditions/origins leave a mark on the way strategic planning is applied I reflect briefly
on its history, logic, aims and critiques formulated.

History
The word strategy has its roots within a military context (see Sun Tzu, 1994 [500bc]). The focus
is on accurate understanding of the real situation, realistic goals, focused orientation of available
strength and persistence of the action. In the early 1980s, the state and local governments in the
US were called upon to use the strategic planning approach developed in the corporate world
(Kaufman and Jacobs, 1987). Bryson (1995) stresses the need to gather the key (internal and
external) stakeholders (preferably key decision makers). Moreover, he stresses the importance
of external trends and forces, and the active involvement of senior level managers, to construct

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a longer term vision. In the 1960s and 1970s strategic spatial planning in a number of Western
countries evolved toward a system of comprehensive planning at different administrative levels.
In the 1980s a retreat from strategic planning can be witnessed, fueled not only by the neo-
conservative disdain for planning, but also by postmodernist skepticism, both of which tend to
view progress as something which, if it happens, cannot be planned (Healey, 1997a). Instead,
the focus of urban and regional planning practices was on projects (Secchi, 1986), especially
for the revival of rundown parts of cities and regions, and on land-use regulations. Gradually a
definition of strategic planning developed that is clearly different from the military and the cor-
porate stance. In the 1990s a growing literature and an increasing number of practices seem to
suggest that strategic spatial planning could provide an answer to the shortcomings of statutory
planning (Healey, 1997a, 1997b, 2006, 2007; Albrechts, 2004, 2013, 2015; Tibaijuka, 2005;
UN-Habitat, 2009; Albrechts and Balducci, 2013; Balducci et al., 2011). It is not surprising that
these ideas and practices started to travel. The Barcelona model (see Borja and Castells, 1997;
Borja, 2000; Gonzáles, 2011) became very influential. Strategic planning in Barcelona1 has been
limited to creating an environment of civic debate in which the economic actors, public entities,
social and labor organizations, and professional and academic sectors are equal. It has served to
promote or legitimize public and mixed projects and programs, contribute to their coherence,
and reflect on the future (Borja, 2000). In 2005, in four volumes (quick guide, manual, toolkit
and action guide) UN-Habitat promotes local economic development through strategic planning.
Here the strategic approach

implies careful consideration of the various trade-offs and making difficult choices.
It demands harnessing and mobilizing the local human, social, financial and natural
capital towards the common vision, goals and objectives that the community aspires to
achieve. This is possible only when various actors join forces to make a difference in
quality of life in their cities, towns and settlements.
(Tibaijuka, 2005: iii)

In a 2009 publication, UN-Habitat stresses that

strategic spatial planning also has a crucial institutional dimension. … Coordination

and integration of policy ideas of line-function departments is essential (because plan-
ning is not just about the functional use of land), and the plan itself cannot achieve this
coordination. New institutional relationships must evolve to do this.
(UN-Habitat, 2009: 61)

With support from UN-Habitat and the African Network of Urban Management Institutions,
strategic plans based on the Millennium Development Goals were drawn up. ‘Integrating the MDGs
within planning made it possible to rectify certain major shortcomings encountered in master
planning’. The approach made available a strategic spatial framework with time horizons and
indicators of objectives. It gave an understanding of the realities and trends in the implementa-
tion of the MDGs at the urban level. The approach made it possible to acquire information to
identify the actions to take ‘in order to improve living conditions and access to basic social ser-
vices at the urban level. It made available indicators for monitoring the strategic plan and, thus,
strengthened public accountability’ (UN-Habitat, 2009: 61–62).
As a result of a reawakening of ‘the political’ based on equality (see Swyngedouw, 2014 in
line with Rancière), a demand for transformative practices leads to a call for a more radical strate-
gic planning (Albrechts, 2013, 2015). It is based on dealing with structural issues, co-production

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as a political strategy2 and in this way as a base for democratic engagement, working with con-
flicts and legitimacy.

Logic, Aims and Critiques

The motivations for using strategic spatial planning in practice vary. However, the objectives –
as demonstrated in its history – have typically been: to construct a challenging, coherent and
coordinated vision and to frame an integrated long-term spatial logic (for land-use regulation, for
resource protection, for sustainable development, for spatial quality, sustainability, equity, etc.).
It aims to enhance action-orientation beyond the idea of planning as control and to promote a
more open multi-level type of governance.
Despite a certain popularity of strategic spatial planning, one cannot be blind to the critique
articulated on strategic planning (Metzger, 2012). The critiques focus on very different registers
of the strategic spatial planning approach (Albrechts, 2015). Some of the criticisms are related to
the ontology and epistemology of strategic planning. Questions are raised on how and to what
extent the shift from a Euclidean concept of stable entities toward a non-Euclidean concept of
many space-time geographies is reflected in strategic spatial planning? How are the different types
of knowledge (tacit/experiential knowledge of local communities versus traditional scientific
knowledge) relevant for a more relational approach to strategic planning reflected in strategic
plans and actions based on these plans? Economic, political and ideological critiques draw a link
between the rise of strategic spatial planning and the strengthened neoliberal political climate (see
Leal de Oliveira (2000a) on strategic planning in Rio de Janeiro; see also the interesting exchange
(2000a) between Borja and Fabricio Leal de Oliveira, and Carlos B. Vainer in Progressive Planning
Magazine (both available on Planners Network (www.plannersnetwork.org/)). In this respect
questions are raised whether strategic spatial planning practices are able to resist the hegemonic
discourses of neoliberalism (see Olesen, 2011). Some attack the militaristic and corporate termi-
nology of strategic planning (see Leal de Oliveira, 2000a). Other critics argue that the results of
strategic planning, in terms of improvement of the quality of places, have been modest. They
ask whether actually existing practices of strategic spatial planning really follow their normative
groundings and they point at its weakness in theoretical underpinnings (Newman, 2008; Monno,
2010). Monno (2010) and Moulaert (2011) question the conditions under which visions would
materialize, the lack of concern about the path dependency of the resources, a too sequen-
tial view of the relationships between visioning, action, structure, institutions and discourse.
Concern is raised about the legitimation of strategic spatial planning, the role of expertise and
knowledge, and how to introduce transformative practices (see Albrechts, 2010).
Most strategic planning processes react against perceived shortcomings of statutory planning.
Statutory planning is blamed for the lack of political, economic and environmental consid-
eration; the rigidity of planning methods; its incapability to deal with uncertainty and tackle
flexibility; its view of space as a container that holds objects inside with distinctive physical and
administrative boundaries; and the fact that statutory plans serve only (mainly) as binding docu-
ments to obtain building permits (see different chapters in Albrechts et al., 2017). So in other
words ‘statutory plans serve the purpose of both generating a conception of a place and the
locales within it and of defining the legal and spatial parameters within which rights to develop
sites and properties are developed’ (see Vigar et al., 2005: 1408).
The shifts from control to framing, from an extended present to becoming, from compre-
hensive to selective, from masterplans and land-use plans to probes of the future, strategies,
projects and distributive justice, from places as containers toward many space-time geographies,
all constitute not only epistemological challenges but also fundamental ontological issues.

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 Louis Albrechts

Potential Critical Features Explaining the Strategic Nature of Planning

The theory and practices of strategic planning demonstrate that strategic planning involves
content and process, statics and dynamics, constraints and aspiration, the cognitive and the col-
lective. It involves the planned and the learned, the socioeconomic and the political, the public
and the private. It has a focus on the vision and the action, the local and the global, legitimacy
and a revised democratic tradition, values and facts, selectivity and integrativity, equality and
power, long term and short term. In the next paragraphs these elements are defined according to
a set of inherent features that are considered essential to the identity and functioning of strategic
planning (see Healey, 2009; Albrechts and Balducci, 2013; Albrechts et al., 2017). They belong
to four relevant dimensions: content- and context-related, visioning embedded in becoming,
relational nature, and legitimacy.

Context- and Content-Related

Political and Institutional Context

Strategic spatial planning needs a contextual understanding of power and material interests, of
(leading) discourses and the constraints of a more-of-the-same attitude (see also proposition 4 by
Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000: 339). The context forms the setting of the strategic planning process
but also takes form and undergoes changes in the process (see Dyrberg, 1997). For some (Olesen
and Richardson, 2012: 1690; UN-Habitat, 2009) strategic planning needs a specific political and
institutional context and is sensitive to specific intellectual traditions. The capacity of a strategic
spatial planning system to deliver the desired outcomes is dependent not only on the legal-
political system itself, but also on the conditions underlying it. These conditions affect the ability
of planning systems to implement the chosen strategies. New ideas and concepts need to be able
to travel into different contexts to change and to be changed by the dominant culture. Strategic
planning does not do any work on its own. It needs change agents, what Kingdon (2003) has
described as ‘policy entrepreneurs’ (a champion in the terminology of Bryson, 1995) to take the
approach and deploy it. The influence is not direct, but works through multiple processes in
which relevant actors can see an opportunity to use strategic planning to push forward a policy
change (see Sorensen, 2010: 133). Actors interpret strategic planning differently and will adopt
those aspects of the approach that best fit their own situation. This might be a choice for elements
that promise to solve some problems and can be implemented or reinterpreted within the frame-
works of existing planning tools (see Healey and Upton, 2010). Practices illustrate that dominant
models are sometimes reimagined as smoke screens behind which agendas of privatization are
implemented. For Leal de Oliveira (2000b) and Vainer (2000) the Barcelona model has opened
up in Rio de Janeiro a door for more corporate-friendly strategic planning techniques and mega
urban projects (see also Gonzáles, 2011: 1412). Such projects have become a key component of
a neoliberal shift from distributive policies, welfare considerations and direct service provision
toward more market-oriented and market-dependent approaches aimed at pursuing economic
promotion and competitive restructuring (see Swyngedouw et al., 2002: 572).
A challenge in contemporary governance – and by extension in strategic planning – consists
in the dialectic between movements that seek democratization, collective decision-making and
empowerment of citizens on the one hand and the established institutions and structures that
seek to reabsorb such demands into a distributive framework on the other (see Young, 1990: 90).
The question concerning who is to be considered an actor in a particular context or situation
is not only an epistemological challenge, but also a fundamentally ontological issue (Metzger,

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2012: 782). One can find a very wide variety of actors in strategic planning practices (Vainer,
2000; Albrechts, 2006; Albrechts et al., 2017): city, regional, and national governments, sector
departments, agencies, banks, universities, chambers of commerce, trade unions, associations of
entrepreneurs, cultural organizations, civic associations, consumer organizations. The search of
strategic planning for new scales of policy articulation and new policy concepts is also linked
to attempts to widen the range of actors involved in policy processes, with new alliances, actor
partnerships and consultative processes (Albrechts et al., 2001, 2003; Healey et al., 1997).

Content
One of the most important manifestations of legal and spiritual life is the fact that whoever has true
power is able to determine the content of concepts and words (Schmitt, 1988: 202). With regard
to crucial political (and by extension strategic planning) concepts it depends on who interprets,
defines and uses them. Who concretely defines the visions, the strategies, the actions? Who defines
what spatial quality, what equity, what accountability, what legitimacy are? As a transformative
process strategic planning produces visions or frames of reference, the justification for coherent
actions, and the means for implementation that shape and frame what a place is and what it might
become (Albrechts, 2001, 2004). Visions and concrete actions must accept the full complexity of a
place while focusing on local assets and networks in a global context, social justice, spatial quality,
and a fair distribution of the joys and burdens. Where statutory planning ends up – as a result of its
legal status – in a closed system, the political potential of strategic planning lies in its dimension to
broaden the scope of the possible and imagine the impossible. This implies the development of rela-
tional more-than-human perspectives as a way to broaden the concepts used (see Metzger, 2014).

Selectivity
Strategic spatial planning defines issues and shapes actions as a result. Much of the process, which
is inherently political in nature, lies in making tough decisions about what is most important
for the purpose of producing fair, structural responses to problems, challenges, aspirations, and
potential. Thus, strategic planning involves choice, valuation, judgment, and decisions that
relate to envisioned agreed-upon ends and to the selection of the most appropriate means, not in
a purely instrumental sense, for coping with and implementing such ends. In strategic planning,
the overall picture that inspires choices is not given by a comprehensive analysis, but rather by
synthetic long-term visions.

Output
Strategic spatial planning, both in the short and the long term, focuses on results and imple-
mentation by framing decisions, actions and projects. It incorporates monitoring, evaluation,
feedback, adjustment and revision. Where traditional spatial plans are judged in terms of con-
formance, strategic spatial plans are judged in terms of performance (Mastop and Faludi, 1997).
The focus on becoming produces quite a different picture from traditional planning in terms of:

•• Products: strategic plans/policies, frames, strategies versus master plans or land-use plans.
•• Type of planning: providing frameworks and justification for specific actions (a geography of
the unknown; see Albrechts, 2006) versus technical or legal regulation.
•• Type of governance: government-led versus government-led but co-productive forms of
governance.

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 Louis Albrechts

In some places, the process of ‘discourse structuralization’ and its subsequent ‘institutionaliza-
tion’ becomes perhaps more important than the plan as such (Hajer, 1995; Albrechts, 1999). In
this way, new discourses can become institutionalized, i.e., embedded in the norms, attitudes
and practices, thus providing a basis for structural change.

Strategic Planning Is Action- or Project-Oriented

Traditional spatial planning is concerned with the production of plans as a reaction to problems
and challenges or just to something a place wants to achieve. Strategic spatial planning relates to
action and implementation. This is seen as the pattern of purposes, policy statements, plans, pro-
grams, actions (short, medium and long term), decisions and resource allocation that define what
a policy is in practice, what it does and why it does it – from the point of view of the various
affected publics (Bryson and Crosby, 1992: 296). This stresses the need to find effective con-
nections between political authorities and implementation actors (planning officers, individual
citizens, community organizations, private corporations, developers and public departments)
(Hillier, 2002). Most actors will not go on the long march unless they see compelling evidence,
within a reasonable period of time, that the process is producing acceptable results. Therefore,
short-term results are needed to build the credibility needed to sustain efforts over the long
haul and needed to help test visions against concrete conditions (Kotter, 1996). But, a strategic
planning process should not maximize short-term results at the expense of the future. It means
that strategic planning implies a move from episodic to continuous change (Kotter, 2008: 17).

Visioning Embedded in Becoming

Envisioning
Envisioning is a process that creates desired futures and then moves back to what is as it wants
to present ideas and concepts that are solid, workable, and of testable value. It works as well as
possible with uncertainty, and it enables actors to open up the spectrum of possibilities. Visions
must symbolize some good, some qualities, and some virtues (diversity, sustainability, equity,
spatial quality, inclusiveness, accountability) that the present lacks. Speaking of sustainability,
spatial quality, virtues, and values is a way of describing the type of place citizens want to live in,
or think they should live in. To get to these ideas, it needs both the solidity of the analysis and
the creativity of the design of alternative futures. Since envisioning is also the journey and not
just the destination, and as visions are so central to transformation and so all invasive, it cannot
be confined to a single actor or institution in the process. The values and images of what a soci-
ety wants to achieve are not generated in isolation, but rather are socially constructed and are
given meaning and validated by the traditions of belief and practice. They are reviewed, recon-
structed, and invented through collective experience (see Foucault, 1980: 11; Hillier, 1999).

Becoming
Becoming emphasizes actions, movements, relationships, conflicts, process, evolvement and
emergence (see Chia, 1995: 601). It expresses very well the dynamic nature of the strategic spa-
tial planning process. Becoming produces, in a non-linear way, visions and frames of reference.
A frame is the way people see an issue, a problem, a situation, a challenge, an opportunity or a
practice (see Healey, 2004: 46). Strategic planning becomes the activity whereby (taking structural

34
 Strategic Planning

constraints into account) that which might become is imposed on that which is, and it is
imposed for the purpose of changing what is into what it might become. Becoming privileges
change over persistence and novelty over continuity (Chia, 2002: 866).

Relational in Nature
It is impossible to understand material places and social nodes such as ‘the city’, ‘the city-
region’ and ‘the region’ in terms of a one-dimensional hierarchy of scales (Healey, 2007: 267).
Therefore, strategic spatial planning focuses on place-specific qualities and assets (social, cul-
tural, and intellectual, including physical and social qualities of the urban or regional tissue) in
a global context. If planners, politicians and citizens reflect upon the city in which they live
their lives, they will be able to discover layers of stakes (Healey, 1997b: 69, 91–92) that consist
of existing but perhaps unconscious interests in the fate of their city. Hence a plea for strate-
gies that treat the territory of the urban not just as a container in which things happen, but as a
complex mixture of nodes and networks, places and flows, in which multiple relations, activities
and values co-exist, interact, combine, conflict, oppress and generate creative synergy (Healey,
2007: 1). This implies that the objects that society engages with are not things, but are rather
an interconnecting set of shifting relations in which action is undertaken not only based on the
identification and use of material assets, but also on an awareness of divergent understandings, –
say, different professional codes or local norms – (Chia and Holt, 2006: 649).
The term spatial brings into focus the where of things, whether static or dynamic; the crea-
tion and management of special places and sites; the interrelations between different activities
and networks in an area; and significant intersections and nodes in an area that are physically
co-located (Healey, 2004: 46). Places become both the text and context of new debates about
fundamental socio-spatial relations, about ‘thinking without frontiers’ (Friedmann, 2011: 69).
They provide new kinds of practices and narratives about belonging to and being involved
in the construction of a place and in society at large (see also Holston, 1995; Yiftachel, 2006;
Watson, 2011). The focus on the spatial relations of territories allows for a more effective way
of integrating different agendas (economic, environmental, cultural, social, and policy agendas).
As these agendas have a variable reach, they also carry a potential for a rescaling of issue agendas
down from the global, continental, national or regional level, and up from the municipal level.

Legitimacy
As (mainly) non-statutory processes, questions are raised on the legitimacy of strategic planning
processes (see Mazza, 2013: 40). Legitimacy is not only a procedural problem (who decides)
but also a substantive problem (the link between strategic planning and statutory planning). For
Mazza (2011, 2013) and Mäntysalo (2013) the possible detachment of strategic spatial planning
from the statutory planning system into a parallel informal system would pose a serious legitimacy
problem. So, instead of detaching strategic planning from statutory planning Mäntysalo (2013:
51) identifies strategic planning not only as planning distinct from statutory planning but also as
a planning framing the statutory-strategic planning relationship itself. In line with Friedmann
(2004: 56) he argues that, as a consequence, the object of strategic planning should not be on
the production of plans themselves (not even strategic ones) but on the production of insights of
prospective change and in encouraging public debates on them. It is a way of probing the future
in order to make more intelligent and informed decisions in the present (Friedmann, 2004: 56).
The strategic probing of future uncertainties frames the fixing of certainties in the present.

35
 Louis Albrechts

The non-statutory character of most strategic planning experiences seems, for some, to act as
a structural antidote against marked standardization (see Sartorio, 2005; see also Hillier (2013)
for strategic planning in Australia at a metropolitan scale which often tends to be a set of long-
range blueprints for investment). For others the end product might consist of a critical analysis
of the main processes and structural constraints shaping our places. This can inform realistic,
dynamic, integrated, and indicative long-term visions (frames), plans for short-term and long-
term actions, a budget, and flexible strategies for implementation. It constitutes a commitment
or (partial) (dis)agreement between the key actors.
More radical strategic planning enters into conflict with political regimes and has to look for
cracks in the system to realize its objectives. It can be looked upon as an attack on the legitimacy
of political institutions as it reverses and upsets the relationship between the state and its citizens.
It is clear that the representative government articulates merely political and not all values. If
we accept that representative democracy is not a single completed thing but that it is capable of
becoming in a new context and in relation to new issues at hand then we may conclude that
a more radical strategic planning does not reject representative democracy but complements
it. It adds to the fullness of concrete human content, to the genuineness of community links
(see Žižek, 1992: 163 about the very notion of democracy). The narrative of radical strategic
planning is a narrative of emancipation. It fulfills a legitimating function. It legitimates social and
political institutions and practices, forms of legislation, ethics, modes of thought and symbols. It
grounds this legitimacy not in an original founding act but in a future to be brought about, that
is, an idea to realize. This idea (of equity, fairness, social justice) has legitimating value because
it is universal (see Lyotard, 1992: 50). So, apart from legitimacy stemming from a representative
mandate, in radical strategic planning legitimacy might come from its performance as a creative
and innovative force and its capacity to deliver positive outcomes and actually gain benefits.
Besides the obvious ‘physical’ space needed to implement projects, strategies and policies, radi-
cal strategic planning has a focus on social space. In social space socially innovative relations are
both catalysts and outcome of struggle between claims over physical space (Mitlin, 2008; Roy,
2009; Moulaert, 2011: 84; Van Dyck, 2011).

What Next?
The four dimensions mentioned earlier cover the major challenges for strategic planning theory
as well as for strategic planning practices. They also provide some ingredients for revisiting
strategic planning. The critiques mentioned earlier make it clear that if strategic planning wants
to play a role in tackling the challenges the revisit will take strategic planning beyond its tradi-
tional boundaries of theory, profession, planning laws and regulations. Underlying is the need
to change the perspective of strategic planning and move away from the trend to depoliticize
strategic planning by translating (potential) political issues into questions of technical knowl-
edge, skills and expertise (see Swyngedouw, 2014). It implies that strategic spatial planning – at
least for the protagonists of a more radical strategic planning – is not just a contingent response
to wider forces but an active force in enabling change (see Sager, 2013) according to specific
terms (equity, social justice) (Moulaert, 2011: 82).
Revisiting strategic planning requires an in-depth reflection on key concepts (envisioning,
becoming, legitimacy), on the path dependency of resources and on space-time geographies.
With the focus on non-linear temporalities a link can be drawn to Bergson’s concepts of dura-
tion (durée) and virtuality. Duration, as the unified flow of time or becoming, and virtuality
provide strategic planning processes with a way of seeing the future as bound up with the
continual elaboration of the new, the openness of things (see Grosz, 1999: 28). This challenges

36
 Strategic Planning

the combination of knowledge (traditional scientific, tacit/experiential knowledge of local

communities) with the creativity of the design of alternative (even impossible) futures. It raises
uncertainties for those involved in the process. How to combine providing certainty for develop-
ers, citizens with probing futures? How to combine flexibility with robustness? New space-time
geographies (a geography of the unknown; Albrechts, 2006) stress the need for rescaling issue
agendas down from the global, city-region, region and up from the municipal/neighborhood
scale. Every situation in which strategic planning is carried out needs some understanding of
the contextual factors (political, institutional, legal), some grasp of who key actors are, size and
power of strategic and statutory planning agencies, and what networks are in play and how
this relates to local social, economic, political and power dynamics (see also Healey, 2010: 14).
The call for constructing a new governance culture through a more collective decision-making
and empowerment of citizens – co-production – (see Mitlin, 2008; Roy, 2009; Watson, 2014)
challenge the established institutions and structures and aims for a shift in power relations.

Notes
1 Barcelona’s mentoring role for Latin American cities has been particularly developed through the CIDEU
(Centro Iberoamericano de Desarrollo Estratégico Urbano) network founded and headquartered in
1993 in Barcelona and covering more than 80 Ibero-American cities. Its original objective was to dif-
fuse the model and methodology of the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan to any interested Latin
American City (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2004: 44). It was inspired by a developmentalist discourse to
intervene in poorer countries to counteract a lack of urban strategic planning culture to channel the fast
urbanization process (March Pujol, 2003: 61).
2 Mitlin (2008) uses the cases of the Orangi Pilot Project (Pakistan), SDI (Slum Dwellers International),
FEGIP, a federation of local residents’ associations in Brazil and the Shack Dwellers Federation of
Namibia to illustrate the use of co-production as a political strategy of grassroots movements.

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 4
GROWTH MANAGEMENT
THEORY
From the Garden City to
Smart Growth

Jill L. Grant

Growth is a central theme in city planning. But growth creates both opportunities and concerns.
Political and business interests typically crave growth as a sign of local success and potential pros-
perity. Residents might resent growth because of concerns about congestion, loss of open space,
and rapid change in urban environments. The proponents and opponents of growth equally
seek solutions to problems of gridlock, escalating housing costs, and the quality of urban devel-
opment. Governments often want growth, but need to manage the externalities it generates.
Planners sell planning with the promise of offering tools to shape the amount, character, and
location of growth. In practice, growth might have a logic of its own: challenging to achieve
and difficult to manage.
This chapter briefly surveys the theoretical foundations of growth management in planning.
We begin with an historical review of planning ideas about controlling growth before examin-
ing the philosophies behind growth management approaches. We then discuss the rise of smart
growth as the dominant contemporary approach to managing growth and consider critiques
of and challenges to that paradigm. In the final section we briefly discuss the future of growth
management.

A Brief History of Growth Management

As long as people have been building cities, authorities have sought to manage growth. The
walls of ancient cities served not only to protect residents from external threats but contained
the areas governors could control (Morris 1994). Outside the orderly growth bounded by
walls in ancient Chang’an (China), for instance, sprawling suburbs reflected the inability of
ancient planners to prevent growth (Wright 1967). During the 6th and 5th centuries bce, the
Greeks established new towns to accommodate growing populations from the city-states: they
planned colonial towns for an ideal community of 5,000 to 10,000 residents (Owens 1991). The
Romans, who saw urban life as the epitome of civilisation, systematically planned walled cities
to assimilate territories, but efforts to manage growth often encountered local challenges, with
some places failing to thrive and others over-spilling their bounds (Owens 1991). Fearing threats

41
 Jill L. Grant

from plague in the late 16th century, Queen Elizabeth proclaimed a greenbelt around London
(England) to try to prevent growth and protect residents from plague: it failed to contain the city
(Nelson and Dawkins 2004). Across time and continents, history reflects repeated, sometimes
futile, efforts to shape urban growth.
By the late 19th century rapid growth in industrial cities in many nations contributed to
intense concerns about crowding, disease, and inefficiencies (Creese 1966). High rates of
immigration to North America from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when
the economy was shifting from agricultural to industrial, fuelled rapid growth in many cities
(Rae 2003). In the early years of the 20th century, modern town planning came of age as a
tool of technological control to promote health. It was linked with civic “boosterism” and
the city beautiful movement advocating urban beautification and competitive urban expan-
sion. The desperate search for growth led many North American cities and companies into
over-committing resources for people who would never arrive. Rae (2003) described a city
beautiful plan for New Haven, Connecticut, which projected the city would grow from its
1910 population of 108,000 to 1 million by the year 2000: instead, New Haven had 123,626
people by then. A similar plan for Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada—with a population of
136,000 in 1911—expected 4.5 million by 1984: in 1986, the city had just over 590,000 people
(R. Turner 2015). As suburban railway lines experienced bankruptcies and real estate booms
went bust in the 1910s, governments recognised the need to plan more effectively and realisti-
cally for growth (Creese 1966; Ward 1998).
Ebenezer Howard (1902) developed one of the most influential theories about how to
plan desired growth. Designed to prevent the sprawl of the largest cities, such as London, the
garden city offered a model of planned satellite cities of 30,000 residents, linked to a larger city
by multi-modal transportation systems, and surrounded by a protected greenbelt of agricultural
land (Creese 1966; Howard 1902). Rather than leaving development to builders motivated
primarily by desire for economic gain, garden city advocates argued that the state had an
obligation to regulate and plan orderly growth with appropriate urban amenities. Garden
city theory influenced community development in many parts of the world in the early dec-
ades of the 20th century (Creese 1966), the 1938 UK Green Belt Act (Nelson and Dawkins
2004), German planning for occupied Poland during the Second World War (Fehl 1992), and
regional plans for major cities such as London, Copenhagen, and Paris in the years after the
war (Ward 1992).
With the economic boom following the end of the Second World War, and the increasing
influence of welfare state policies in Western countries, local governments turned to planning
for tools to control where and how growth occurred. In a climate of optimism and faith in
modern science, anything seemed possible. Planning for growth became central to compre-
hensive land-use planning. Planners treated growth as inevitable, desirable, and amenable to
direction through the technical exercise of assessing capacities, identifying appropriate locations,
and applying regulations (Goodman and Freund 1968; Hall 1975). New town development in
nations such as the United Kingdom and Sweden provided opportunities to test garden city
theory (Ward 1992). In North America, planning strategies and highway expansion programs
generally sought to point commercial growth to city centres and residential growth to the
periphery, although cities such as Toronto tried nodal growth policies (Filion 2007). In the
developing world, planners experimented with strategies to encourage economic growth and to
accommodate rapid urbanisation.
During the 1950s and 1960s North American planners elaborated theories about using urban
renewal as a strategy to excise run-down neighbourhoods to permit “healthy growth”. As the
American Institute of Planners (1950: 53) explained:

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 Growth Management Theory

The spread of blight from the outmoded and run-down central areas of cities, with its
wake of excessive crime and fire rates and falling real estate values, must be stopped.
New and healthy growth must be encouraged if our cities and their citizens are to have
a wholesome future.

Mid-century planners focussed on replacing blight—mixed uses in congested, low-income,

central neighbourhoods—with spacious, segregated land-use patterns. Rather than letting cities
change in undesirable ways, planners advocated regional planning while applying zoning and
other regulations to shape new growth. In the process, however, they helped generate sprawl: a
widespread pattern of unwanted and fragmented growth (Bruegmann 2005).
Some governments began responding to concerns about the nature, rate, location, and
impacts of growth in the 1960s and 1970s. In the first wave of US growth management, for
instance, Hawaii adopted state land-use planning in 1961 to address natural constraints and
protect agricultural lands (Weitz 1999). The 1965 plan for Paris envisioned transportation cor-
ridors from the centre connecting suburban new towns of 300,000 residents to accommodate
population growth. The Toronto-centred region report in 1970 proposed to control growth,
design transportation corridors, and reduce infrastructure costs, but a change in provincial gov-
ernment undermined efforts to mandate regional planning activities (Filion 2003). Managing
the character of growth became a popular topic of discussion in the 1970s as the externalities
of modernist-inspired growth raised concerns about loss of farmland, commuting congestion,
and loss of older neighbourhoods (Ohm 2000). Sprawl—“shorthand for poorly planned growth
that consumes precious open space and mars the landscape with ugly development” (Tregoning
et al. 2002: 341)—dominated planners’ concerns in North America. Several US states and cities
adopted policies in this period to try to reduce sprawl and manage growth (Dierwechter 2008;
Nelson and Dawkins 2004). Even in the UK, with its highly centralised planning system and
legacy of new town planning, sprawl appeared in some regions (Phelps 2012). The Club of
Rome report, The Limits to Growth, stimulated scholarly debate about the perils of unlimited
growth (Meadows et al. 1972) but did not slow urban expansion. In the developing world, rapid
urbanisation drew attention to the need to plan for affordable housing and adequate access to
urban services (J. Turner 1972). From the 1970s on, managing growth became an increasingly
important planning concern.

Approaches to Managing Growth

Before detailing the approaches to managing urban growth that influence planning theory, we
first briefly consider the philosophies behind dealing with growth. We might conceive of those
philosophies as arranged along a continuum: on one end, the aim of promoting growth; on the
other end, the goal of limiting growth or accepting decline (Table 4.1).
In the early years of modern town planning the aim of promoting growth dominated.
Political leaders since the Progressive Era (1890–1920) have sought growth in government rev-
enues to provide enhanced services and amenities. City beautiful era plans forecast ballooning
populations and sought major investments in urban centres as leaders sought to boost their city
at the expense of others. Molotch (1976) argued that a “growth machine” alliance of business,
real estate, construction, and political interests continually pushes for urban growth. Capitalist
societies justify state intervention because authorities expect that comprehensive planning can
generate growth and wealth (Scott and Roweis 1977). In the contemporary period, strategies
such as enterprise zones still seek to stimulate growth in contexts where growth is slow or
decline in progress. Recent arguments about “making room” for growth in the rapidly growing

43
 Jill L. Grant

Table 4.1 Planning philosophies of growth with examples of strategies

Approach Promote growth Manage growth Control growth Limit growth

Belief Growth is desirable Growth is good and can Growth can be Growth is problematic
and should be be shaped good only if
facilitated controlled
Planning City beautiful Regional development Garden city Eco-cities
idea Civic boosterism planning Sustainable Shrinking cities
Comprehensive Comprehensive planning development Smart decline
planning New urbanism City-region
“Making room” New regionalism planning
Smart growth
Tools and Enterprise zones Developers pay for New towns Greenbelts
strategies infrastructure Growth or Building permit caps
Nodes and corridors service Development moratoria
Incentives boundaries Decommissioning
Codes and deregulation Regulations neighbourhoods

cities of developing countries suggest accommodating expansion rather than trying to contain
it (Angel 2011).
Although powerful forces in local politics promote growth, the negative effects of growth
have sometimes stimulated a contrary-minded approach aiming to severely limit growth in
particular areas or for certain periods. For instance, in some areas, concern about conserv-
ing farmland from urban development led to greenbelt legislation prohibiting development
on designated lands. The UK adopted greenbelts in the 1930s to contain growth and protect
countryside. South Korea created greenbelts around cities such as Seoul in the early 1970s
(Bengston and Youn 2006). Around the same time, the Canadian province of British Columbia
established an agricultural land reserve around Vancouver, while in 2005 Ontario protected a
greenbelt around Toronto. Many other cities—including Berlin, Barcelona, and Bangkok—
adopted greenbelts (Bengston and Youn 2006). Some communities reacted to perceptions of
crowding, gridlock, congestion, pollution, and sprawl with new strategies. For instance, in an
effort to slow growth, in 1972 Petaluma (California) applied an annual cap on building permits
for five years: the tactic slowed growth, but drove housing costs higher (Dierwechter 2008). As
downtowns began to feel the effects of suburban shopping centres in the 1970s, the Canadian
province of Nova Scotia set a five-year moratorium on new shopping centre development. Of
the varying strategies to limit growth, greenbelts have had the greatest staying power, although
critics suggest they simply push development farther from the urban centre and increase hous-
ing prices. With such wide faith in the potential—and perceived inevitability—of growth,
efforts to limit it have proven relatively rare. Mainstream planning rhetoric has not generally
promoted a limiting growth strategy, although the eco-cities movement adopted some of its
principles (Joss et al. 2013). In recent years, recognition that many cities are decreasing in popu-
lation has given rise to a movement to plan to accommodate shrinking cities and smart decline
with strategies such as withdrawing from some neighbourhoods (Beckman 2010; Hollander
and Nemeth 2011).
Managing and controlling growth are closely related in their shared interest in shaping devel-
opment. Those who use the language of managing growth suggest that growth by its nature is
positive, while those who favour controlling growth see growth as inclined to produce negative
effects. Thus the strategies employed by planners differ between approaches.

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 Growth Management Theory

Trying to control growth in order to reduce its externalities and enhance its benefits
implies that the state takes a strong role in shaping land uses. The garden city model, which
reflected this approach, was implemented through building new towns in Europe during the
post-war period: government master planning and investment provided powerful tools to shape
the pace, location, and nature of growth. In the 1970s the state of Oregon required local gov-
ernments to plan by establishing boundaries to contain future growth and conserve farmland
(Nelson and Dawkins 2004). Communities often adopt planning and environmental regulations
to control the location of particular land uses or the density of development. The publication
of the Brundtland report (WCED 1987) popularised a new theory of growth during the 1990s
and 2000s: sustainable development approaches gave priority to protecting the environment
and promoting social equity along with ensuring economic growth. Several Canadian prov-
inces have amalgamated city-regions in recent decades (Sancton 2001): they thereby facilitated
regional planning by giving municipalities the tools to better control where growth would be
encouraged or restricted.
Those who seek to manage growth identify its benefits and suggest that planning or design
can create conditions to promote good growth. For instance, international development planning
and regional economic development strategies in the 1960s and 1970s tried to stimulate growth
and direct it to targeted areas by providing infrastructure and other incentives. Comprehensive
planning efforts in US states such as Florida sought to address the need for growth management
(Dierwechter 2008; Chapin et al. 2007). North American approaches to growth management
generally favoured finding ways to work with land development markets to achieve desired
planning outcomes. During the 1980s many North American cities began requiring developers
to cover the costs of infrastructure to reduce public expenditures (Dierwechter 2008; Krueger
and Gibbs 2008). The rise of neoliberalism, with governments urged to roll-back regulations
said to restrict markets, influenced planning approaches (Peck and Tickell 2002). Advocates of
new urbanism argued that the market would provide attractive developments if planners would
remove red tape (Duany et al. 2000). Planners suggested that targeted investments in transporta-
tion networks would provide opportunities for node and corridor development (Filion 2003,
2007). Political scientists promoted “new regionalism” through which local governments would
voluntarily collaborate to coordinate regional growth (Frisken and Norris 2001; Sancton 2001).
During the 1990s and 2000s the idea of smart growth emerged in North America, and gradually
spread in influence. Smart growth advocated government incentives and alternative regulatory
regimes to shape growth in desired ways, but it also adopted some strategies used to control or
limit growth.

Smart Growth as a Paradigm

As a theory of growth management, smart growth appeared as an antidote to efforts to limit or
control growth. Concerns about the externalities of growth generated development moratoria
during the 1970s and later sustainable development approaches that advocated moderating con-
sumption and controlling growth to reduce environmental impacts (Beatley 2000; Wackernagel
and Rees 1995). In response, political leaders in Maryland began to develop an alternative para-
digm in the 1990s to imagine an “unabashedly pro-growth” approach with positive outcomes
(Frece 2004: 113). With inspired rhetorical framing, Maryland governor Parris Glendening and
his staff branded the approach smart growth. As Beatley and Collins (2000: 292) noted, “The
smart growth tag neatly creates a rhetorical advantage by contrasting it with what can only be
considered ‘dumb’ growth. The use of the word smart is simply smart.” Krueger and Gibbs
(2008: 1263) suggested that “Smart growth is sometimes referred to as a uniquely ‘American’

45
 Jill L. Grant

Table 4.2 What is smart growth?

“[S]mart growth refers to the use of financial and other incentives, and public investment decisions,
to encourage less-sprawling land use patterns and more compact urban form.” (Beatley and Collins
2000: 289)
“Advocates [of smart growth] share many of the same goals of earlier anti-sprawl efforts fought under the
banner of sustainability—with a key difference. Their language and methods are more pragmatic and
inclusive. . . . they wrap the discussion around basic quality of life issues”. (Tregoning et al. 2002: 341)
“Smart Growth . . . supports choice and opportunity by promoting efficient and sustainable land
development, incorporates redevelopment patterns that optimize prior infrastructure investments, and
consumes less land . . . Supporting the right of Americans to choose where and how they live, work,
and play enables economic freedom for all Americans.” (American Planning Association 2012: online)

variant of sustainable development . . . a market-based approach that promotes the tripartite

concerns of sustainability.” As the definitions in Table 4.2 illustrate, smart growth promises
growth that will reduce sprawl while protecting choice and quality of life.
Smart growth adopted many principles and practices from new urbanism, including commit-
ment to compact form, higher densities, mixed uses, walkable communities, and transportation
alternatives. Like the growth management theories that preceded it, smart growth builds on
particular assumptions. It presumes that it is possible to predict long-term growth: indeed,
population forecasts often become growth targets that plans aim to achieve. Smart growth
theory treats the market as rational, holding that supply of desired commodities such as attrac-
tive neighbourhoods and housing choices will respond to opportunity and demand (Duany
and Talen 2001; Krueger and Gibbs 2008). Planners expect that by influencing development
options they can achieve aims such as reduced automobile use, mixed land uses, affordable
housing, or downtown revitalisation. Smart growth promised economic growth without sac-
rificing environmental values, social equity, or urban quality of life. Its principal strategies to
achieve desired outcomes were financial incentives, regulatory lightness, and ramping planning
up to a regional scale (Dierwechter 2008): the perfect theory for an era dominated by neoliberal
discourse (Krueger and Gibbs 2008). Smart growth offered a hybrid ideology with something
for everyone (Dierwechter 2008): professional associations as diverse as the American Planning
Association, US Conference of Mayors, American Farmland Trust, National Home Builders,
and the Sierra Club saw smart growth as a way of acknowledging that growth is inevitable (and
good), while generating practices to shape development in desired ways (Beatley and Collins
2000; Knaap and Talen 2005). Smart growth rapidly penetrated planning discourse and became
the dominant theory of growth management in North America, and in some cases beyond.
By the 2000s, smart growth theory and practice had travelled widely. Along with new
urbanism—and with Richard Florida’s (2002) creative cities theory—smart growth was part
of a cluster of “archetypical ‘mobile’ urban policies” being applied to justify streamlined devel-
opment processes and large-scale master planning, even in remote areas such as the Scottish
Highlands (MacLeod 2013: 2198). The government of Ontario in Canada began organising in
2002 to promote smart growth as provincial policy. Having forced the amalgamation of the City
of Toronto with neighbouring communities in the late 1990s, in the mid-2000s the province
adopted greenbelt legislation to protect environmentally sensitive and agriculturally important
lands from development. It also required municipalities within an area identified as the Greater
Golden Horseshoe to develop growth plans with density targets to accommodate a mix of jobs
and residents within already developed areas (Filion 2007; Ontario 2005, 2006). In nations such
as Canada and Scotland, where higher order governments can give local government powerful

46
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tools and mandates to enforce compliance, smart growth approaches might move beyond man-
aging growth toward controlling it. Paradoxically, the state might employ its power to force local
governments to use smart growth strategies in political contexts where neoliberalism remains
pervasive. The state’s efforts to contain growth and protect some areas from development works
effectively with planning regimes that implement “regulatory lightness” to create opportunities
for capital gain in the guise of efficient service provision, environmental protection, or social
equity. Even when the stars align, however, the product of applying smart growth policies might
not be what planners expect. As Kushner (2000: 230) opined, “Opponents of Smart Growth and
those who are skeptical should not fear; Dumb Growth still rules.”

Challenges to Smart Growth

Downs (2005) suggested that we talk about smart growth more than we do it. In practice, smart
growth has encountered many challenges that similarly faced new urbanism and sustainable devel-
opment (Filion and McSpurren 2007; Grant 2009). Some of its assumptions have proven naive
(Downs 2004). Its users interpreted it in varying ways to promote divergent priorities and interests
(Filion 2003; Hawkins 2014). Three interrelated categories of challenges—economic, political,
and social—make smart growth theory hard to implement even in areas that are growing.
Economics and market factors play important roles influencing development dynam-
ics. Smart growth theory assumes that reducing regulatory red tape will induce opportunities
to reduce development costs. Several practices frustrate that. First, in many nations the devel-
opment industry has been consolidating (Coiacetto 2009). While that facilitates large-scale
master-planned developments that might include smart growth features, it also empowers
industry to control the pace (and hence price) at which housing is released and to reproduce
conventional practices they believe the market supports (McGuirk and Dowling 2009). Second,
corporate decision making involves complex calculations about risk and potential rewards.
Many companies continue development strategies they view as tried and true, delaying innova-
tion (Farris 2001). For instance, efforts to increase mixed use and to integrate commercial uses
with residential have encountered significant resistance (Grant and Perrott 2011). Rather than
being associated with more walkable communities and transit use, higher densities might, per-
versely, contribute to demand for more privatised, disconnected, and even gated developments
where automobile use dominates (Grant and Curran 2007). In rapidly growing larger cities,
market pressures and effective public transportation systems work synergistically to provide a
context within which smart growth measures can thrive; in smaller and more remote commu-
nities, however, limited demand and ready access to inexpensive land on the urban periphery
challenge the potential for change. Successful smart growth initiatives also require government
or private sector investment, transportation infrastructure, and a wide range of housing options;
such funds are infrequently available at the time and in the amount needed.
Political will and the scale of governance play roles in the fate of smart growth initiatives.
Smart growth redistributes the costs and benefits of development in ways that create winners
and losers: hence, conflict. To work effectively smart growth requires some shift in power and
authority from the local to regional level: it requires a different scale of planning and action in
a context where political will and fiscal capacity might not always be supportive or sufficient
(Filion and McSpurren 2007). Moreover, smart growth demands long-term comprehensive
planning (Nelson and Dawkins 2004): such vision exceeds short-term political mandates. State
and provincial governments and their leaders play critical roles (Downs 2005), but reliance on
political champions leaves initiatives vulnerable when regimes change. Smart growth has pro-
vided theory to justify new regionalism in some cities—collaboration to cooperate in elements

47
 Jill L. Grant

of regional planning and infrastructure delivery (Scott 2007)—but achieving the overall aims of
smart growth remains a significant challenge. In regions where cities and towns are coping with
decline, smart growth might seem politically naive.
Social behaviour and cultural values influence efforts to achieve smart growth. High
levels of immigration and rural-to-urban migration leading to growth of the largest metro-
poles—such as London, Vancouver or New York—favour increasing densities and mixed uses
in urban cores. In smaller cities or slower growth areas, however, cultural expectations contrib-
ute to resistance to smart growth policies, especially around increased densities, mixed uses, and
mixed housing types (Brewer and Grant 2015; Song 2005). Declining household size means
fewer people live in more units, so that increased dwelling unit density might not produce
desired population densities. To be effective, smart growth requires amenities and services, such
as local retail and schools, and efficient transit systems connecting residents to places of work.
The transportation issue is a chicken-and-egg problem: we need transit to support density, and
density to support transit. As Filion (2003) noted, it is hard to get both simultaneously. When
transit systems are not effective, planners cannot wean people from their cars, especially as the
location of jobs becomes more dispersed in many cities. In projects developed to date, evidence
is mixed about the relationship between patterns of growth and resulting transportation effects
(Handy 2005; Jun 2008). Even if people live in smart neighbourhoods, they might still shop in
suburban big-box stores (Pollan 1999), and take cars to work for the convenience offered. In
sum, people do not necessarily respond in the way that theory predicts or desires.
In some cases, the success of smart growth initiatives disadvantages particular social groups:
for instance, urban containment boundaries might increase the costs of housing (Nelson and
Dawkins 2004); less affluent and racialized populations might be displaced as central neigh-
bourhoods grow in popularity among the professional classes (Hyra 2015). The Smart Growth
Network (2015: online) argued that “Integrating single- and multi-family structures in new
housing developments can support a more diverse population and allow more equitable distri-
bution of households of all income levels.” In practice, however, the aim to include affordable
housing by implementing smart growth policies has often been thwarted by escalating land
values and inadequate government investment in social housing (Downs 2004). Smart growth
might be achieving the American Planning Association’s (2012: online) aspiration of “Reversal
in the centralization of poverty in communities both urban and rural” but it has not necessarily
contributed to more equitable outcomes: instead, poverty has increasingly suburbanised (Vicino
2008). Indeed, the urban revitalisation associated with smart growth and new urbanism initia-
tives plays a significant role in driving gentrification and displacement (Kushner 2002; Quastel
2009). Experience suggests that smart growth theory’s faith that eliminating regulatory barriers
would reduce housing costs and increase choice was fundamentally misplaced. Ramirez de la
Cruz (2009: 220) argued that “Smart growth regulations involve redistributing the benefits
and costs associated with land development and urban growth . . . Smart growth practices have
substantial redistributive effects for various interest groups in the community, particularly for
the welfare of developers, environmentalists, and homeowners.” Smart growth has done less to
benefit disadvantaged residents and communities.
Faith in the benefits of growth can blind authorities to the risks of increasing densities or
redeveloping former industrial sites. Angel (2011) has challenged the wisdom of applying smart
growth ideas in the developing world: he argues that growth boundaries and greater densities
are inappropriate options in cities that are doubling in population at such a rapid rate and are
already extremely dense. Sun (2011) noted that some places will never be smart for growth,
no matter the strategies used. Coastal areas threatened by flooding, landfilled sites in seismically
active zones, wetlands, desert environments, and such cannot be rendered safe or appropriate

48
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for development by applying smart growth strategies. Some regions where smart growth
intensification policies have been followed for several years—such as parts of coastal North
America—have become increasingly vulnerable to potential disasters. Globally linked cities of
densely populated neighbourhoods can also face risks of communicable diseases, as the 2002
SARS and 2014 Ebola epidemics demonstrated. “‘Smart Growth in dumb places’—those that
are particularly disaster prone—is the antithesis of true sustainability” (Sun 2011: 103). Survival
of the smart growth paradigm will require greater attention to longer term risks and locally
appropriate development options.

The Future of Growth Management

Slogans such as “smart growth”, like “sustainable development” before it, have a limited half-
life: utility could be decaying already. The popularity of smart growth as an approach to growth
management reflected its ability to bridge interests and agendas as criticisms of growth reached
fever pitch. Dierwechter (2008: 4) suggested that “we should see the smart growth paradigm for
urban growth management, in particular, as an ongoing territorial struggle – as a still open pro-
ject of geopolitical agency that concomitantly reflects both progressive and regressive tendencies
pulsing within society as a whole.” As the tensions inherent in growth management practices
become increasingly evident, and as critics continue to point to flawed assumptions and failures
to achieve formidable ambitions, smart growth will at some point yield to new approaches.
Managing growth remains a central concern of local governments and integral to the daily
activities of many planners. Growth theories and approaches to growth management have always
reflected the times, and the changing needs of capital. During the optimistic Progressive Era, local
business and political leaders had ambitious aspirations for growth, but generally lacked the means
to implement them. The moral codes implicit in the garden city paradigm reflected Victorian
values of order and domesticity, as they reshaped suburban landscapes in the 20th century. The
transformational objectives of the modernist period supported wholesale change in neighbour-
hood form and function. The growth control and growth management theories of the later 20th
century illuminated concerns about the nature and pace of urban change, and the increasingly
important role that real estate development played in the economy. As a core planning paradigm
in the late 20th and early 21st century, smart growth responded to the reality that growth might
not be universal and, when it occurs, might not be universally beneficial. “Making room” for
urban expansion in cities in the developing world responds to pressures to accommodate growth
on the fringe (Angel 2011). Smart decline approaches promote positive futures for cities without
growth. Challenges for cities over the next decades will likely shape the direction of growth
management theories and practices in future. As theories of growth direct planning decisions and
policies they have long-term implications for urban development: hence, smart growth policies
that have shaped urban form and function in recent years will influence urban life for generations.
What factors might affect the nature of growth management theories and planning practices
in the years to come? First, we can expect that economic conditions will remain significant in
influencing where and how growth occurs, and consequently our ideas about how to manage
change. Cities in China and in parts of the developing world have exploded in population while
Western nations have experienced considerable de-industrialisation, and in some cases urban
decline, over the last several decades. Globalisation is likely to continue to generate upheavals in
the location of employment opportunities and in the conditions that attract people to particular
cities and particular neighbourhoods. As earlier paradigms of growth management reveal their
inadequacies, we can expect planners to develop new theories about how to achieve desirable
growth to improve conditions for populations and for urban development interests. With the

49
 Jill L. Grant

extent of consolidation that has occurred in the development industry over recent decades, we
can expect that large master-planned communities will remain an important feature of urban
growth, with increasing inequities between those who can afford to live in well planned com-
munities and those who cannot. At the same time, however, we will continue to need improved
theories and strategies to help cities and regions decline gracefully (Hollander and Nemeth 2011).
Second, environmental change will generate new threats to which planning will need to
respond. For instance, some governments are currently ramping up research activities to con-
sider how threats associated with climate change might alter many of the assumptions that
have driven planning for growth in the past (Dedekorkut et al. 2010). Growth management
approaches will need a more comprehensive view of the range of threats and hazards that cities
might face as they grow (or decline).
Third, political instability might present new challenges to planners trying to manage growth.
Recent decades in Eastern Europe have illustrated the way that political change can destabi-
lise and reorient growth patterns. Chronic instability in parts of the Middle East and North
Africa are stimulating massive population movements that might influence patterns of growth in
Europe and beyond. Immigration seems likely to become an increasingly important, and poten-
tially contentious, issue for those planning for growth. In nations such as Canada and the US,
which traditionally relied on immigration for growth, the political climate might be less wel-
coming than it once was. Japan faces a future of planning for decline in the absence of significant
changes to its resistance to immigration. Changing cultural values and conditions around the
world will generate new concerns that will demand innovative approaches to managing growth
and the externalities it creates.

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McGuirk, P. and Dowling, R. (2009) “Master-Planned Residential Developments: Beyond Iconic Spaces
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 5
PLANNING IN THE
ANTHROPOCENE
William E. Rees

Introduction: Framing the Conundrum

Plan (verb): To think about and arrange the parts or details of (something) before it
happens or is made.
(Merriam Webster)

High intelligence, including the ability to reason logically and act upon available evidence, is a
uniquely human attribute. So are the capacity to plan ahead and the plethora of social mecha-
nisms for cooperation. Assiduously applied, these qualities should enable the global community
to engineer an economically secure and ecologically stable future for the entire human family.
But where is the evidence we are exercising our unique intellectual gifts? The cumulative effect
of human activities (including meticulously planned activities) is eroding the biophysical struc-
ture and life-support functions of the ecosphere—greenhouse gases (GHGs) are accumulating
and driving climate change; fishers are emptying the seas; industrial society is polluting and
acidifying the oceans; overexploitation and bad management degrade landscapes and erode soils;
accelerating biodiversity losses herald the ‘sixth extinction’, etc., etc. In short, people’s demands
on nature are breaching critical ‘planetary boundaries’ (Rockström et al. 2009); the human
enterprise is in a state of ‘overshoot’ (Wackernagel et al. 2002, WWF 2014). The cumulative
effect might well end hopes for sustainable global civilization.
Indeed, some authorities argue that global societal collapse is a real possibility with many
precedents, albeit on a sub-global scale (Tainter 1988, Diamond 2005). As Tainter (1995)
observes, “what is perhaps most intriguing in the evolution of human societies is the regular-
ity with which the pattern of increasing complexity is interrupted by collapse.” If industrial
civilization does indeed succumb, we can hardly claim not to have been warned—the 1972
Club of Rome report on Limits to Growth (LTG) projected the collapse of global society before
the mid-21st century under the combined weight of resource shortages, excess population
(demand), insufficient capital and pollution (Meadows et al. 1972). This unprecedented mod-
eling study was summarily dismissed—particularly by economists—as failing to take human
ingenuity and technological progress into account.1 However, subsequent independent analyses
of forty years of actual data since LTG’s publication indicate “that the world is closely tracking
[the study’s] BAU scenario” (Turner 2014, Hall and Day 2009). Moreover, various unrelated

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 William E. Rees

studies underscore the LTG message that global civilization is on track to implode (Motesharrei
et al. 2014, Barnosky et al. 2012, Barnosky 2014). Whatever the eventual outcome, H. sapiens
has become the major geophysical force affecting the evolution of the ecosphere. Welcome to
the Anthropocene (Steffen et al. 2007, Crutzen 2002).
Assuming that our best scientific evidence is correct (is there any reason not to?) this chapter
asks how urban and regional planners might address humanity’s cumulating ecological predica-
ment. What are some of the biophysical and economic principles that should help shape urban
land-use, resource and developmental planning theory in the 21st century? My starting premises
in addressing this question are that: (1) the biophysical foundations of planning, particularly per-
taining to urban ecosystems, are seriously underdeveloped; (2) the prevailing neoliberal framing
of economic planning is dangerously misguided; (3) resolving the ecological crisis requires
reasserting the common good and the public interest over selfish individualism and corporate
privilege; (4) the ‘disjointed incrementalism’ characterizing typical development planning is
woefully inadequate for the Anthropocene. It is worth noting that, contrary to popular wisdom,
some developing countries actually have an advantage over advanced high-income countries in
addressing the threat if they can organize to use it.

The Question of Urban ‘Land’: A Biophysical Systems Perspective

The optimal use of ‘land’ has always been central to urban planning. In recent decades, however,
‘optimality’ has increasingly been interpreted in light of neoliberal economic theory. Modern
society treats urban land as a tradable, mainly private, commodity and reduces optimality to
efficient trade-offs among competing economic land uses. In this framing, land is valued as lit-
tle more than a lifeless substrate for buildings, roads and engineered infrastructure. There is no
appreciation of land-as-living system, of soil as the well-spring of terrestrial life.
Nor is the city as a whole much better animated in the modern mind. Typical definitions
describe the city as ‘a large permanent settlement’ or ‘a major centre of commerce and culture’
dominated by elements of the ‘built environment’; cities are political entities as well as ‘hotbeds
of artistic, cultural and political activity’; Jane Jacobs famously described them, as the ‘engines of
national economic growth.’ Cities are, of course, all these things but even in the aggregate this
conception is inadequate for navigating the Anthropocene. Just what would happen to such an
entity (think ‘London’ or ‘New York’) if it were sealed in an impermeable glass bell-jar whose
outer diameter encompassed the city’s entire built-up area? Clearly, the city’s economy and social
life would quickly wind down and die with its human inhabitants as they simultaneously starved
and suffocated (Wackernagel and Rees 1996, Richardson and Moskal 2016). What is missing
is any appreciation of the city as a complex, highly dependent living system.2 Cities are dynamic
biophysical entities that must exchange with the larger ecosphere to survive and whose very exist-
ence is ultimately subject to the rule of thermodynamic and related biophysical laws (Rees 2012).

Cities as ‘Dissipative Structures’

[Thermodynamics] … holds the supreme position among the laws of nature … If your
theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, I can give you no
hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
(Eddington 1929)

We ignore the laws of thermodynamics at our peril. The Second Law states that any spontane-
ous change in an isolated system—a system that can exchange neither energy nor material with

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its environment—increases the ‘entropy’ or randomness of that system. Concentrations disperse,

energy dissipates and gradients dissolve. Over time, the system reaches ‘thermodynamic equilib-
rium’, a state of maximum entropy in which nothing further can happen.
Contrast this situation with the familiar world. We all know of systems that are obviously
not sliding inexorably toward equilibrium. The ecosphere, for example, is a highly ordered self-
organizing system of mind-boggling complexity, multi-layered structure and steep gradients as
represented by millions of distinct species, differentiated matter, and accumulated biomass. Over
geological time the ecosphere has been moving ever further from disorderly equilibrium. Indeed,
self-maintenance in a far-from-equilibrium state might well be the hallmark of life. As Prigogine
(1997) asserts, “distance from equilibrium becomes an essential parameter in describing nature,
much like temperature [is] in [standard] equilibrium thermodynamics”.
All systems experience the same entropic forces that afflict isolated systems—there are no
documented exemptions from the Second Law. (Have you ever known a rusted-out automo-
bile to restore itself spontaneously to showroom condition?) So how do living systems avoid
continuous decay? The paradox dissolves with recognition that living systems are open systems
that freely exchange energy and matter with their environments. They also exist in overlapping
nested hierarchies in which each component system is contained by another one level higher up
(think ‘individual, population, community, ecosystem, ecosphere, Earth, solar system . . .’). Each
subsystem in the hierarchy grows and develops by extracting usable energy/matter (negentropy)
from its host system and using it to produce its own structure/function. It also exports degraded
energy and material wastes (entropy) back into its host (see Kay and Regier 2000). The main
point is that living systems generate local organization and maintain themselves far from equi-
librium at the expense of increasing global entropy, most immediately the entropy of their host
system (Schneider and Kay 1994, 1995). They are called ‘dissipative structures’ because they self-
produce by consuming/dissipating available concentrations of energy/matter (Prigogine 1997).
So, where do cities fit in? Cities, like the ecosphere, are self-organizing far-from-equilibrium
dissipative structures but with an important difference. The ecosphere evolves and maintains
itself by ‘feeding’ on an extra-terrestrial source of available energy (the sun) and using it to
recycle matter; the degraded energy dissipates off the planet as low-grade heat, increasing the
entropy of the universe. By contrast, today’s cities can grow and maintain themselves only by
‘feeding’ on the rest of the ecosphere and ejecting low-grade heat and matter (pollution) back
into it.3 In short, the local order represented by the burgeoning city is acquired at the expense
of a much greater potential increase in the disorder of the ecosphere.4
We now have a sufficient biophysical explanation for humanity’s apparent ecological dys-
function: (1) as a wholly dependent subsystem, the increasingly urban human enterprise is
thermodynamically positioned to consume/dissipate the ecosphere from within (Rees 1999);
and (2) propelled by the perpetual growth ethic, aggregate human demand already exceeds the
ecosphere’s regenerative capacity (WWF 2014). Wealthy urbanites might experience a world of
unprecedented luxury and convenience, but the price is a parallel world of degraded landscapes,
declining biodiversity, and climate change. Urban humanity has become dangerously parasitic
on its planetary host. High-income cities are now as much the engines of global ecological
decay as of national economic growth. The question is how might planners re-configure cities
to become true regenerative ecosystems?

Are Cities Ecosystems?

There is a long-standing interest in cities as ecosystems (e.g., Berkowitz et al. 2002, Register
2006). However, despite numerous eco-city innovations and physical developments in various

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countries around the world (Joss et al. 2015) no modern city comes close to achieving true
human ecosystem status (Rees 1997, 2012). A functionally complete ecosystem is a self-sustaining
community of producer organisms (green plants), macro-consumers (mostly humans and other
animals), and micro-consumers (bacteria and fungi) existing in complementary relationships
with each other and non-living components of a shared ‘environment’. In ‘Second Law’ terms,
ecosystems are complex, self-organizing, far-from-equilibrium dissipative structures that assimi-
late high-quality solar energy (through photosynthesis) and recycle essential inorganic chemicals
(water, carbon dioxide, nitrates, phosphates and a few trace minerals) to produce and main-
tain themselves. As matters stand, cities are nearly devoid of essential ecosystem components,
particularly producer and micro-consumer organisms. We might perceive cities as productive
‘economic engines’ but, in strictly biophysical terms they are nodes of intense consumption only.
This structural deficiency has important consequences. For example, separating food produc-
tion from consumption and decomposition fosters soil degradation by inhibiting the economic
maintenance of organic matter and the recycling of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other nutrients
contained in household and human wastes. These are typically washed out to sea (i.e., ‘dissipated’)
where they contribute to the emergence of anoxic marine dead zones and other forms of pollu-
tion. In effect, contemporary urbanization transforms what were once local, integrated, cyclically
self-sustaining human production systems into global, transport-reliant, horizontally disintegrated,
resource-depleting, unidirectional throughput systems (Rees 1992, 2012).5 Society consequently
becomes dependent on artificial fertilizers which, in turn, deplete essential feed-stocks (e.g., phos-
phate rock and natural gas). Far from ‘decoupling’ people from nature (a common assumption
of urban geographers and economists) modern cities could hardly be better configured to accelerate the
entropic degradation of supporting ecosystems.

The Eco-footprints of Cities: What Really Constitutes ‘Urban’ Land?

Which, somewhat circuitously, brings us back to urban land. The UK National Ecosystem
Assessment (UK 2011) classifies 6.8% of the UK as urban. But urban land is not necessarily built
upon—the classification includes parks, sports fields, private gardens, water courses and other
forms of urban green space. In England, fully 78.6% of urban land is ‘natural’—the actual ‘built
environment’ constitutes only 2.3% of the landscape in England and less than 1% elsewhere in the
UK. Bottom line? The UK-NEA gives the impression that we can consider roughly 98–99% of
the UK to be ‘natural’, unoccupied. This undercuts “the great myth of urban Britain” (BBC 2012)
and might delude some to believe the country is relatively empty with plenty of room for growth.
Contrast this perspective with that viewed through an ecological lens. The first question of
urban ecology should be: ‘how large an area of productive ecosystems, both inside and outside the
city’s built-up or political area, does its population functionally “appropriate” to support itself?’
The answer is revealed by ecological footprint analysis (EFA), a quantitative method that can esti-
mate any population’s demand for ‘biocapacity’ (Rees 1992, 2013; Wackernagel and Rees 1996).
The ecological footprint (EF) of any specified population is:

The area of land and water ecosystems required, on a continuous basis, to produce the
bio-resources that the population consumes and to assimilate the carbon wastes that
the population produces, wherever on Earth the relevant land/water is located.
(Rees 2013)

In 2010, the UK’s EF was 4.4 gha per capita, more than half of which was carbon sink. In short,
it took at least 4.4 hectares (10.9 acres) of ecosystems of average productivity scattered all over

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the planet to produce food and fibre for, and to assimilate the carbon emissions of, the typi-
cal UK citizen (WWF 2014).6 (Significantly, the UK diet demands 0.8 gha/capita of cropland
compared to a domestic supply of only 0.4 gha/capita which explains the trade deficit in food.)
Assuming per capita consumption has not increased significantly, the UK’s 2015 population
of 64 million had an EF of about 282 × 106 gha. Compare this to a domestic biocapacity of
82.8 × 106 gha (~ 1.3 gha per capita) and a total actual land base of 24.3 × 106 ha. The UK eco-
footprint is 3.4 times greater than the nation’s biocapacity and 11.6 times the actual area of the
country!7 Far from being 98% undeveloped the UK, like the world at large, is in a state of eco-
logical overshoot. Demand for biocapacity greatly exceeds domestic supply.8
Now consider UK cities and ‘urban’ land. In 2015 Greater London had a population of over
8.1 million; assuming its inhabitants are typical UK residents, their collective eco-footprint is
36 × 106 gha. That is, London’s EF is 227 times larger than the city’s political area of 158,300 ha
and 1.9 times the entire UK land base. London alone, with just 12% of the UK population,
appropriates the equivalent of 43% of the nation’s biocapacity (and we have yet to consider
other UK cities). And London is no exception—independent studies of various modern cities
have found that urban EFs are typically hundreds to a thousand times larger than the city’s geo-
graphic area (Folke et al. 1997, Warren-Rhodes and Koenig 2001, BFF 2002, Moore and Rees
3013, Richardson and Moskal 2016).
These observations are more than mere curiosities—remember, London’s eco-footprint rep-
resents the city’s true human ecosystem, the area, mostly outside the city, that London must ‘feed’
upon to maintain its human population and built infrastructure in their current stable, highly
ordered far-from-equilibrium state. By extrapolation to include other cities, the UK’s entire
productive land base, and twice as much again outside the country, constitute the nation’s functional
urban ecosystem. If the UK were cut off from extra-territorial sources and global waste sinks,
it could not support itself at anything approaching current material standards. Even assuming
the inter-convertibility of domestic ecosystem types (e.g., agricultural to forest land, etc.) UK
residents would have to reduce energy/material consumption by at least 70% to survive on
domestic biocapacity. Such results are typical of high-income countries and cities.

Evidence-based Planning for the Anthropocene

City planners have traditionally focused on land within city limits. This was relatively risk-free in
ecologically stable times when human demand on nature was manageable, resources abundant
and trade unimpeded—but circumstances have changed. The world is in overshoot; population
and per capita consumption are increasing; global competition for Earth’s shrinking biocapac-
ity is intensifying (as exemplified by the accelerating phenomenon of ‘land grabbing’ [Gardner
2015]); and sea level rise, mass migrations, resource shortages, energy insecurity and attendant
geopolitical tension threaten the relationships between cities and their distant hinterlands even
as cities become humanity’s major habitat.
Clearly planners must begin to acknowledge in practical terms that arable land, forested land
and other ecosystems are a more important functional component of urban ecosystems than
are the lifeless roads, parkades and building lots that currently command professional attention.
Planning for the Anthropocene should strive to re-conceive cities—or better, urban regions—as
self-renewing, regenerative human ecosystems. Residents’ demand for food, fibre and energy
should be supplied as much as possible by ‘domestic’ (i.e., intra-regional) production systems
driven by photosynthesis and renewable energy technologies. Regional materials and waste
management systems must be redesigned to facilitate the intra-regional recycling of essential
nutrients and otherwise limit the dissipation of important resources. In short, we must create

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 William E. Rees

urban-centred eco-regions that are potentially self-sustaining—the successful design and execu-
tion of this ideal would be the highest form of bio-mimicry.
If we could begin again in full knowledge of overshoot, climate change, etc., we might
fashion human settlements from the ground up as self-governing bioregional city-states. Less-
urbanized developing countries (mostly in Africa and Asia), particularly those with ‘surplus’
biocapacity, actually have a planning advantage here since they are starting with a relatively
clean slate. By contrast, fully urbanized countries must cope with historic settlement patterns
and governance systems that evolved with no reference whatever to global constraints. The best
we might do is to ‘retrofit’ existing towns and cities in ways that reflect emerging biophysical
and geopolitical realities. In either case, the major goal should be to reduce dependence on
uncertain external sources and to enhance regional self-reliance. Implemented on a planned
schedule over several years, the following policies/objectives are consistent with re-configuring
present settlement patterns into more functionally self-contained human ecosystems that serve
the broader public interest:

•• Create a national system of bioregions centred on existing cities with boundaries based
on ecologically meaningful land forms and biophysical features (e.g., watersheds, heights
of land).
•• Strive to contain, within the eco-region surrounding the urban core, an area equivalent to
each city’s currently globally dispersed supportive hinterland; i.e., internalize their de facto
‘eco-footprints’.
•• Re-localize government and economy; devolve sufficient governance and taxation powers
to the new urban bioregions to enable effective management of their internal resource- and
ecosystems.
•• Organize the regional economy and commerce to sustain the population as much as pos-
sible on domestic bio-resources and ecosystems, thus reducing reliance on trade goods.
•• Re-engineer urban utilities to convert cities from resource-depleting throughput systems
into self-sustaining circular-flows ecosystems. E.g., collect, treat and recycle animal and
domestic wastes onto the bio-region’s farm and forest lands whence it came, thus main-
taining soil quality, reducing the need for artificial fertilizers, and eliminating ground and
surface water pollution.
•• End all non-essential green-field development. Restore depleted soils, degraded landscapes,
wooded areas and other wildlife habitats to promote biodiversity, enhance regional produc-
tion, increase carbon sink capacity, and mitigate climate change. (Human use has already
dissipated half the world’s topsoil but soil still contains several times as much carbon as the
atmosphere.)
•• Build up rather than out. Densify existing built-upon land in ways that spatially reintegrate
work-places with living-space and recreation areas.
•• Utilize the economies of scale and agglomeration economies that confer a substantial ‘sus-
tainability multiplier’ on well-designed high-density settlements (e.g., reduced per capita
demand for occupied space and transportation; greater potential for recycling, reuse and
remanufacturing, electricity co-generation and district heating/cooling; expanded oppor-
tunities for co-housing, tool-sharing and other activities that reduce material demand)
(Rees 2003).
•• Recognize that governance of regional ecosystems and landscapes for the common good
will sometimes require stinting customary private property rights. Importantly, citizens
who realize that their security depends on maintaining the integrity of local ecosystems
have an incentive to support such measures.

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 Planning in the Anthropocene

•• Create multiply redundant energy/water/food sources and related redundant infrastructure

that are not fossil fuel dependent. In particular, sustainable cities should buffer water and
food supplies from short-term climate vagaries (e.g., crop failures, drought, flooding) by
engineering substantial storage capacity and maintaining reliable trading relationships.
•• Implement economic and social planning policies that facilitate reducing residents’ ecological
footprints toward a globally equitable 1.6 hectares per capita (Moore and Rees 2013). This
would achieve ‘quasi-sustainability’,9 is technologically possible, and if skillfully implemented
could actually improve individual and community well-being.
•• Develop national/regional population policies consistent with regional and global carrying
capacity. This will usually mean planned population reductions—overshoot is the product
of too many people over-consuming finite resources.
•• Developing countries in particular should prohibit the alienation of seemingly ‘under-
utilized’ lands to foreign interests. There are no true surplus ecosystems on Earth. International
‘land grabbing’ (see Gardner 2015) compromises prospects for local self-sufficiency, creates
unsustainable dependencies, and increases geopolitical tension.

Note that the need to become more self-reliant is not an argument against trade. It is obvi-
ously unrealistic to expect retrofitted bioregions to come close to self-sufficiency, certainly
not in manufactured goods and even in food and other renewables in the short and medium
terms. Cities in the UK and other densely populated countries have long since exceeded the
carrying capacities of their regional environs—i.e., they are overpopulated relative to their
(partially depleted) resource bases. At best, then, our new urban bioregions will remain par-
tially import-dependent as they rehabilitate regional ecosystems, adapt their consumption habits
and implement long-term population policies in the transition toward maximum self-reliance.
To facilitate the transition, senior governments will have to renegotiate terms of global trade
to ensure the long-term conservation of vital natural capital—soils, biodiversity, etc.—upon
which everyone depends. (Current WTO rules rationalize natural capital depletion to accelerate
economic growth.) However, given the uncertainties confronting even managed exchange, an
early priority goal of urban bioregions should be independence from imports of vital food and
fibre resources. A reasonable guiding principle during the transition might be trade if necessary
but not necessarily trade.

Growth or Development? The Need for New Economic Theory

Something strange happened to economics about a century ago. In moving from clas-
sical to neo-classical economics—the dominant academic school today—economists
expunged land (or natural resources) [from their theorizing].
(Wolf 2010)

As noted, planning is excessively influenced by neoliberal economics, a mechanistic analytic

framework that is divorced from biophysical reality and therefore anathema to sustainability. Its
core model, the ‘circular flow of exchange value’, sees value in goods and services flowing from
firms to households in exchange for spending by households (national product) and a counter-
current represented by factors of production (labour, knowledge, finance capital), flowing from
households to firms in exchange for wages, rents, dividend, etc. (national income). There is
no reference in this or derivative models to the energy and material resources required from
nature to generate the money flows that the model does represent. To understand the eco-
nomic process as a circular flow while ignoring unidirectional energy and material throughput

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is to think of a living body in terms of the circulatory system with no reference to the digestive
tract. One might as well ask biology students to accept that “an organism can metabolize its
own excreta” (Daly 1991).
Abstraction from reality is increased by economists’ belief in the near-perfect substitutability
of factors of production. Classical economics considered land, labour and capital to be three
essential factors of production. However, finance capital and knowledge (human capital) are now
perceived as the drivers of economic growth in advanced countries, so neoliberal economists
downplay the role of traditional labour and have eliminated ‘land’ (a surrogate for nature and
life-support functions) from their production functions altogether. The notion that knowledge/
human ingenuity (e.g., more efficient and novel technologies) can substitute for nature dispels
residual concerns for resource scarcity and clears the way for continued economic growth.10 In
theory, if we gradually reduce the energy and material intensity of the economy (lower energy/
material consumption per unit GDP) then the economy is effectively ‘decoupling’ from the
material world and growth has reduced impact.
Reality paints a different picture. Global material consumption has doubled in the past 35
years (a period of unprecedented efficiency gains), has accelerated since 2000 and there is scant
sign of even relative decoupling (Giljum et al. 2014). Indeed, most claims of absolute and rela-
tive decoupling can be traced to poor analytic methods and accounting errors (Wiedmann et al.
2013). From a land-use planning perspective, perhaps the most interesting finding is that, with
each doubling of income, the per capita land and marine areal footprints of nations increase by
a third (Weinzettel et al. 2013). Again, material growth requires the appropriation and depletion
of ecosystems.

Economics For the Anthropocene

Fortunately, an alternative economic paradigm has emerged in recent decades (Martinez-Alier
1987, Daly and Farley 2010). Ecological economists have advanced a vision of the economy that
addresses the most egregious misconceptions of the neoliberal model and maps much better to
biophysical reality. For example:

•• Ecological economics replaces analytic mechanics with core concepts from ecology, complex
systems theory, and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics.
•• While neoliberal models treat the economy as a separate, open, growing system lacking any
important connectedness to an inanimate ‘environment’,11 ecological economists depict the
economy as an open but fully contained, wholly dependent subsystem of the living, materially
closed, non-growing ecosphere.
•• Neoliberal models generally assume that change in key variables will be smooth and pre-
dictable and therefore reversible; ecological economics recognize that complex social,
biophysical (and even economic) systems under stress often behave discontinuously. Key
variables change unpredictably and can cross irreversible tipping points.
•• Mainstream economics ignores the Second Law and sees no other insurmountable barriers
to continued growth. By contrast, ecological economics recognizes that material growth
necessitates the irreversible consumption and dissipation of available energy/matter, that
beyond a certain point entropic disorder threatens global life-support systems, and that these
facts impose strict limits on the safe scale of economic activity. In fact, contraction might be
necessary for sustainability.
•• Mainstream economic logic favours globalization, competition, specialization, selfish indi-
vidualism, corporate values and free trade as stimulants to growth; ecological economics

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 Planning in the Anthropocene

argues for locality, cooperation, economic diversity, community, the common good and
managed trade as the foundation for resilient development.
•• Neoliberal theory assumes that manufactured (and even finance) capital can substitute for
natural capital. Ecological economics sees man-made and natural capital as complements
(more sawmills are no substitute for denuded forests). Indeed, natural capital is required to
produce manufactured capital.
•• This, in turn, suggests a so-called strong ‘constant capital stocks criterion’ for sustainability:12
Each generation should inherit from the previous generation at least an equivalent (and adequate) per
capita stock of both manufactured and natural capital in separate accounts (i.e., no substitution).
•• While neoliberal economics promotes quantitative growth (getting bigger) through enhanced
efficiency, ecological economics emphasizes qualitative development (getting better), includ-
ing measures that ensure greater social equity.

More on this final point: in various countries today, including the US and the UK, rising GDP/
capita is accompanied by de-development—greater economic insecurity, deteriorating envi-
ronments, eroding public services, a growing income gap (implicated in declining population
health) and falling real incomes for low-income earners (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010, King
2014) all leading to disenchantment with politicians and government. Growth is failing to satisfy
either of its ostensible objectives—continuous poverty reduction and enhancing general well-
being—even as it simultaneously depletes/destabilizes supportive ecosystems.

Contraction toward a ‘Steady-State’

The astute planner will realize that if the benefits of growth are falling and the costs rising, the
former will eventually converge with the latter. Indeed, an economy will have achieved its opti-
mal scale at the point where the (diminishing) marginal benefits of material growth just equal the
(rising) marginal costs—including the (currently unaccounted) costs of depleted natural capital,
capital substitution and pollution. At this point the total net benefits of economic growth to date
(total benefits minus total costs) is at a maximum and further growth actually makes us “poorer
than richer” (Daly 1999). If intelligence and logic were the principal determinants of economic
policy, the primary goal of development planners would be to ensure that growth slows and
stops as we approach optimal scale.
Regrettably, we do not have satisfactory methods to monetize various social and ecological
costs, so reliable benefit/cost estimates of optimal scale remain an elusive goal. We can, how-
ever, reach a first approximation in biophysical terms. Ecological economics recognizes the
thermodynamic imperative of limiting the material scale (energy and material throughput) of
the economic process to something less than regenerative/assimilative capacity of supporting
ecosystems. It follows that one goal of contemporary economic planning should be the transi-
tion from a growth-based, increasingly unequal society to a dynamic, more equitable steady-state
society, operating within the regenerative means of nature (Daly 1991, 1992).13 (Growth-based,
capitalism will not survive.)
While ‘no growth’ is foreign to the modern mind, there should be nothing to fear about the
steady-state. The normal human body is a steady-state system. Indeed, the ecosphere as a whole
is in approximate steady-state, limited by the constant solar flux and the geographically variable
availability of water and nutrients. It should be obvious on these grounds alone that the eco-
nomic subsystem, rapidly becoming the dominant subsystem of the ecosphere, must conform to
the operational dynamics of the ecosphere if it is to survive—and the operational dynamics of
the ecosphere exemplify the steady-state.

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 William E. Rees

The steady-state is not to be confused with a static state. The economy need not cease
developing, it must merely stop growing. Long after one stops growing one continues developing—
acquiring more knowledge, greater professional and practical expertise, better social skills, sta-
tus in the community, etc., etc. With sound planning and good management society at large
could hover indefinitely near a materially optimal scale even as the well-being of the citizenry
improves. In short, there are no limits on the capacity of human ingenuity to better quality
of life, only on the quantity of throughput available to do it. The economy too should con-
tinue evolving as technological advances enable new firms and whole industrial sectors to both
develop and grow as their thermodynamic equivalents in obsolete or ‘sunset’ industries wither
and die off.
It should be apparent that a steady-state economy functioning on available biocapacity is an
appropriate economic model for our proposed system of increasingly self-reliant bioregional
city-states.

Discussion: Do We Have Viable Options?

Readers might protest that the spatial reorganization and planned economic contraction of
society as proposed here is radically unrealistic: “Whatever the ethical merits of the case, the
proposition of no growth has absolutely no chance to succeed” (Porter 2015). Others will argue
that rapid transformation is unnecessary because gradually, incrementally, society is already tak-
ing tentative steps in the right direction. In any event, only small changes are politically feasible
because they can be implemented using existing political mechanisms without upsetting too
many establishment apple carts or losing public support.
Perhaps, but history and social science suggest that making major cultural shifts incremen-
tally typically takes decades and we no longer have decades—how long has the climate debate
gone on even as GHGs and mean global temperatures reach yet another record in 2015? By the
time significant movement is evident we will likely have missed important targets (e.g., hope
is fading that we can avoid two Celsius degrees warming, which is increasingly looking like
disaster [Hansen et al. 2013]) or passed irreversible tipping points, the consequences of which
(for human civilization, at least) will play out over centuries.
In these circumstances, transformational surgery must be performed as quickly as possible
without jeopardizing the patient. At a minimum, rich countries should accept their responsi-
bility to shrink their material economies toward a globally viable steady-state. Prudent analysts
increasingly recognize that “appropriate policies and frameworks have to be implemented,
leading to reduced resource use and absolute reductions (dematerialisation) particularly in indus-
trialised economies, in order to enable a more balanced allocation of material resources across
the globe” (Giljum et al. 2014). Global equity requires that North Americans reduce their
ecological footprints by over 75% from seven global average hectares (gha) per capita to a ‘fair
Earth-share’ of 1.6 gha (e.g., Moore and Rees 2013); European throughput would typically fall
by 60–70%. The emergent ‘de-growth’ movement is also inspired to create just such an ecologi-
cally stable, economically secure, more nearly equal world (Kerschner 2010, Gheorghică 2012,
Rees 2015). Bottom line: material contraction at the top is necessary to make room for needed
consumption growth in the developing world (Rees 2008, Victor 2008).
Unreasonable demands? Impossible goals? Not necessarily—the world actually has the tech-
nology to enable a 75–80% reduction in energy and material consumption (von Weizsäcker et al.
2009) while improving quality of life in both rich and poor countries. Remember, too, that
people in wealthy countries were actually happier on average with less than half of today’s aver-
age per capita income (Lane 2001). Programme implementation on the scale of urban-centred

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bioregions would break the problem into manageable bits each of which would constitute an
experiment from which the others could learn. And, if we are successful in creating a world of
more self-reliant sustainable regions, the aggregate effect will be global sustainability.
The most plausible alternatives to ‘steady-state with redistribution’ are the growth-oriented
status quo or some technologically engineered variant. But if our best science is correct, the
increasingly likely outcome of these alternatives is a dystopic chaos of climate change, ecosys-
temic collapse, resource wars and geopolitical upheaval. This dismal outcome underscores that
it is actually in everyone’s long-term interest to give up on continuous material growth and
learn to share the Earth’s existing bounty. For what might be the first time in human history,
individual and national self-interest has converged with humanity’s collective interests (Rees 2008).

Epilogue: Is H. Sapiens Fatally Flawed?

It is often said that the ecologically necessary is not politically feasible. On the other hand, the
politically feasible might well be ecologically meaningless (and is often not implemented any-
way). Which raises the possibility that humanity’s (un)sustainability conundrum is one of those
problems that is simply not solvable.
Many behavioural barriers stand in the way (Rees 2010)—like all species, H. sapiens has
a natural predisposition to expand to fill all accessible habitat and use all available resources;
individual humans have a natural tendency to prefer the here and now over the future and dis-
tant places (formalized by economists as ‘social discounting’); customary behaviours and beliefs
(e.g., paradigms and ideologies) acquire synaptic circuits in the brain that are difficult to over-
ride; we are tribal, hierarchical and belligerent and both individuals and tribes at the top of the
economic pyramid will do everything within their considerable power to avoid relinquishing
their privileged positions. (Power politics and short-term self-interest generally trump evidence-
based analysis and long-term collective interest.) Finally, humans evolved in small groups and
ranged over relatively small areas. Our brains are adapted to coping on that scale—no one can
wrap his/her mind around the world that is unfolding, let alone determine how it unfolds.
(Do we really have a handle on climate change? Who is in control of the global economy or
geopolitics? Who predicted ISIS?) Indeed, the history of societal collapses suggests that the
inability of a stressed-out society to cope with some new macro-problem and implode (Tainter
1988) might well be an inevitable repeating pattern which, for the first time, is now unfolding
inexorably on the global scale (Diamond 2005)—hardly an uplifting prognosis.
But planning is by nature an optimistic profession—it is about building a better world. We
have the data; we know what must be done; we can break the problem into manageable spatial
components as proposed herein. The profession’s overriding challenge now is to help elevate
H. sapiens’ unique capacities for high intelligence and forward planning to positions of promi-
nence in the policy arena. If we succeed in rising above reptilian instinct, raw emotion and
ideological intransigence it is theoretically possible that we can break the cycle of societal collapse.
Does any other discipline have a greater challenge than that of enabling H. sapiens to realize its
full and uniquely human potential?

Notes
1 Mainstream condemnation of LTG continued for decades, much of it based on error, misinterpretation,
and untruths such as the oft-repeated claim that the model predicted resource depletion and global
collapse before the end of the 20th century (Bardi 2011). Evidently, many critics had not actually read
the LTG report, preferring to regurgitate the errors of earlier ideologically compatible (e.g., growth-
oriented techno-optimistic) commentators.

63
 William E. Rees

2 This perceptual gap reflects modern humanity’s socially constructed sense of ‘exceptionalism’, the gen-
eral belief that, because of technology, modern humans are no longer part of, or dependent on, nature.
3 A city’s resource consumption and waste production reflect both bio-metabolism and industrial metabolism.
4 This need not be problematic as long as the regenerative capacity of the ecosphere exceeds the dissipa-
tive output of the human enterprise (with a generous allowance for the thousands of other consumer
species with whom we share the planet).
5 In effect, ‘the city’ is the human analogue of a livestock feedlot (Rees 2003). In both cases, the eco-
systems that produce the primary residents’ food/fibre and recycle their wastes might be thousands of
kilometres distant.
6 To facilitate international comparisons, EF data are generally converted to their equivalents in hectares
of global average productivity (gha). Significantly, there are only about twelve billion hectares of land
and water ecosystems on Earth adequately productive for human use (WWF 2014); this is 1.6 gha per
person in 2015. The UK eco-footprint is 2.8 times larger than the share of biocapacity each citizen
would receive if ecosystems were allocated on an equal basis.
7 Domestic biocapacity can exceed domestic territory because UK landtypes are more productive than
average. For example, if UK farmland is three times as productive as world average farmland, one
domestic hectare is the equivalent of three global average hectares (see Note 6).
8 These results are conservative because we err on the side of caution in the case of data discrepancies and
we assume that productive lands are being used sustainably which is often not the case. For full details of
current methods and implications see Rees (2012) and follow the links at www.footprintnetwork.org/
9 A settlement is quasi-sustainable if current per capita energy and material throughput could be extended
to the entire world population without compromising the integrity of the ecosphere. This would con-
stitute ‘one planet living’ (Moore and Rees 2013) and in 2015 an average eco-footprint of 1.6 gha.
10 See the Ecomodernists’ Manifesto. Available at www.ecomodernism.org/
11 Even environmental economists merely try to ‘internalize’ nature through market or shadow pricing.
This treats ‘the environment’ as a sector of the economy.
12 A weak version, preferred by environmental economists, calls for a constant aggregate per capita mon-
etary value of manufactured and natural capital, i.e., society can liquidate natural assets provided it
generates an equivalent value of manufactured or finance capital (implies perfect substitution).
13 Remarkably, more than a century and a half ago when GDP/capita was a small fraction of today’s, John
Stuart Mill also reasoned that society would reach a “stationary state” of sufficiency in which virtually
everyone would be able to enjoy “sufficient leisure . . . to cultivate freely the graces of life.” Mill was
at heart a planner and hoped that people would reach this state of grace deliberately “before necessity
compels them to it” (Mill 1848). (He would be disappointed that, in the 21st century, nature is indeed
compelling us to it.)

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 PART II

How Meaning/Values Are

Constructed in Planning
 6
THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Stefano Moroni

Introduction: The Fall from Grace of the Idea of the Public Interest
Planning has traditionally considered the public interest as its principal criterion of justification.
The notion of the public interest has traditionally provided the raison d’être for planning.
This was true, in particular, of comprehensive technocratic planning. As Altshuler (1965: 186)
wrote, the traditional master plan approach is based on the assumption “that the comprehensive
planners understand the overall public interest”. In other words: “The existence of such a public
interest was taken for granted during the heyday of comprehensive planning . . ., and the ability
of planners . . . to identify this public interest and justify their proposals in its name, was rarely
questioned” (Alexander 1992: 129). This traditional view, which for long dominated planning
theory and practice, can be termed the rationalistic conception of the public interest.
The situation is completely different today. The concept of the public interest has come
under severe attack. It is in fact, today, a commonplace in the planning literature to say that the
public interest does not exist. In other words, it has become fashionable “to dismiss the concept
of ‘the public interest’ as devoid of content. Its use as a counter of public debate is said to be
fraudulent, since there is no such thing as a public interest” (Barry 1990: 207).
But the statement “the public interest does not exist” can be interpreted in four different
ways (usually not clearly demarcated in the debate) that correspond to four quite different
arguments on the ‘inexistence’ of the public interest: first, the public interest does not exist as
a fact; second, the public interest does not exist as an a priori criterion; third, the public interest
does not exist as an extra-individual value; fourth, the public interest does not exist as an always
overriding substantive value (Table 6.1). For each of these four views, I shall ask four questions
(further developing some ideas anticipated in Moroni 2004 and 2006): first, what is the presup-
posed argument and what kind of argument is it? Second, who proposes the argument? Third,
against whom (and against what idea of the public interest) is the argument proposed? Fourth,
what idea of pluralism is accepted? Answering these questions will allow me not only to present
a (new) map of the various positions on the public interest (Table 6.2), but also to suggest a
number of conceptual distinctions that will be useful for the subsequent attempt to reconstruct
the concept.
I use here the term “public interest” in a very broad sense that roughly coincides with expres-
sions like “public good” or “common good”. The expression “common good” is the oldest one

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Table 6.1 Four different arguments on the inexistence of the public interest

Main idea Kind of argument Perspective

The public interest does not exist as a fact Empirical Divergentism

The public interest does not exist as an a priori criterion Ethical Dialogical proceduralism
The public interest does not exist as an extra- Ethical Classical liberalism
individual value
The public interest does not exist as an always Meta-ethical Value pluralism
overriding substantive value

(dating back to Greek and Roman thought), while “public interest” has been introduced more
recently (in an attempt to render the concept more consistent with the secularization of political
science). However, both concepts convey the same idea: that the state should not pursue private
and sectional interests or needs, but rather the interests and needs of all citizens.

What Kind of Inexistence? First View, Divergentism

The central idea of this view is that the public interest does not exist as a fact. Let us consider
four crucial questions in this regard.
First question: What is the main argument and what kind of argument is it? In this case, the
idea is that the public interest does not exist as a fact because, in our contemporary fragmented
societies and cities, there is no possible factual overlap among the multiple varied individual and
group interests. The interests of individuals and groups in our societies are today too divergent
to exhibit any significant area in common. It is therefore impossible for public action to operate
simultaneously to everyone’s advantage. This is, fundamentally, an empirical argument. In other
words, it has something to say about our social and urban world as it is.
Second question: Who proposes the argument? This argument is usually advanced by those
planning theorists and political scientists who want to evidence the marked distributive effects of
political decisions in a society that de facto comprises multiple factions and groups with different
interests. In the planning literature, this is a position held by Simmie (1974), who argues that
in social circumstances characterized by divergence among the goals and desires of the various
individuals and groups as regards access to the scarce resources available, the public interest is a
totally inadequate criterion for planning intervention. As he writes: “There is no such thing as
THE public interest. Rather there are a number of different and competing interests” (Simmie
1974: 125). A similar view is propounded by Gans (1973: 10):

In a pluralistic society, it is difficult to identify communal goals because they generally

turn out to be shared by … only a part of the population. For example, open space is
usually thought to be in the public interest, but it does not necessarily benefit those too
far away to use it, those who do not wish to use it, or those who want scarce resources
applied to a more urgent need, such us housing.

Third question: Against whom (and against what idea of the public interest) is the argument
directed? This argument is directed against the rationalistic conception of the public inter-
est; that is, the idea that all individuals and groups have, in fact, interests in common, even if
they are usually not aware of this fact. It is therefore an argument against those (i.e. orthodox
technocratic planners) who believe that the role of the planner is to uncover this factual area of
common interests and to show it to the individuals and groups.

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Fourth question: What idea of pluralism is presupposed? Pluralism (of interests, desires, aims)
is, here, merely a fact. More precisely, it is a peculiarity of our contemporary societies that we
must recognize as fundamental if we wish to furnish a viable empirical description of them.
Today cities represent the clearest example of this irreconcilability of the interests of the various
individuals and groups.

What Kind of Inexistence? Second View, Dialogical Proceduralism

First question: What is the main argument and what kind of argument is it? In this case the idea
is that the public interest does not exist as an a priori criterion. It is maintained that anyone who
claims that it is possible to define what the public interest is in abstract terms and in advance
ignores the fundamental interactive and dialogical process through which meaningful criteria are
actively constructed. This is an ethical argument.
Second question: Who proposes the argument? This argument is advanced by planning theo-
rists who stress the centrality of communicative practices. On this view, a good planning process
can be understood as one of joint sense-making in practical collective conversation (Forester
1989). This approach focuses on removing barriers of various types – structural, organizational,
and political – which may distort dialogue. While the public interest cannot be defined a priori,
it can therefore emerge a posteriori in a process of undistorted collective communication.

The purpose of intercommunicative planning is to help planners begin and proceed

in mutually agreeable ways based on an effort at interdiscursive understanding. … We
may be able to agree on what to do next, on how to start out, and then travel along
for a while. We cannot know where this will take us.
(Healey 1993: 244)

As a consequence, the public interest is identified ex post facto through open dialogical processes.
As Healey (1997: 296–297) writes: “The ‘public interest’ has to reflect the diversity of our interests
and be established discursively.” Compare with Innes and Booher (2015: 205): “Although partici-
pants do not come into the process looking for the public interest, as they accommodate diverse
interests, the proposals come closer to something that can be viewed as in the common good.”
Third question: Against whom (and against what idea of the public interest) is the argument
directed? This argument, too, is mainly directed against the rationalistic conception of the
public interest. According to communicative planning theory, planners must not limit their
action to set ends and look for the means with which to achieve them; rather, they should use
their abilities to generate a platform that encourages inter-communication. Planners are not
mere problem-solvers; rather, they are (and must be) organizers of public attention. As Healey
(1996: 230) writes in an influential paper:

The spatial planning tradition emphasized planning’s role in spatial ordering, supported
by rationalist methodologies of technical analysis and evaluation designed to achieve
“public interest” goals … . The approach outlined in this paper presents strategic spatial
planning as a process of facilitating community collaboration in the construction of
strategic discourse, in strategic consensus-building.

Fourth question: What idea of pluralism is presupposed? Pluralism is here again mainly a fact.
The focus is not simply on different interests but also on different ways to formulate problems.
As Forester (1989: 57) observes: “In a pluralist world the decision-making setting becomes more

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complex . . . . Definition of problems in a pluralist environment are multiple. Different interest

groups have different senses and valuations of the problems at hand.”

What Kind of Inexistence? Third View, (Classical) Liberalism

The central idea of this view is that the public interest does not exist as an extra-individual value.
First question: What is the crucial argument and what kind of argument is it? In this case,
the main idea is that the public interest does not exist as an extra-individual or supra-individual
value because we must reject any value of this kind. The assumption here is that individuals are
the only appropriate moral entity to which public choices must refer. In short, only individuals
should be taken into account when public decisions are taken. In this perspective, the individual
is an end in him/herself; the only source of legitimate moral claims. As a consequence, there
are no legitimate distinct moral claims deriving from cultures, structures, communities, groups,
etc. (Kukathas and Pettit 1990) We can call this conception “moral (or deontic, or normative)
individualism” to distinguish it clearly from other forms of individualism. It is therefore essential
to stress what moral individualism is not: first, it is not a meta-ethical subjectivistic claim regarding
the nature of the value (in particular, it is not the claim that the only source of value is subjective
sensation and that there are no sources of value independent of the real and subjective experi-
ences of individuals); second, it is not an ontological claim regarding the non-existence of entities
other than individuals (in particular, it is not the claim that there are no collective entities –
collective entities may exist, but they do not have a moral status in themselves); third, it is not a
methodological claim regarding the way in which we ought to describe society (in particular, it is
not the claim that we ought to explain society by conceiving individuals as monads independ-
ent of social relations and prior to them); fourth, it is not an empirical claim regarding a specific
individual psychology (in particular, it is not the claim that individuals have to be viewed as
selfish agents).
This argument against a certain idea of the public interest (i.e. an argument that is focused on
the idea of moral individualism) is patently an ethical argument. In other words, it does not con-
cern so much the social reality as it is, as the best way to evaluate that reality, and intervene in it.
Second question: Who proposes the argument? This argument is advanced, in particular, by
liberal thought. A clear example can be found in Nozick (1974). After having suggested an idea
of rights as side constraints expressing the individuals’ reciprocal inviolability, Nozick (1974: 32)
asks: “But why may not one violate persons for the greater social good?” Here is his reply:

There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good.
There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own indi-
vidual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits
the others. Nothing more. What happens is that something is done to him for the sake
of others. Talk of on overall social good covers this up.
(Ibid.: 32–33)

The term “liberalism” is used here to denote a family of normative political theories which have
some fundamental ideas in common: first, the above-mentioned idea of moral individualism;
second, the idea that we have to draw a sharp distinction between the good (which personally
concerns each individual separately) and the right (which regards all individuals); third, the idea
of the desirability of a plurality of conceptions of the good (i.e. the idea that we neither need
nor want a society in which people share a similar idea of the good life); fourth, the idea of
the centrality of certain basic rights and liberties (i.e. the idea that we have to recognize and

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defend certain individual rights or liberties in order to protect ourselves from others and from
the state itself).
The various contemporary liberal perspectives in this sense can be located on a continuum that
ranges from the libertarian-liberal (e.g. Nozick 1974) to the egalitarian-liberal (e.g. Rawls 1971).
There are few examples in the planning literature of the libertarian-liberal outlook (e.g. Sorensen
and Day 1981). Examples of egalitarian-liberal perspectives are more common (e.g. Stein and
Harper 2005).
Third question: Against whom (and against what idea of the public interest) is the argument
directed? The liberal criticism of the idea of the public interest or the common good as an extra-
individual or supra-individual value is levelled first of all against those holistic conceptions that
disregard moral individualism. A first example is provided by the holistic transcendental conceptions
of the public interest; that is, those conceptions focused on some overall idea such as “the spirit of
history”, “the spirit of progress”, or “the essence of the state”. Transcendental conceptions of this
kind have had a considerable impact on planning (see Taylor 1994: 106–109). Other examples
are the holistic communitarian conceptions of the public interest: that is, those conceptions focused
on the community as the prime ethical subject and, consequently, on a common conception
and standard of the good life. By “communitarianism” here I do not mean any generic claim in
favour of collective or communal life, but rather a strong ethical commitment to community as
the only decisive source of value (MacIntyre 1981). Conceptions of the public interest or the
common good rooted in communitarian perspectives of this kind have also had a strong impact
and are still widely accepted – explicitly or implicitly – in planning theory and practice. (For a
critical appraisal of various ideas of community in planning theory and practice – and a warning
against the risks of a “strong community” perspective – see Ganapati 2008).
The liberal argument is also an argument against aggregationist conceptions of the public inter-
est such as utilitarianism; that is, those normative perspectives based on an aggregative criterion
of choice focused on the notion of utility. As is well known, the utilitarian philosophy strongly
influenced planning theory and practice (with particular reference to the interpretation of the
public interest, see Taylor 1994: 103–106; Campbell and Marshall 2002: 174–176). Utilitarians
usually start with an apparently individualistic claim: “Real individual preferences (desires, inter-
ests, aims) are what really matter for us.” But their particular principle of collective choice,
the maximization of total utility as a sum of individual utilities (interpreted as the satisfaction
of individual preferences), is incongruous with the initial individualist stance. In the utilitarian
aggregative criterion of public decision-making, the separateness of persons becomes lost in an
impersonal global calculus (Rawls 1971: 27; Lukes 1973: 48). The utilitarian aggregative pro-
cedure takes account of utility measures and not of individuals. To sum up, utilitarianism seems
open to criticism not because it is too individualistic (as many planning theorists believe), but
because it is not individualistic enough.
Before concluding, it is essential to specify that liberal theorists do not focus specifically on
the “rationalistic” conception of the public interest. However, they reject it implicitly, consider-
ing rationalistic conceptions to be irrelevant a priori. It is also essential to underscore that what we
have said does not imply that liberal thinkers reject any idea of the public interest. A liberal con-
ception of the state simply presupposes a particular idea or version of the public interest. There
is a public interest present in liberal conceptions of the state as well, since the intervention of a
liberal state aims at safeguarding certain (individual) rights of the members of society (Kymlicka
1990: 206; Freeden 1991: 97). In conclusion, despite the prevailing narratives, no liberal thinker
has ever considered self-interest as an alternative to the public interest (Holmes 1989: 252).
Fourth question: What idea of pluralism is presupposed? For liberal perspectives the idea
of pluralism that is centrally relevant is the idea of the “pluralism of conceptions of the good”.

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The plurality of the conceptions of the good is here not simply a fact, but a desirable situation.
In this perspective, each individual must be free to pursue the conception of the good life that
he or she likes, once some guarantees for all are provided (through certain universal individual
rights). Classic liberals have nothing to say about the individual’s conceptions of the good and
about the possible forms of self-realization. Crucial for liberalism, in fact, is the idea of the state’s
neutrality regarding the good itself. A legitimate state is, therefore, a state whose principles do
not presuppose any comprehensive conception of the good life (Rawls 1993). Each individual can
obviously believe that his or her particular idea of the good life is the best one and that he or she
has sound reasons for this conviction, but these reasons cannot become public reasons.

What Kind of Inexistence? Fourth View, Value-Pluralism

The core idea of this view is that the public interest does not exist as an always overriding
substantive value.
First question: What is the argument, and what kind of argument is it? In this perspective,
the conviction is that the public interest does not exist as a substantive value since it is impos-
sible to contend that any substantive value is better than others. A strong value-pluralism is the
only acceptable option. The interests and goals of individuals and groups are, in this perspective,
morally equivalent and strictly incommensurable. The argument is therefore primarily meta-
ethical. That is to say, it concerns whether or not it is actually possible to argue rationally in the
field of ethics.
Second question: Who proposes the argument? Value-pluralism can assume a quite different
meaning in two different perspectives: first, we have non-sceptical value-pluralism; second, sceptical
value-pluralism.
In the first case, i.e. in the case of non-sceptical value-pluralism, the fundamental idea (Kekes
1993; Gray 2000) is that we can at least identify and defend societal arrangements that can allow
pluralism to flourish in peace. Kekes (1993) and Gray (2000) argue that no particular value
always overrides any other. Hence moral dilemmas cannot be completely eliminated from ethi-
cal experience. But this does imply, according to Kekes and Gray, radical scepticism. Kekes
(1993) believes that plural values unavoidably conflict with each other. The state that accepts
value-pluralism has, therefore, no overriding commitment to any specific value and must be
hospitable to the flourishing of the widest possible array of values. But this does not mean that
the state has nothing to do apart from encourage pluralism; it might sometimes become an advo-
cate of particular conflict-resolutions. Along similar lines, Gray (2000) suggests the idea of modus
vivendi as the focus of a viable political perspective for value-pluralistic societies. The idea of
modus vivendi recognizes the ineliminable plurality of values: not simply the diversity of desires,
but the unavoidable diversity of ways of life. In this view, “harmony” is not the preferable
starting point for political doctrines: “It is better to begin by understanding why conflict –
in the city as in the soul – cannot be avoided” (Gray 2000: 5). In this view, institutions do not
reflect any common or universal value; they are simply devices enabling individuals and groups
with different ideas of the good to coexist. In short: “The ethical theory underpinning modus
vivendi is value-pluralism” (Gray 2000: 6).
In planning theory, a similar idea of (non-sceptical) value-pluralism is implicit in Davidoff
(1965). Here planners are considered to be advocates of the various groups according to their
own personal values: “The planner as advocate would plead for his own and his client’s view of
the good society” (ibid.: 333). In other words, advocate planning is “the exercise of the planning
function on behalf of specified individuals and groups, rather than on behalf of a broadly defined
public” (Davidoff et al. 1970: 12).

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Turning to the second case – i.e. the case of sceptical value-pluralism – we can observe that the
central idea is that the public interest does not exist, since it is impossible to justify any kind of
public choice in any reasonable fashion. It is also asserted that it is difficult to imagine, specify and
defend any societal arrangement as preferable to any single other arrangement. Value-pluralism
here coincides with total scepticism. A large group of sceptics have advanced an argument of
this kind. A recent version of this form of sceptical value-pluralism is connected with the post-
modern incommensurability thesis, according to which values, aims and lifestyles are so intrinsically
varied and diverse that we lack any common ethical language and standard.
An example of this kind of scepticism in the planning literature was anticipated by Rittel and
Webber (1973) in a noted article on the impossibility of a general theory of planning (I do not
mean to say that Rittel and Webber always sustained a similar form of scepticism; simply that this
kind of scepticism can be found in their well-known 1973 article). Rittel and Webber (1973:
168) write: In a situation in which a plurality of individuals is pursuing a diversity of goals,

how is the larger society to deal with its wicked problems? … Surely a unitary con-
ception of a unitary “public welfare” is an anachronistic one. We do not even have a
theory that tells us how to find out what might be considered a societally best state.

Third question: Against whom (and against what idea of the public interest or the common
good) is the argument proposed? In this view (i.e. in both the perspective of non-sceptical
value-pluralism and that of sceptical value-pluralism, albeit in partially different vein in the two
approaches) the argument is against any outlook other than value-pluralism. It is, therefore, an
argument against every use of the idea of the public interest to identify certain values as always
overriding other values.
Fourth question: What idea of pluralism is presupposed? It is essential to maintain the distinction
between the idea of pluralism accepted here – value-pluralism – and the idea of pluralism – pluralism
of the conceptions of the good – accepted by classic liberals. Kekes (1993: 199) himself writes:

Pluralism is committed to the view that there is no particular value that, in conflicts with
other value, always take justifiable precedence over them. By contrast, … liberalism …
must be committed to holding that in cases of conflict the particular values liberals
favour do take justifiable precedence over other values.

Observe, moreover, that the idea of pluralism presupposed here is also partially different from that
discussed in the first case above (i.e. divergentism). At issue is not whether value-pluralism is a
simple fact accentuated by the complexity of contemporary cities and societies and the contradic-
tions inherent in the capitalist system, but whether it is a fundamental condition of human existence.
As Gray (2000: 10–11) notes: “Value pluralism is . . . not an interpretation of pluralism in late
modern societies. If it is true, it is a truth about human nature, not the contemporary condition.”

Rethinking the Public Interest: First Point, Acceptable

(and Unacceptable) Criticisms
Having clarified a number of preliminary issues, I now put forward some considerations crucial
for formulating a viable idea of the public interest. First of all, not all the versions of the idea that
the public interest does not exist seem acceptable.
The divergentist perspective – the public interest does not exist as a fact – is plausible but
trivial. Presenting it as one of the fundamental discoveries of planning theory and political science

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in the second part of the twentieth century is an exaggeration. Moreover, if this idea is taken
in absolute terms, there is a risk of rendering it simply untrue. It is, in fact, evident that any
group of individuals will always share some common interests: we can find common interests
even among enemies (Barry 1990: 195). The crucial point is that the interests that are actually
in common cannot necessarily help to resolve fundamental conflicts. In any event, accepting this
first view implies the (agreeable) rejection of the rationalistic conception of the public interest
(and only that).
The dialogical proceduralist perspective – the public interest does not exist as an a priori
criterion – appropriately directs attention to the usefulness of real interaction and debate; but
if this point is taken to the extreme, such a position becomes open to criticism. First, as
Alexander (2002: 234) writes: “A dialogical concept of the public interest may be useful as a
kind of default legitimation for planning but it fails to provide the substantive content planners
need if the public interest is to have any value as an evaluative criterion for plans or planners’
decisions.” Second, the desirability of dialogue cannot be justified dialogically: in other words,
some (albeit minimal/thin) idea of the public interest must precede any process. Not every
value can be redeveloped ad hoc in each interchange; some of them have to transcend particu-
larity (Fainstein 2005: 126). In short, some sort of meta-consensus (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2006)
is an inevitable presupposition.
The value-pluralist perspective – which argues that the public interest does not exist as an
always overriding substantive value – can be rejected. More precisely: non-sceptical value-pluralism
seems simply incoherent; sceptical value-pluralism is, on the contrary, coherent but susceptible to
criticism.
Non-sceptical value-pluralism (as in Kekes 1993 and Gray 2002) is self-defeating (Tate 2010).
The idea that there must be some kind of state – protecting and favouring value-pluralism –
rather than no state (Gray 2000) entails accepting certain substantive values rather than others.
The same problem arises when we argue (Kekes 1993) that the state has a crucial role to play in
conflict-resolution. Strictly speaking, value-pluralism entails nothing at all about what we ought
to do (Talisse 2015). Gray (2000: 135) himself seems to admit this when, irreparably damaging
his theory, he writes: “Yet value-pluralism does not strictly entail modus vivendi. As a matter of
logic, value-pluralism cannot entail any political project.” In short, non-sceptical value-pluralism
seeks to reconcile two incompatible elements: on the one hand, total pluralism of values; on the
other, some sort of idea of a preferable institutional arrangement and public action. A similar
kind of incongruence can be found also in certain current planning approaches.
Sceptical value-pluralism is, on the contrary, coherent – or at least can be made such – but
can be criticized on different grounds. It is impossible to discuss this issue extensively here
(see the arguments by Trainor 2008). I simply stress that incommensurability seems not to be abso-
lute (individuals belonging to different cultures, traditions and groups have strong differences
but when they meet they can learn, exchange and change; moreover, to coexist in peace and
with reciprocal advantage, they do not need to overlap or converge on everything, but only on
very circumscribed “framework-issues”), and axiological reasoning seems not totally impossible
(in particular, it can take many intermediate forms between “foundational absolutism” and
“total relativism”; as regards planning, see Harper and Stein 1995).
The classic liberal perspective – the public interest does not exist as an extra-individual value –
can not only be accepted but seems to me particularly relevant. Accepting it implies rejecting
not just holistic conceptions of the public interest, such as the transcendental and communitar-
ian, but also the aggregationist conceptions of the public interest, such as the utilitarian one. This
happens for reasons that seem appropriate, and that do not deny the relevance of other ideas of
public interest. In particular, it is important to stress here that, according to a liberal view, we

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can accept conceptions-of-the-good-pluralism as crucial to planning issues without necessarily

having to embrace a more radical – and not totally convincing – blanket value-pluralism.
Liberalism and value-pluralism are usually thought to be intrinsically linked. The widely
accepted idea seems to be that value-pluralism is a fundamental component of liberalism. But
this is untrue. This mistaken overlap between liberalism and (value-)pluralism has emerged
because pluralism has usually not been clearly demarcated from a different idea that is the core
of liberal thought: the idea of reasonable disagreement (Larmore 1996). Reasonable disagreement
is the recognition of the inevitable disagreement concerning what can constitute a good life;
the recognition that reasonable individuals tend to disagree about the nature of self-realization.
But this does not mean that there exists no value at all that overrides others; it merely means
that the state cannot impose any comprehensive conception of the good life on all individuals
(Rawls 1993). The state must limit itself to safeguarding the right of each individual to pursue
the concept of the good life that he or she prefers without seriously harming others. Liberalism
is, therefore, not value-neutral.

Rethinking the Public Interest: Second Point, Viable

(Nomocratic) Universalism
As stressed, liberal criticisms of certain ideas of the public interest seem particularly convincing.
Having concluded the pars destruens of the argument, I shall now try to develop a more positive
pars construens, which I see as a development and reformulation of the classic liberal paradigm
toward what can be termed “nomocracy” (Moroni 2010). (As already evidenced, classical liber-
alism is against certain ideas of the public interest, not against every idea of it.)
Drawing on (and mixing) insights from Buchanan (1977), Hayek (1982) and Cordato (2007),
one could say that it is in the public interest to improve in the long term the chances of unknown
individuals of pursuing their equally unknown and continuously changing purposes in a complex social
environment that is open-ended.
This view is still based on moral individualism, but in a quite particular sense. Here, the pub-
lic interest is not the real interest of any one specific person but the potential interest of anyone
at all in the long run. As was already clear to Lewis (1832: 233): “Public, as opposed to private, is
that which has no immediate relation to any specified person or persons, but may . . . concern
any member or members of the community, without distinction.” In assessing whether some-
thing is in the public interest the point is, therefore, if it is in the interest (advantage, benefit . . .)
of potentially everybody, but not literally everybody (Taylor 1994: 97). The public interest is
something that is in the interest of each individual regardless of his or her membership in any
specific sectional interest group: it is the interest of any individual taken at random (ibid.: 95).
For instance, there might be no single road or other kinds of infrastructure in a region to whose
building cost it would be strictly in everyone’s interest to contribute directly; but it might still
be in everyone’s interest to contribute to the costs of an institutional and political setting in
which roads and infrastructures will be built (Barry 1990: 197). In this sense the public interest
is something that concerns an indefinite number of non-assignable individuals (ibid.: 192). A public
rule or policy ought not to be the decision to grant X to B, but to grant X to everyone in such-
and-such conditions (ibid.: 197).
Note how an idea of the public interest of this kind becomes almost a matter of course if
we want to take also future generations into account. And note how it presupposes intrinsic
unpredictability and continuous change as peculiar and unavoidable features of complex systems –
like contemporary urban realms (Moroni 2015). The suggested definition of the public interest
avoids, in fact, any interpersonal comparison of contingent utilities and instead focuses on settings

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that can help and encourage everyone to discover and use the information and tools concern-
ing the appropriateness of means to (centrally unknowable and not fixed once-and-for-all)
individual ends. The above conception of the public interest is “ends-independent” in the sense
that it does not depend on single given ends, but aims at promoting a situation where everyone
can adaptively pursue the various ends he/she perceives from time to time as most valuable
(Cordato 2007).
Observe that if the criterion of the public interest is formulated thus, it is primarily a metacri-
terion for institutional design which can be progressively enriched and specified through successive
decision-making stages.
As I see the issue, this approach to the public interest requires the granting to each individual
of certain basic negative rights (i.e. the right for everyone to freely pursue their idea of the good
life – using the knowledge, capacities, resources and assets at their disposal as they wish – without
being harmed by others, or harming others; for instance, the right to own, use, manage, trans-
form private spaces without producing – or being affected by – negative externalities), and some
positive rights (for instance, the availability for all of certain public spaces and services, such as basic
urban infrastructures) (Moroni and Chiodelli 2014). What is crucial, according to the approach
suggested, is that these rights and entitlements have to be granted and made effective through
much less decision-making discretionality than happens today and a more radical application of
the principle of equality of treatment (also at the local level). The simplicity and stability of land-
use and building rules are also crucial. The focus of attention will, therefore, be on certain stable
patterns of social relations and public provisions, rather than on contingently introduced and
frequently revised specific material distributions and physical configurations (Moroni 2010). All
of this is in accord with the necessary reaffirmation of a radical (both procedural and substantive)
version of the classic ideal of the rule of law (Moroni 2007). As was already clear to Harrington
(1771: 241): “The public interest (which is no other than common Right and Justice) may be
called the Empire of Laws and not of Men.”
In this perspective, planners neither create nor uncover the public interest but contribute to
specifying and operationalizing the above-mentioned higher-level criterion. According to this
view, communicative and dialogical methods do not entail a new global perspective; rather,
they only provide (together with other methods) useful assistance – for example, in particular
circumstances at local level – within a more general, stable and different framework.

Final Remarks: The Ineliminability of the Concept of the Public Interest

A first conclusion of the foregoing discussion concerns the diverse positions taken on the issue
of the public interest. As a partial alternative to more traditional typologies of conceptions of the
public interest, it is now possible to compile a somewhat different one (Table 6.2).
The second conclusion is that it is not easy to refute the concept of the public interest. We
are obviously free to abandon the term “public interest” if we do not like it; but if we do so, we
will simply have to deal with the same problem under some other label: determining justifiable
public intervention in the face of diversity is crucial for any political order (Flathman 1966: 13).
In short, I believe (as do, in the field of planning theory, Friedman 1973; Klosterman 1980; Howe
1992; Campbell and Marshall 2000 and 2002; Taylor 1994; Alexander 2002; Chettiparamb
2016) that one of the main tasks of planning and political theory is to rethink the public interest.
To do this – and independently from accepting or otherwise the particular proposal above on
how to reformulate a substantive idea of the public interest – we need to revise many current
ideas too often taken for granted. In particular, we need: to sharply distinguish arguments at
different levels of discourse (empirical, ethical, meta-ethical); to rediscover the real meaning and

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 The Public Interest

Table 6.2 Views on the public interest

Views on the public interest

Rationalistic views Technocratic perspectives

Holistic views Transcendental perspectives
Communitarianism
Aggregationist views Utilitarianism
Procedural views Communicative/dialogical perspectives
Individualistic (deontic) views Classical liberalism
Nomocracy
Abolitionistic views Divergentism
Value-pluralism (sceptical and non-sceptical)

relevance of (moral) individualism; to reconsider the real limits of orthodox approaches such as
utilitarianism; to admit that no preferred institutional schema can be derived from value-plural-
ism; to recognize that value-pluralism and classical liberalism are not connected; to recognize
that a different kind of pluralism – pluralism of the conception of the good – is the really crucial
one.

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 7
RETHINKING SCHOLARSHIP
ON PLANNING ETHICS
Tanja Winkler

Introduction
Many scholars accept that planners operate at the interface of knowledge and action (Friedmann,
1987; cf. also Campbell, 2012a; Fainstein, 2010; Flyvbjerg, 2001; Healey, 1997; Porter, 2010;
Sandercock, 2003; Yiftachel, 2006). Many equally accept that operating at this interface neces-
sitates not only an awareness of how we know (epistemology), but also an awareness of our
value-based judgements (or ethical principles), since ethical principles guide discursive and
material actions, and vice-versa. Stated differently, epistemological standpoints and accompany-
ing actions shape—and are shaped by—ethical principles. This suggests articulating knowledge,
actions and ethical principles as recursively interlinked conditions, rather than as separate pre-
conditions that occur before each other in some linear, causal chain of events (Davoudi, 2015).
Planning might, therefore, be conceptualised as an epistemology of ethical actions.
Furthermore, epistemologies of ethical actions undergo periodic shifts in accordance with ever-
changing philosophical understandings of ‘the world’. Thus, during one moment in history,
operating at the interface of knowledge and action was shaped by positivist standpoints, whereas
contemporary ways of knowing and doing reject positivist claims about value-free knowledge.
Many scholars now argue in favour of the value-laden nature of planning ideas and practices.
Many also argue in favour of developing context-specific knowledge for situated actions. And
for those of us who argue along these lines, our epistemological standpoints embrace concerns
for embodied, historically grounded and embedded knowledge(s) and actions. Planners might
then be identified as “situated agents [who] work across different epistemological frames [that]
shape not only [our] socio-political ways of knowing and doing, but also [our different] ways
of understanding the objects and purpose of [our planning] activities” (Davoudi, 2015: 325).
Yet, while contemporary planning theories draw on poststructural, postcolonial, subaltern
or feminist scholarships that value subjective and situated epistemologies of action, work on
planning ethics tends to retain a focus on normative ethical theories alone. To be sure, Stein
and Harper (2005: 148) claim that “contemporary planning theories rest [squarely] on norma-
tive ethical theories”. And by extension, it can be argued that planning’s different epistemologies
of ethical actions equally rest on normative frames of reference. This resting stems from the fact
that planning, as an applied discipline, is oriented toward future courses of action, and, as such,
“it tends to be normative” (Madanipour, 2015: 2). But a focus on normative (or first-order)

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ethical theories alone effectively forecloses further explorations of the nature and meaning of
adopted ethical values regardless of ever-changing epistemological understandings of situated
contexts, and regardless of the fact that scholars refer to the significance of ‘situational eth-
ics’ in their work (cf. Flyvbjerg, 2001). First-order ethical principles also tend to be objective
in nature, because they hone in on what planners should do in accordance with established
social rules (Campbell 2012a, 2012b). Should or ought ethical questions, in turn, assume that
planners are sufficiently knowledgeable to endorse some ethical judgements while rejecting
others, and that planners instinctively know what the nature and meaning of adopted value-
based judgements entail. Argued differently, within first-order ethical frameworks “the [ethical]
matter is already decided in advance, and the capacity for reflexive questioning of [value-based]
frames is thereby surrendered” (Fraser, 2009: 291). The field of normative ethical theories thus
negates opportunities to critically reflect on taken-for-granted ethical discourses, social rules
and ‘Master Signifiers’ (cf. Gunder 2004 and Gunder and Hillier 2009 for critiques of planning’s
‘Master Signifiers’).
Such observations then beg the question: Why is the scholarship on planning ethics rooted,
almost exclusively, within normative ethical frameworks despite ever-evolving epistemologies
of action in situated contexts? This is not to suggest that the idea of planning needs be conceptu-
alised as something other than a normative project. The normativity of planning per se is NOT
in question. Rather, the aim of this question is to create a space that might allow planners to
reflect on their ethical frames of reference in the first place. To this end, I turn to Nancy Fraser
(2009: 284) who asks: “What sort of theorizing can both open up a space for entertaining novel
claims and also provide for the provisional closure needed to vet and redress them?” In response,
Fraser proposes that theorising suited to contemporary moments in history “must engage the
meta-level” if we hope to entertain the possibility that our normative ethical “framings might,
in themselves, be in dispute” (ibid.). While Fraser’s (2009: 284) project concerns justice in a
post-Westphalian world, her argument that our “first-order framings are in dispute” resonates
with the concerns put forward in this chapter. And if we hope to ‘see’ this dispute, we need to
question the taken-for-granted assumptions of planning ethics by engaging with meta ethical
(or second-order) theories. Alternative ways of theorising planning might then rest not only
with how we know and act in ‘the world’, but also with how we theorise ethics from first- and
second-order ethical standpoints. Arguably, it is difficult, if not impossible, to answer (first-order)
normative ethical questions (that concern an ethics of knowing to what end) before engaging with
(second-order) meta ethical questions that include, for example:

•• What are the nature and meaning of an ethical planning judgement in a situated context?
•• How do planners know if their interpretation of an ethical value is ‘better’ (or ‘worse’) than
the interpretations made by others?
•• How does the subjective understanding of a ‘better’ (or ‘worse’) planning intervention vary
from person to person, context to context, or culture to culture?

Meta ethics is the branch of moral philosophy that pays attention to the study of moral concepts,
discourses, languages and thoughts. Whereas the field of normative ethical theories focuses on
“what is moral” and “what we ought to do”, meta ethics focuses on “what morality itself is”
(Jacobs, 2002: viii). In contrast to the field of normative ethics—that presupposes that some
ethical judgements are ‘better’ than others—meta ethical theories allow us to consider subjec-
tive and intersubjective interpretations of value-based statements, attitudes and judgements from
situated standpoints by asking questions about our moral judgements without attempting to dis-
cover what the ‘right’ (or ‘wrong’) course of action is (Foucault, 1984; Garner and Rosen, 1967;

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Mackie, 1977). Although less intuitively familiar, meta ethical questions are purposefully crafted
to examine how we come to know our own interpretations of ethical values, as well as the
interpretations made by others, in the first instance. They enable reflexivity by critically assessing
how moral discourses, languages and thoughts shape decision-making processes and planning
interventions. At issue here are precisely those value-based frames that are, in themselves, in
dispute, but that are often taken for granted in normative ethical questions (Fraser, 2009). In the
absence of grappling with meta ethical questions, planners might have no other way of assessing
and justifying their value-based claims.
The aim of this chapter is to explore how engagements with meta ethical questions might
offer scholars alternative bases for theorising and operating at the interface of knowledge and
action in situated contexts. It also aims to demonstrate how such engagements might be of par-
ticular interest to scholars who are calling for Southern theories. To these ends, this chapter is
structured in two sections. In order to begin to understand why scholarships on planning ethics
are rooted, almost exclusively, within normative ethical frameworks, the first section sets out
to critically analyse (via a discourse analysis) some of planning’s dominant epistemologies of ethical
actions. The second section briefly turns to the potential relevance of meta ethics in Southern
contexts, before drawing to a conclusion.

Conceptualising Planning’s Dominant Focus on Normative Ethics

Epistemology and ethics are usually considered as two distinct philosophical domains. However,
when epistemology appeals to the character traits of an epistemic agent as a condition for knowl-
edge production, it might then be argued that ethical commitments function as productive
components of epistemic processes (Code, 2007; van Fraassen, 2007). Contemporary planning
theories are replete with appeals such as ‘collaborative’, ‘just’, ‘respectful’, or even ‘ordinary’
character traits, and these character traits contribute to the theoretical conceptualisations of
Healey’s (1997) collaborative planning, Fainstein’s (2010) Just City, Sandercock’s (2003) inter-
cultural planning, or Robinson’s (2006) Ordinary City (to name a few theories that explicitly
draw on value-laden epistemologies of ethical actions). Our ethical choices inform our acquisition of
knowledge, and vice-versa (Code, 2007; van Fraassen, 2007). And seeing ourselves as epistemi-
cally responsible agents implies that planners’ ethical choices carry a degree of responsibility,
since we might be held accountable for the choices we make and the actions we take.

Indeed, planning is an archetypical example of Aristotle’s “practical discipline” which

concerns the doing of something not separate from the agent [and her] actions and
choices. Knowledge of social and spatial processes becomes, at once, a condition for
and a consequence of planning. That is why Aristotle’s discussion about action (praxis)
is closely linked to the discussion about planners’ ethical values.
(Davoudi, 2015: 321, 323)

Furthermore, adopted epistemologies and accompanying value-based choices are “situated in

time and space and specific to a particular context” (Davoudi, 2015: 323). Such assertions
invoke a Foucauldian understanding of ‘situational ethics’ in the sense that epistemologies and
values are not only contextually grounded but are also provisional, since human actions—which
are closely linked to adopted epistemologies and accompanying values—are “made through
ongoing internal and external processes” (Foucault, 1990: 9). And because actions are “made,
they can be unmade, as long as we know how they were made” (ibid.). The idea that actions
are ‘made’ through ongoing internal and external processes also draws our attention to the fact

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that epistemologies of ethical actions are both self-constructed (through subjective interpretations) and
socially constructed (through intersubjective interpretations).

Foucault talks about ethics in relation to “an aesthetics of existence,” that is, the rela-
tionship you have to yourself when you act. [Whereas] Aristotle is mainly talking about
ethics in relation to social and political praxis, that is, the relationship you have to
society when you act.
(Flyvbjerg, 2001: 55)

Persons and objects, groups and institutions, are therefore not merely given, but are instead
open to subjective and intersubjective interpretations that concern both the self and society
(Beauregard, 2012). And since individuals and groups hold different world views—that are
subjectively and intersubjectively constructed—Foucault (1984: 37) argues that “the search for
a form of morality acceptable by everyone, in the sense that everyone would have to submit to
it, seems catastrophic to me”.
These kinds of arguments then suggest the need for some engagement with the nature and
meaning of the ethical choices we adopt when we hope to plan. Such engagements also allow us
to question, rethink, and, if necessary, challenge first-order ethical framings that are in dispute
(Fraser, 2009). However, because the study of meta ethics explicitly desists from establishing
how we ought to plan, scholars of planning ethics tend to dismiss meta ethics as irrelevant to
planning theory and practice (cf. Campbell, 2006, 2012a, 2012b; Campbell and Marshall, 1999;
Harper and Stein, 1992; Hendler, 1996, 2001; Lo Piccolo and Thomas, 2009; Stein and Harper,
2005; Thomas, 1991; Thomas and Healey, 1991; Wachs, 1985). Thus, for some, further explo-
rations of the nature and meaning of planning values are deemed superfluous, because first-order
framings remain uncontested. Argued differently, because the normative idea of planning rests
squarely upon “a search for a better future” (Healey, 2012: 199), it is assumed that planners
instinctively know what the nature and the meaning of this ‘better’ future entails. This might be
argued even if scholars hint at meta ethical concerns when suggesting that it is “the nature of
‘better’ that requires engagement with ethics” (Campbell, 2012b: 393, my emphasis), or when
suggesting that the normative idea of planning “demands consideration of what ‘better’ could
and should mean” (Healey, 2012: 199, my emphasis). But instead of delving deeper into what
this nature means, and how we might know if something is ‘better’ (or not), scholars tend to
turn only to first-order ethical theories for answers to their considerations. By way of an exam-
ple of this tendency, Campbell (2012b: 393, my emphasis) proposes that:

[There] is no need for a perfect definition of justice or equality [in order] to take
actions which will reduce injustices and inequalities. [That] such actions will fall short
is no revelation. The revelation lies in the ability to envisage better actions, which will
deliver better outcomes.

While planners might not require perfect definitions of justice or equality in order to act,
Winkler and Duminy (2016), nevertheless, suggest that since subjective and intersubjective
interpretations of ethical values vary from person to person, from culture to culture, and from
one context to another (including from one neighbourhood to another neighbourhood within
the same city), we need to engage with the nature and meaning of the planning values we adopt
when we hope to act. Arguably, in the absence of such engagements our planning actions might
“lead to unintended consequences” (Davoudi, 2015: 324). We therefore cannot assume that
all participants or recipients of a planning intervention subscribe to the same interpretations

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and understandings of ethical values such as ‘justice’ or ‘equality’, for example (cf. Winkler and
Duminy 2016 for an example of residents’ and planners’ conflicting interpretations of ‘justice’
or ‘equality’ that led to unintended consequences). But, how can I be sure that contemporary
epistemologies of ethical actions preclude, for the most part, meta ethical considerations?
Without presenting a lengthy discussion on planning’s philosophical roots, it is worth not-
ing that it was only once an explicit epistemological break from unitary and universal methods
was called for in the late 1950s, that a greater engagement with planning ethics began to surface
(cf. Marcuse, 1976). Until then, planners seldom felt compelled to justify their work from an
ethical standpoint, since planning actions that were based on unitary scientific methods (whether
from posteriori or priori standpoints) were deemed to be sufficient justifications for what should
take place (cf. Freestone, 2000; Friedmann, 1987). Ethical concerns, therefore, remained sub-
sumed within matters of procedural correctness and professional integrity. With the rise of
hermeneutic approaches to knowledge production in the social sciences—that coincided with a
recognition of the political nature of planning (cf. Davidoff, 1965; Freestone, 2000; Friedmann,
1987; Klosterman, 1978; Madanipour, 2015)—planning scholars sought to challenge the then
assumed value-neutral stance of the profession by arguing that the social world “can only be
understood from within, rather than from without” (Davoudi, 2015: 319). Still, one might ask,
as Davoudi does, from within what? To this she responds: Either “from within the mind of each
individual planner (subjective meaning), [or] from within the social rules which render [a] plan-
ner’s action with meaning (objective meaning)”. And for Davoudi (2015: 319):

Subjective meanings are concepts “we think about”, while objective meanings are
concepts “we think with”. Although difficult to untangle from each other, the separa-
tion is analytically [and philosophically] useful as it highlights the distinction between
what a planning action means to others and what a planner means by it.

It might then be argued that if a planner interprets (or thinks about) ‘the world’ from within
her subjective mind in order to understand the meaning of her actions, so too do recipients of
a planning action interpret (or think about) ‘their world’ and what a planning action means to
them from within their subjective minds. Thus, different and even conflicting interpretations of
these meanings can arise. This might be argued regardless of the socially constructed nature of
establishing value-based meanings, as “it [seems] impossible to secure one’s own [values entirely]
independently of the [values held by] others” (Aristotle, cited in Flyvbjerg, 2001: 59). This can
also be argued regardless of the social rules that render planning actions with objective meanings,
since we all “interpret the world through specific forms of language and thought that are situ-
ated in specific social and political contexts” (Davoudi, 2015: 319).
Nonetheless, while the manifold interpretations of subjective and intersubjective ethical
meanings were briefly celebrated during the first decades of the twentieth century—as moral
philosophy was no longer solely embroiled in (first-order) normative ethical concerns—the study
of (second-order) meta ethics declined after the influential publication of John Rawls’ A Theory
of Justice in 1971 (Bridge, 2000; Jacobs, 2002). The Rawlsian idea that self-interested and rational
individuals emerge from behind ‘a veil of ignorance’ to live in a risk-adverse society became the
moral basis for “a rejuvenated conception of normative ethics from a universalist, impartial and
liberal-individualist perspective” (Bridge, 2000: 520; cf. Rawls, 1971). For the scholarship on
planning ethics in particular, the idea that social rules render planning actions with objective meaning
thus grew in prominence, even if Rawls’ (2001) later assertions recant universal ethical positions.
Rawlsian philosophy—with its dominant focus on normative ethics—remains a key influ-
ence on the scholarship of planning ethics (Howe, 1990). Explicitly stated: “Rawls’ normative

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ethical theory provides a firm moral basis for much of contemporary planning theory” (Stein
and Harper, 2005: 148). Accordingly, scholars maintain that our ethical choices “must be
deemed good (or bad) in order for good and bad to have meaning” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 57, my
emphasis). But instead of critically reflecting on subjective and intersubjective meanings of
‘good’ and ‘bad’, or on the nature of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in situated contexts, scholars of planning
ethics assume that “debates in planning theory need to be understood [only] as debates about
underlying normative ethical theories” (Harper and Stein, 1992: 105), because “determining
what constitutes ‘the good’ or whose interest this good serves are highly normative questions”
(Davoudi, 2015: 326; cf. Campbell, 2006, 2012a, 2012b). Let us explore this assumption a little
further by demonstrating how three different planning theories—that are grounded in different
epistemologies of action—retain a focus on normative ethical theories and the social rules we
think with (Davoudi, 2015), irrespective of the fact that all three embrace the idea that planning
is a value-laden discipline.
Habermas’ (1984, 1987a, 1987b, 1990) theory of communicative action acknowledges, in
the first instance, the existence of stakeholders’ subjective and competing ethics. However,
in order to proceed from this initial meta ethical acknowledgement, and in order to arrive at
an ethics of action, Habermas’ (1990: 120) procedural discourse ethics necessitates the produc-
tion of “normatively right statements based on good reasons”. For Habermas (1990: 120), these
“normatively right statements [are the] agreed upon social rules [that allow us] to reach consen-
sus on generalizable maxims”. And by necessitating a consensus on social rules and generalisable
maxims, Habermasian discourses unquestioningly shift their focus from subjective ethical values
to “a universal ethics of action” (Bridge, 2000: 519), since, according to Habermas, an ethi-
cal norm is “universal when all affected stakeholders [of a communicative process] accept the
consequences of an ethical norm” (Bridge, 2000: 523). As such, all participants of a commu-
nicative process presumably can, and will, accept the consequences of agreed upon social rules
and ethical norms, because these rules and norms are based on the concepts we think with and
not the concepts we think about (Davoudi, 2015). In other words, “Habermas is a universalis-
tic, top-down moralist [in that] the rules for correct [ethical] process are normatively given in
advance” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 91). We might then conclude that our normative framings are not
in dispute, and that these framings cannot be unmade, since ‘correct’ ethical matters are already
decided in advance. Such conclusions, however, ignore Fraser’s (2009) and Foucault’s (1984,
1990) invaluable insights.
In the same way that Habermasian procedural discourse ethics moves from recognising sub-
jective values to a position of ‘generalisable’ ethical norms, communicative and collaborative
planning theories move from intersubjectivities to a position of consensus based on normatively
‘correct’ ethical processes that are established in advance. Communicative and collaborative
theorists thus begin their arguments with a recognition of discursive spaces that are intersub-
jectively constructed, before shifting their focus to the search for agreed upon communicative
actions in a ‘scaled-up’ public realm. Here, in this scaled-up public realm, members of a group
no longer orientate their actions toward subjective and intersubjective concerns. Rather, actions
are oriented toward a “unifying, consensus-building force in which participants overcome their
subjectively biased views in favor of a rationally motivated agreement” (Habermas, 1987b: 315).
Habermasian procedural discourse ethics combines elements of intersubjectivity and abstract
universal ethics for the ultimate purpose of establishing consensual communicative actions,
while the nature of ‘consensual actions’ remains subsumed within a normative understanding of
ethical theories that renders communicative actions with objective meanings alone.
Flyvbjerg (2001), in contrast to communicative and collaborative theorists, draws on an
Aristotelian conceptualisation of phronesis and a Foucauldian understanding of situational ethics

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that rejects universal rules. Yet, and somewhat surprisingly, Flyvbjerg’s moral point of depar-
ture remains firmly grounded in normative ethical theories. Accordingly, Flyvbjerg (2001: 130)
begins his phronetic inquiry by focusing only on the following three normative ethical ques-
tions: “Where are we going? Is it desirable? What should be done?” But this focus relegates meta
ethical concerns to a realm of mere intellectual curiosity, which is demonstrated via Flyvbjerg’s
(2001: 98) acknowledgement that “Foucault is a declared opponent of Kant’s question, ‘what
ought I to do?’ or Lenin’s ‘what is to be done?’” Thus, instead of grappling with Foucault’s rejec-
tion of Kant’s and Lenin’s normative ethical questions, “phronesis concerns the analysis of values
that are good or bad” despite the possibility that different members of a “reference group” might
hold different understandings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 57). To be clear, phronetic
research is based on subjective and intersubjective “interpretations [that are] open for testing in
relation to other interpretations” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 130). However, “every interpretation must
be built upon claims of validity, [because] one interpretation is not as good as another. [Rather,]
the key point is the establishment of a better interpretation” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 130, 131, origi-
nal emphasis). Phronetic research, therefore, seeks to ensure that value-based choices are “not
based on idiosyncratic morality or personal preferences, but instead on a common view among
a specific reference group” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 130). It is then assumed that all members of a ref-
erence group hold a ‘common view’ regarding the value-based choices needed when aiming
to establish: What is desirable? And how should we achieve these desires? It is also assumed that
all members intuitively know what the meaning of a better interpretation encompasses, because
“phronesis is what permits one to chase away false opinions and make good decisions” that are
informed by predetermined validity claims (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 110, my emphasis).
Other planning scholars, in turn, focus on how “various subjectivities coalesce in ways that
undermine and disrupt ways of knowing [and doing in situated contexts]” (Derickson, 2015:
653; cf. Porter, 2010). Contained within these scholarships are more nuanced understandings of
the manifold, and often non-discursive, ways in which lived experiences of difference, marginali-
sation and subalterneity are produced through competing subjectivities. Such understandings are
central to multicultural and intercultural planning theories, among other contemporary schol-
arships that are grounded in postcolonial, subaltern and feminist epistemologies. Sandercock
(1998: 30), accordingly, calls for a more “inclusive democracy [of] heterogeneous publics”.
And the accompanying ethical values for the fulfilment of heterogeneous publics might be
understood from a Levinian conceptualisation of intersubjectivities that is founded on a moral
agent’s unconditional responsibility toward others. Here we find an ethics of care and respect.
However, ethical responsibilities toward others require “a move from proximity to infinity”
(Bridge, 2000: 526), where proximity is based on intersubjective and situational ethics, whereas
infinity is based on “a higher realm of ethical conduct” that is shaped by agreed upon social rules
(Lash, 1996: 102). Hence, in the same way that Habermas is able to move from the subjective
to the universal, or Flyvbjerg is able to move from situational ethics to common validity claims,
Levinas is able to move from the intersubjective to the infinite. And in all three epistemologies
of ethical action, value-based judgements involve, by-and-large, normative ethical concerns that
emphasise the ethical concepts we think with.
Regardless then of scholars’ critiques of the tendency in planning to derive ethical principles
from “a universal set of deontological values” (Watson, 2006: 46), concerns pertaining to plan-
ning values remain, for the most part, normative ethical concerns that are shaped by the social
rules ‘we think with’. This is not to suggest that these concepts and rules are irrelevant. Rather,
if scholars based in Africa (or elsewhere) are asked to seek “new moral philosophical sources to
inform [their] thinking” (ibid.), perhaps a starting point for such a search is from a meta ethical
position before arriving at normative judgements. Such a starting point might be of particular

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interest to scholars who are calling for alternative ways of theorising ‘the African urban’ (or the
global South-East), since reflecting on first- and second-order ethical questions allows us to shift
our attention from merely explaining social events as being different in different contexts, to
“understanding what the social world means for the people who live in it” (Davoudi, 2015: 320,
my emphasis). Let us now briefly turn our ‘gaze’ to the relevance of meta ethics for Southern
scholarships. In so doing, the aim is not to argue for a totalising narrative. Rather, the aim is
to encourage an ongoing search for authentic specificities by embedding local knowledge(s),
actions and value-based claims within everyday subjectivities and intersubjectivities.

Turning Our ‘Gaze’ to Southern Epistemologies of Ethical Actions

For many Southern scholars, the problem with planning theory stems from the geopolitical
dominance of knowledge production within capital-centric settings (Appiah, 2006; Connell,
2007; Kemete, 2010; Parnell et al., 2009; Pieterse, 2010; Robinson, 2006; Roy, 2008; 2011;
Watson, 2009; Yiftachel, 2006). And for them, a useful starting point to provincialise main-
stream theories—including those with a more critical bent—involves grappling with how we
might come to know Southern urbanities. Being able to identify and name Southern urbanities
as something different—all be they ‘ordinary’ (Robinson, 2006) and intrinsically linked to global
economies (Roy, 2008)—also allows them to question contemporary planning values. In fact,
Parnell, Pieterse and Watson (2009: 235, my emphasis) argue in favour of “making the values
of planning contextually relevant to our location in Africa”. However, they go on to suggest that
“there is scope for the reaffirmation of the fundamental values that underpin planning” (Parnell
et al., 2009: 235, my emphasis). But whether ‘contextually relevant’ values are necessarily the
same as, or compatible with, planning’s ‘fundamental values’, is an issue that remains undisputed.
Rather, for Parnell et al. (2009), concerns pertaining to planning values are normative ethical
concerns. Accordingly, their focus is aimed at how we should plan in order to improve urban
conditions in Africa; and from their standpoint, we should plan by ensuring ‘greater equity’ and
‘socio-spatial justice’: “Planners do not alter the fundamental relations of society, but they may
be able to stimulate particular growth paths, mitigate disasters, [and] identify how to redistribute
resources to ensure greater equity and socio-spatial justice” (Parnell et al., 2009: 235, my emphasis).
Yet, what precisely is the nature and meaning of ‘greater equity’ and ‘socio-spatial justice’ in
a situated context? How might we know if our planning-based interpretations of ‘equity’ and
‘justice’ are ‘better’ than the interpretations made by residents with whom we hope to plan?
What are residents’ subjective and intersubjective understandings of values such as ‘equity’ and
‘justice’, and how might these understandings differ from a planner’s interpretation of ‘equity’
and ‘justice’? These are the types of questions that remain unanswered despite the fact that
answers to these meta ethical questions have very real consequences for planning in Southern
(and other) contexts. To clarify, by posing these kinds of questions I am not questioning the
concepts of ‘equity’ or ‘justice’ per se. Rather, second-order ethical questions allow us to explore
how subjective and intersubjective interpretations of ethical values such as ‘equity’ or ‘justice’,
for example, shape planning outcomes in situated contexts.
Engaging with meta ethical questions then becomes relevant if we hope to understand
how and why ethical meanings differ in practice, and if we hope to explain how competing
understandings of values are in themselves embroiled in power relations that shape planning
outcomes. From this perspective, keeping concepts such as ‘equity’ and ‘justice’ (or any other
planning value) as relatively undefined normative principles serves only to obscure unequal
power relations, while negating opportunities to justify the validity of our normative ethical
claims and social rules in the first place. But regardless of the potentials that might arise from

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meta ethical inquiries, ongoing quests for Southern theories remain rooted in desires for alter-
native epistemologies alone: “[W]e need to understand the various epistemological dimensions of
the overall knowledge project that has to simultaneously provincialize western-centred urban
theories while addressing the imperative to purpose” (Pieterse, 2012: 26, my emphasis).
Western-centred epistemologies are identified as necessitating provincialisation, while simi-
lar assertions are not asked of normative planning ethics. However, if impartial and universal
rationalities are rejected as epistemological bases for Southern scholarships, why then do we
continue to frame Southern (or other) epistemologies of ethical actions within planning values that
are assumed to be known and shared from the outset? One answer to this question—as gleaned
from Davoudi’s (2015) argument—is that we have not yet begun the project of untangling
the subjective meanings ‘we think about’ from the objective meanings ‘we think with’. Our
normative social rules are presumed to be ‘agreed upon’, ‘shared’, ‘common’ and ‘given’ in
advance, even if contemporary theories draw on poststructural, postcolonial, subaltern and fem-
inist scholarships that value subjective and situated epistemologies of action. But by neglecting
the project of untangling subjective meanings from taken-for-granted social rules, we equally
neglect what our planning interventions might mean to others, and what the consequences of
different meanings might be for the residents who live and work in the spaces we plan (even
if we aim to plan with them). Of equal concern, by neglecting second-order ethical questions
we relinquish the opportunity to question, reflect on and unmake our ethical framings that are
in dispute.

Conclusion
It is argued that epistemological standpoints and accompanying actions shape—and are shaped
by—ethical principles, and that epistemologies of ethical actions undergo periodic shifts in accord-
ance with ever-changing philosophical understandings of ‘the world’. Thus, contemporary ways
of knowing and doing are, on the whole, grounded in poststructural, postcolonial, subaltern or
feminist scholarships that value subjective and situated knowledge. Yet regardless of an assertion
that knowledge, actions and values are recursively interlinked, and that epistemologies of action
are subject to ongoing transformations, our objectively defined social rules and moral points of
departure seem to be static, because these rules and morals are assumed to be known, shared
and given in advance. Furthermore, and despite an acceptance of planning’s value-laden nature,
scholarships on planning ethics continue to focus, almost entirely, on normative ethical theo-
ries that hone in on first-order ethical questions such as: How should we plan, what ought to be
done, and what is done (for the purpose of launching ‘better’ outcomes)? And answers to these
types of questions presuppose that planners are sufficiently knowledgeable to endorse some ethi-
cal judgements while rejecting others, and that planners intuitively know what the nature and
meaning of a ‘better’ outcome should entail. For these reasons, when scholars acknowledge that
planners “may not [always] know what to do when it comes to moral choices about what course
of action to take” (Davoudi, 2015: 321), they tend only to turn to a normative ethics of knowing
to what end. While this purposeful knowing is indispensable if we hope to act, a focus on normative
ethics alone precludes the possibility that the nature and meaning of our planning values might
be understood and experienced as something different by the recipients of our actions. So while
“people [tend to] know what they do; [and while] they frequently know why they do what they
do; what they don’t know is what what they do does [to others]” (Foucault, 1982, here cited
from Davoudi, 2015: 327). Foucault’s somewhat convoluted assertion therefore remains intact,
because scholarships on planning ethics have not yet begun to untangle the value-based mean-
ings ‘we think about’ from the objective meanings and the social rules ‘we think with’.

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Foucault explicitly defines his ethics as a type of “thinking differently” (Foucault, 1990: 9).
Alternative ways of theorising planning might then rest not only with how we know and act
in ‘the world’, but also with how we might ‘think differently’ about planning ethics by engag-
ing with normative and meta ethical concerns. Meta ethical concerns allow us to consider the
specific nature and histories of ethical principles, and how we come to know our own and other
value-based judgements before deciding on how we should plan or what the ‘better’ judgement
is. “Because [these concerns are] pitched to the meta-level, [they also] permit us to entertain
the possibility that first-order questions have been unjustly framed” (Fraser, 2009: 294), and that
taken-for-granted framings can be unmade (Foucault, 1990). Moreover, if “planning cultures
worldwide exist only in the plural” (Friedmann, 2005: 184), then meta ethics becomes relevant
to scholarships that purposefully seek to embed local knowledge(s), actions and value-based
claims within everyday subjectivities and intersubjectivities.
“The trick [however] is to resist the reactionary and ultimately futile temptation to cling to
assumptions that are no longer appropriate to our post-Westphalian world” (Fraser, 2009: 295).
For this reason, meta ethical theories explicitly desist from establishing criteria for making ethical
judgements about situated contexts. Establishing such criteria would be a distinctly normative
project: one that aims to develop some authoritative model by which other things are judged.
So while meta ethical questions cannot assist us in deciding which ethical principles are ‘right’ or
‘wrong’, ‘better’ or ‘worse’, or how we should plan, such questions can assist us in our different
understandings of how planners arrive at moral judgements in the first place; how we employ
ethical principles in practice; what our planning interventions might mean to others; and what
the consequences of different meanings might be. Meta ethical engagements unsettle our own
presuppositions. And in so doing, they empower us to critically reflect on our value-based
frames of reference by deliberately prompting us to rethink our scholarships on planning ethics.

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 8
COMMUNICATIVE PLANNING
Tore Sager

Core Ideas and Progress of Communicative Planning

Communicative planning (CP) is seen here as a participatory and dialogical endeavour involv-
ing a broad range of stakeholders and affected groups in socially oriented and fairness-seeking
developments of land, infrastructure, or public services. It is guided by a process exploring
the potential for cooperative ways of settling planning disputes and designed to approach the
principles of discourse ethics, demanding processes to be open, undistorted, truth-seeking, and
directed at mutual understanding. The process of CP is open in the sense of being inclusive
and transparent; the public can gain knowledge of what is going on. Development efforts are
socially oriented when they aim to further the interests of large segments of society rather than
the interests of a few stakeholders only. Fairness-seeking development aims to improve the liv-
ing conditions of deprived groups, and its planned results observe the rights of all groups.
CP aims to advance deliberative democracy by exploring the potential for broad workable
agreement on planning matters, in any case making deliberation inclusive and thorough before
a planning issue is politically settled. This mode of planning also helps democracy produce fair
outcomes by striving to reduce the influence of systematically biased power relations on the
dialogically determined recommendations. It is assumed that a change toward more participative
approaches will help to develop social capital and community cohesion, improve service deliv-
ery to meet local needs, restore information flows and accountability, and give voice to those
most directly affected by public policy. Excellent overviews of CP are offered by Allmendinger
(2009: 197–223) and Healey (2012). The present chapter gives more attention to the difference
from ordinary citizen participation, the planner role, legitimation, and the critique of CP for
facilitating neo-liberalism.
All strands of CP research have in common a revision and expansion of what used to count
as rational decisions (Sager 1994: 3–25). Instrumental rationality is insufficient in the kind of
planning where the ulterior end is embedded in the participatory process itself. Dialogue, close
ego-confirming relationships, and the experience of being able to make a difference, are important
to the development of mature personalities. These activities have intrinsic value independent of
any goal-oriented strategy. ‘Communicative rationality’ (Habermas 1998: 220–22, 300) requires
arguments in dialogue to be comprehensible, factually true, sincere, and appropriate within the
normative context of public planning. This rationality established Communicative Planning

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Theory (CPT) as a bulwark against the relativism of post-modernism (Harper and Stein 2006).
It provided a platform for critiquing and building alternatives to plans with a narrow economic
focus, and planning processes designed to be the fastest road to implementation of ready-made
decisions. Communicative rationality depends on the use of language oriented toward mutual
understanding and sets CP apart from earlier modes of planning. Synoptic (rationalistic) planning
and disjointed incrementalism are built on instrumental rationality in full-blown or modified
versions (Innes 1995: 184).
The most important forerunner of CP is John Friedmann’s transactive planning, in which
dialogue and mutual learning are key concepts (Friedmann 1973). Processed knowledge justifies
the expert status of the planner. Personal knowledge reflects the undisguised subjective inter-
pretations of the lay person, resting on an informed and detailed picture of the local conditions.
The planner expands the frame of local lay people’s assessment of the plan; lay people supply
nuances and particulars to the planner’s outline of local consequences. The necessary exchange
of experience requires – according to Friedmann – a more personal, face-to-face relationship
between experts and lay people, namely, the transactive style. Friedmann launched dialogue
and transactive planning against the backcloth of what he called ‘the cracked melting pot: rising
cultural pluralism’ (Friedmann 1973: 90–93). The sentiment of instability lingers on in Innes and
Booher’s (2010: 3) advocacy for CP in the US context marked by rapid transformation, a ‘new
tribalism’, and an accompanying loss of identity and shared values.
The inception of CPT came with John Forester’s PhD dissertation in 1977, outlining a critical
theory of planning. Critical CPT assesses how organizational and institutional contexts affect the
contingencies, the fragility, and the vulnerable precariousness of people’s speaking and deliberat-
ing together in preparation for collective action (Forester 1993: x, 4). Mangled communication
patterns are an important aspect of the contexts in which planning takes place. These patterns
are shaped by power and ideology. In CPT, the critique of ideology turns into the critique of
systematically distorted communicative structuring of citizens’ attention; that is, the taken-for-
granted power relations encroaching on efforts to make sense together in autonomous dialogue
(Forester 1993: 62). Critical CPT aims to scrutinize and reform planning and decision processes
in order to advance fairness by empowering local publics.
In planning practice, communication is political. Even if the power of planners is limited,
they can influence the communication between the parties involved in the process. Planners
do this, for example, by shaping attention and questioning the information, statements, and
arguments of the parties, thereby revealing misinformation, authoritarian pressure, and power
games. Forester developed this strategy into a critical tool in articles from the early 1980s. Jürgen
Habermas’ critical theory of communication was a main inspiration (Habermas 1998). Other
influences are mentioned in Forester’s own accounts of the early development of CP (Forester
2013). The arguments for CP were brought together in the seminal book Planning in the Face
of Power (Forester 1989). It spelled out the strategy for achieving fairness in planning processes
by approaching dialogue and identifying and counteracting manipulation, threats, concealment,
self-serving argumentation, and other forms of communicative distortions.
Main works by other authors have later elaborated on the theory and tried to advance the
practice of CP (Harper and Stein 2006, Healey 2006, Innes and Booher 2010, Sager 1994,
2013). Healey and Innes searched for new forms of governance, such as consensus building,
alternative dispute resolution, and various kinds of partnership and collaboration, while Forester
explored the techniques and opportunities of mediation. CP theorists have attended to a wide
range of communicative practices, such as listening, storytelling, rhetoric, mediation, and use of
metaphors. A rich literature links CP to descriptions of the argumentative and interactive aspects
of a planner’s day and to a variety of planning tasks.

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Communicative Planning and Citizen Participation

When CPT appeared in academic journals, citizen participation had been a hot topic among
planning scholars for one and a half decades or more (Levine 1960). An important difference
between typical citizen participation and critical CP is illustrated by the concepts ‘invited space’
and ‘invented space’ (Miraftab 2004). Citizen participation is about inviting groups and individ-
uals from civil society into the official planning process and creating arenas – invited space – for
expression of opinion and information exchange between professional planners and affected lay
people. CP entails citizen participation, but acknowledges the need that some protest groups
and social movements have for standing outside the official planning process. Communicative
planners meet these actors in invented spaces external to the planning framework of the authori-
ties. Communication in these arenas can come closer to discussion on an equal footing and bring
a wider set of interests into the planning dialogue.
Citizen participation takes place within a framework encouraging public input, but ending
public involvement well before implementation and even before the decisive discussions. The
intention in CP is, in contrast, that the dialogue among stakeholders, planners, and public should
include all affected actors, making joint recommendations hard to ignore when the politicians
finally decide. The desired shift is from a planner–citizen information exchange under citizen
participation, to a wider dialogue, solution-seeking, and decision-oriented deliberation in CP.
It has been questioned whether CP, in practice, adds much to earlier planning processes with
procedures for public involvement. Similar to the assessment of regular, government-initiated
citizen participation, available case studies are by no means in agreement on the potential and
the success so far of CP. Margerum (2002) belongs to the creed concluding in a balanced or
largely positive tone, while Bedford et al. (2002) are among the many sceptical researchers.
They conclude that experience with CP has been discouraging, or that real gains have still to
be proved.
CP theorists were keen to study what was going on in participative processes and to make
improvements. The aim was not only to expand participation in numbers or to ascend one rung
on the ladder from tokenism to codetermination. Rather, the idea was that a dialogical process
would enhance mutual understanding, trust, and cooperation, thereby opening up possibilities
for planning problem solutions that were not viable in conditions of misunderstanding, mutual
suspicion, and clogged communication channels (Innes and Booher 2010). Aspirations were not
limited to procedural progress, although this is often assumed by critics (Fainstein 2014: 7). The
critique that communicative planners take little interest in the content of the plans is understand-
able, however, as the transformation from procedural values to substantive realities reflecting
them, is severely understudied in CPT.
Other aspects of theory building preoccupied the CP theorists. First, they wondered what
institutional designs facilitate the communicative mode of planning (van Dijk et al. 2011). How
to put up protective institutional fences around the planning process, so that power outside is
less easily converted to domination inside? The planner must have institutional backing for pre-
venting the powerful in market-oriented urban development from trampling on the rights and
interests of other parties around the table in the official planning process.
Second, several theorists studied how to include marginalized groups and make their voices
heard (Sandercock 1998). Advocacy planners tried to achieve this by speaking for the deprived
and translating their viewpoints and arguments to technical-economic jargon familiar to bureau-
crats. In contrast, communicative planners let communities in need of planning assistance speak
for themselves, but direct attention to their problems and proposals, and question critically the
attitudes and procedures making it difficult for the disadvantaged to get their message through.

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Third, CP theorists prepare for diffusion of the dialogical approach to democratic problem
solving beyond the single planning process. The aims of CP fit well with the idea of deliberative
democracy (Gutman and Thompson 2004). Neither requires that consensus decisions replace
voting. Any actor has the right to stand up for his or her own interest in a liberal democracy.
However, just as in deliberative democracy in general, CP explores the potential for working
agreement emerging from a process that is reasonably free from communicative distortions
(Mansbridge et al. 2010).
Fourth, from the start, there was an epistemological side to CPT, which was virtually
absent in the already established literature on citizen participation. One strand of CP research
took a phenomenological and ethnographic approach (Forester 1992, Sandercock and Attili
2010). Even more important, much North American research linked up with the philoso-
phy of pragmatism (Harper and Stein 2006, Hoch 2007, Verma 1998), as shown in Healey’s
(2009) excellent overview. Pragmatic CP research has partly dealt with rational inquiry and
the consequences of communicative action.
The differences between the approaches of main proponents – such as John Forester, Patsy
Healey, and Judith Innes – were particularly clear in the 1980s and 90s. Forester was developing
the basis of CP as a critical theory, while Innes – in addition to theoretical works – demonstrated
the potential of CP and consensus building by drawing attention to successful cases (Innes and
Booher 1999). Healey’s approach was somewhat in between, more formed by institutionalist
thinking than Innes, and with a stronger leaning toward place-making and spatial planning than
Forester (Healey 2012: 344). Some of the differences are reflected in the terms chosen by the
researchers to characterize their versions of CP. Forester denotes his version ‘critical pragma-
tism’, while Healey and Innes settled for ‘collaborative planning’. Harper and Stein (2006) gave
the name ‘dialogical planning’ to their variety of CP, which owes as much to John Rawls and
American pragmatists, as to Habermas.

The Planner Role

It is not obvious how communicative planners can use the technical-economic knowledge
acquired in their academic education, which traditionally gave planners expert status (Fainstein
2014: 7). Wide-ranging impact assessments and network governance bring an increasing number
of actors into planning processes. Accordingly, the ideal has changed from expert planning with
a public involvement supplement, to participatory planning with a technical-economic expert
supplement. An illustration of the change from expert planning to CP can take the typical text-
book presentation of synoptic planning as the starting point. Its often-listed phases are problem
formulation, goal setting, option seeking, forecasting and impact assessment, evaluation, and
implementation. The conspicuous feature of this list of tasks is the falsely assumed self-sufficiency
of the expert planner. Everything having to do with interaction between actors in the plan-
ning process is invisible. This includes collecting and giving information, facilitation, mediation,
negotiating land acquisition, conflict solving, citizen participation, consensus building, coordi-
nation with other public agencies, eliciting people’s preferences, and building political support.
Masking these interactive tasks makes it difficult to plan and even to understand planning.
Nearly everything regarded as essential in CP is relegated to the shadows in rationalis-
tic expert planning. ‘CPT introduced practical heuristics alien to the model, such as listening,
inclusion, dialogue, and deliberation among diverse stakeholders’ (Innes and Booher 2015: 197).
Impact assessment and the other listed tasks of synoptic planning are not ignored in CP. However,
the knowledge and preferences of local communities, interest groups, and stakeholders have

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become more important inputs in the techniques applied to carry out the tasks, and in the
process leading up to decisions. It is the role of communicative planners to make stakeholders
and affected groups collaborate with each other in a creative process, generating opportunities
that offer each participating group more than it could achieve for itself through alternative
procedures.
Throgmorton (2000) describes the communicative planner’s role as that of being a skilled-
voice-in-the-flow of persuasive argumentation. The planners must work both on process and
substance. It is part of their role to advance fair plans to the advantage of deprived groups, as
well as to design an inclusive process based on open exchange of sincere and honest arguments.
As pointed out by Allmendinger (2001: 134), the central coordinating role of the planner is
played down in CPT. He regards this as a necessary consequence of the planner’s engagement
with local stakeholders in an unbarred search for local consensus. This engagement also leads
him to question: ‘[H]ow can you have a profession (whose raison d’être is the application of
expert knowledge) if you argue that there is no such thing as expert knowledge, only different
opinions to be brought together?’ (Allmendinger 2009: 220–21). The trade-off between cater-
ing for local interests and meeting the need for expertise of society at large warrants further
discussion in CP.

Legitimizing Communicative Planning

Sustainable systems for collective action – such as CP – need legitimacy. Legitimation is about
the justification of power. In a democracy, public planning must be legitimate in order to
build and retain the authority required to implement plans. Solid anchoring of this authority
in democratic institutions is of paramount importance to planners who are trying to restrain
particularistic interests that rely on force, and fight for solutions serving the great majority. This
section concentrates on legitimizing features that are closely associated with the main attractions
of CP, that is, its epistemological, empowering, and relation-building potentials.
Public planning is legitimate only when planners can invoke sources of authority beyond
and above themselves. A decision is justified if made by the right legitimate authority, and if
the procedural rules of this authority were observed. What is worth doing together, according
to CP theorists, is what the parties come to agree on in a dialogical process. With the demand-
ing requirements to be fulfilled by a communicative process to make it dialogical in the sense
adopted by most CP theorists, it might not be unreasonable to define the consensual outcome of
dialogue as being in the public interest. After all, everyone concerned should take part, freely
and equally, in the cooperative search for truth, where nothing coerces anyone except the force
of a valid argument. In ideal conditions, then, the public interest can be discovered discursively
through participatory practice.
The remainder of this section draws attention to three ways in which CP can favourably
affect knowledge, power, and action, respectively (Sager 2013: 3–33). The argument is that CP
is a legitimate way of defining what is in the interest of the citizenry for the following reasons:

•• The dialogue aimed for engages many people representing all interests affected by the plan-
ning, thus increasing the likelihood that decisions are right and fair.
•• One interest group cannot for paternalistic reasons set aside the stated preferences of another
group.
•• Social capital networks established by CP generate relational goods, such as social approval,
confirmation of identity, and community attachment.

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Knowledge: The Advantage of Many Minds

The Condorcet jury theorem states that majorities are more likely than any single individual
to select the better of two alternatives when there is uncertainty about which of the two better
serves the purpose. More accurately, the theorem states that, if each individual is more likely
than not to make the better choice between some pair of alternatives, and each individual votes
independently and sincerely, then the probability of the majority being correct increases as
the number of individuals increases, toward a limiting value of 1 (List and Goodin 2001). The
Condorcet jury theorem has been generalized in several respects and offers a strong argument
for democratic practices such as CP. The exchange of arguments in inclusive debate free from
repression educates the interlocutors and makes it more likely that each of them identifies the
best alternative.

Power: Anti-Paternalism
In a paternalistic power relationship, the subordinate is regarded as incapable of recognizing and
defending his or her own interests, and the paternalist therefore defines and manages these inter-
ests on behalf of the less competent individual. Paternalism can be defined as the interference
of an individual or a collective actor with another person, against the other’s will, claiming that
the person interfered with will be better off or protected from harm (Dworkin 1983: 1). Much
paternalism in planning springs from the belief that identifying the public interest requires spe-
cial knowledge, and that those who have attained this knowledge – the planners – are thereby
entitled to make policy on behalf of those who have not. This belief is a challenge to CP in
particular, as the credence questions the ability of ordinary citizens to make rational choices
concerning public goods.
Intrinsic to all paternalistic power relations is the problem that subordinates’ attempts to
articulate their own interests conflict with the paternalist’s conviction, and will be repressed.
In denying the subordinates all independent means of expressing and defending their interests,
there is nothing to stop paternalism with a benevolent intent from degenerating into exercise
of power in the interest merely of the powerful. CPT takes a stance against paternalism and
fights it by advising that all affected parties come to the table and take part in deliberative
decision-making.

Action: Producing Relational Goods

Public goods are not only produced through market transactions, contracts, and physical con-
struction, but also through the building of interpersonal relations. Relational goods are public
goods that are simultaneously produced and consumed in relationships between people who are
not anonymous to each other. Examples of relational goods are social approval, friendship, con-
firmation of identity, emotional support (encouragement and comfort), solidarity, and a sense
of belonging. Relational goods can only be produced by people acting together. Such goods
emerging from communicative action are anti-rival, in that a person benefits both as her own
and others’ consumption increases.
CP produces relational goods in addition to physical goods. Dialogue is conducive to empa-
thy, which in turn promotes pro-social behaviour. A spiral of dialogical rewards is at work,
as relational goods, in turn, motivate more CP. The spiral goes like this: CP → interpersonal
encounters → social capital networks → relational goods → deeper and more extensive par-
ticipation. The encounters of CP generate networks of social relations in which social capital

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is embedded. Dialogue is the most efficient vehicle for creating the positive communicative
externalities that are inherent in relational goods (Rader Olsson 2009).
Planners’ transformation of knowledge into action is mediated by power. CP can improve prac-
tice in relation to each of these key words and enhance the legitimacy of governance. CP aims
for (1) right decisions through the mechanism of the Condorcet jury theorem, (2) reduced
misuse of power by encouraging anti-paternalism, and (3) a stronger motive for participatory
collective action by producing relational goods. None of these legitimizing features requires that
everyone agrees on the planning matter under discussion.

Debates and Critique

CPT sparked off some new planning debates and revived other discussions that were ongoing in
the social sciences both inside and outside planning. This section deals with four controversial
themes that are partially connected:

1 how to link procedural and substantive qualities;

2 how to conceptualize power and deal with it in planning processes;
3 how to handle social conflicts of interest: consensus seeking or agonism;
4 how to avoid urban public planning becoming biased toward satisfying capital interests, in
particular neo-liberalism.

Planning theory is criticized for focusing too narrowly on how to design a democratic process
and make it work well. This has come at the expense of theorizing about substance, scrutinizing
criteria for what is a good plan. The communicative turn, centring on the interaction between
actors in the planning process, intensified this critique (Fainstein and Fainstein 2013: 40–42).
Mees (2003) builds on the process-substance gap to blame CP theorists for bringing forward a
risky mode of planning. The participatory and communicative part of the planning process is
often manipulated or contracted to a minimum level, even if the planners’ engagement with the
public was originally advertised as a central characteristic of the process. The problem, according
to Mees, is that when this happens, there is nothing left in the ruins of the CP effort that can
defend broader social interests. In alternative modes of planning – even in the despised rational-
istic expert planning – one has professional recommendations about the substance of the plan to
lean on, if workable agreement from deliberation is missing. Mees fears that, in a manipulated
and curtailed communicative process, there will be nothing to counteract opportunistic political
proposals and profit-maximizing market solutions. CP is seen as risky, as it leaves no defence of
non-partisan interests if deliberation fails.
An equally salient problem is how to prevent CP being used intentionally – or especially
unintentionally – to justify policies that support the predominant economic-political ideology
of the time. This question is considered here, directly after the question of risk, as the two prob-
lems have the same solution. A standard Marxist critique of spatial planning is that it makes the
capitalist markets run smoothly and thus enhances the perpetual accumulation of capital (Scott
and Roweis 1977). Fainstein and Fainstein (2013) restate this critique, specifically targeting CP.
They contend that CPT flourishes due to neo-liberals’ wish to gain legitimacy through locally
agreed development projects, and their need for establishing social institutions that match and
advance urban land markets and the continuing flow of investment. A planning regime with
a minimum of predefined restrictions and guidelines, and ample possibilities to strike deals at
the community level, seems to fit with neo-liberalist preferences. This is because critics assume
that developers gain the upper hand in local negotiations. If this is so, communicative planners

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facilitate market processes and make development plans the products of individual deals between
private firms and the public sector (Fainstein and Fainstein 2013: 41).
The values of CPT and neo-liberalism differ greatly. Individualism, entrepreneurialism,
accountability, prosperity, merit reward, and freedom of choice are among the neo-liberal val-
ues. CPT values are, for example, empathy, empowerment, equality of moral worth, fairness,
honesty, inclusiveness, responsiveness, and self-government. The value differences are the foun-
dation of the strategy for addressing the charge that CPT facilitates the progress of neo-liberal
urban development. The strategy is to bring process qualities and outcome qualities closer
together. It must be made evident that what is required from the plan (the outcome) is grounded
in substantive principles that explicitly point back to the procedural values. Given the profound
differences between the value sets, it is unlikely that urban plans complying with a set of substan-
tive principles that mirror the process values of CPT, will also serve the purposes of neo-liberals.
The proposals below make no claim to be exhaustive, but taken together, the listed principles
are associated with all the procedural communicative values mentioned above.

•• The plan should accommodate diverse lifestyles and not hinder licit groups from living in
accordance with their self-chosen identity. For example, cultural minorities should find
places in the city that are fit for their rituals and ways of socializing (empathy).
•• The plan should respect what is culturally essential to affected groups, such as their heritage
and their conception of that which is sacred (equality of moral worth).
•• The plan should hold something for each affected group, if not in the main physical mani-
festation of its purpose, then in the form of compensation. Especially, the situation of
underprivileged groups should not be aggravated (fairness).
•• The plan should correspond to the information and the planner intentions conveyed to the
participating parties throughout the planning process. The plan should not give reason to
suspect previously hidden agendas (honesty).
•• The plan should make it easier, especially for disadvantaged groups, to take part in public
life, to work, and to access basic public and private services (empowerment, inclusiveness).
•• The plan, even when designed contrary to the wishes of a particular group, should include
elements signalling to this group that it has been listened to. At least some details of the
plan should be fashioned to accommodate the needs of protesting groups (responsiveness).
•• Widely accepted solutions negotiated in the communication process (especially consensus
proposals) should be incorporated in the final plan, possibly with modifications catering for
the interests of people who might not be part of a local consensus; for example, tax payers
in general and future generations (self-government).

The substantive principles above help to solve two problems. First, it seems unreasonable to
blame CP for lubricating neo-liberal urban development to a greater extent than other modes of
planning when holding on to these principles. They are attached to values differing greatly from
those of neo-liberalism. Second, they bridge the gap between process and product and make CP
less risky by providing guidelines for the content of the plan even when the communication and
participation process does not live up to expectations.
Over the years, the liveliest and most consequential debate concerning CP has been about
power. The question of how to conceptualize power led to deep disagreement on ‘how to deal
with it in planning’. Even this innocuous phrase may point to a reductionist view of power as
suppressive, that is, as use of force that has to be counteracted. It suggests a reading of power as
‘power over’ instead of emphasizing the productive aspect expressed as ‘power to’. The critics
associated Habermas and CP theorists with the reductionist view of power (Huxley 2000: 372).

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It was largely ignored that Habermas (1977) endorsed Hannah Arendt’s notion of ‘communica-
tive power’. This is an enabling collective capacity, which Booher and Innes (2002) linked to
CP under the label of network power.
The debate on power in CP was very much a Habermas versus Foucault discussion, reach-
ing its peak in the planning academy in the latter half of the 1990s. Foucault did not see power
as a ‘massive . . . condition of domination, a binary structure with “dominators” on the one
side and “dominated” on the other, but rather a multiform production of relations of domina-
tion’ (Foucault 1980: 142). Power always generates resistance, as Foucault sees it, and it must
therefore be analysed as something that circulates, rather than a phenomenon present only at
particular localities. Productive power involves the capacity to engage in conflict to protect one’s
own values and interests, while a conception of communicative action that presupposes con-
sensus comes close to being an instrument for discipline and rather unbearable group pressure,
according to Huxley (2000).
Foucault’s followers in the planning academy regard communicative planners’ attempts to
build consensus as a repressive normalizing practice in planning governance. There is, however,
scant empirical support for claiming that mapping the potential for a working agreement on the
next few steps in a planning process is likely to result in restrictive conformity. Besides, some
notions of consensus are less demanding than perfect agreement at the substantive level. They
require instead a common understanding or a shared symbolic space. Theories of social choice
and democratic deliberation analyse harmonization of preferences and judgements characterized
by overlapping consensus, single-peakedness, meta-consensus, and inter-subjective rationality
(Niemeyer and Dryzek 2007). These concepts are consistent with sound deliberative procedure,
but have been largely ignored both by CP theorists and their critics.
Theorists with a bent for Foucault combined the conceptual critique of power in CPT
with the equally widespread critique contending that Habermasians have no credible strategy
for counteracting repressive exertion of power, for example, by private developers acting to
maximize profit at the expense of broader community interests. The critique for serving neo-
liberalism gains credibility if communicative planners invite people affected by proposed urban
developments to join in consensus-building deliberation without having an effective strategy for
how to help them stand up to real estate interests and resourceful investors. This is the objec-
tion most often voiced against CPT (Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002). The problem is how to
hold back those trying to influence the planned solution by leaning on their power base instead
of persuading by arguments that sound reasonable to the wider public. For all its good inten-
tions of counteracting such behaviour by fighting communicative distortions through critical
questioning and by decreasing the political transaction cost of fair-playing actors and groups that
stand to lose from the project (Sager 2013: 34–65), critics are not convinced that such measures
are effective. One reason is that planners need strong institutional backing in order to follow up
with sanctions when threats, manipulations, and other communicative distortions are disclosed.
The establishment of such a solid platform for exercising a critical function is at odds with the
neo-liberal wish to push planners into an entrepreneurial role.
According to the critics, the consensual approach to planning cannot succeed as an eman-
cipatory and empowering project. This view is much inspired by Foucault’s (1980) thinking
about power and Mouffe’s (1999) theory of agonistic pluralism. Critics see consensus as shallow
due to language games and different community life forms causing participants hailing from dif-
ferent social groups to talk at cross-purposes. Agreement would be the product of power politics
or clever rhetoric rather than acknowledgement of common interests. Another main argument
of Mouffe’s (1999: 755) is that ‘(p)olitics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict
and diversity; it is always concerned with the creation of an “us” by the determination of a

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“them”’. She sees it as impossible in these circumstances to eradicate communicative distortions

and make planning inclusive. Meaning can emerge only by advancing one point of view at the
expense and exclusion of other viewpoints, rendering any discourse authoritarian – or so the
critics say. Most CP theorists seem unmoved by this argument, as they see the distortion-less
situation as an evaluative ideal, not as a realistic destination of politics and planning in practice.
Moreover, CPT does not mystify the other by treating her as always violated by being neces-
sarily misunderstood. Mouffe’s argument comes close to giving the peaceful outcome of any
real-life discussion an authoritarian stamp, not only the debates and deliberations of CP.
Mouffe (1999: 755) stresses the importance of

distinguishing between two types of political relations: one of antagonism between ene-
mies, and one of agonism between adversaries … An adversary is a legitimate enemy,
an enemy with whom we have in common a shared adhesion to the ethico-political
principles of democracy.

Equality, liberty, and respect for one another’s beliefs (reciprocity) are among these principles.
Deliberative democrats point out that Mouffe cannot explain the transformation from hostile,
destructive relations to agonism without a notion of consensus among ‘friendly enemies’ sub-
scribing to the ethico-political principles (Bond 2011). The need is surely for a meta-consensus
rather than full agreement on the substance of plans. The recourse to ‘conflictual consensus’ in
Mouffe’s theory of agonistic democracy nevertheless raises the question of how deep-seated the
contrast between agonistic planning and critical CP is, especially when it comes to practice.

Concluding Remarks
Neither conflict nor deliberation can be allowed to delay decisions about plans forever. Lengthy
planning processes add costs, delay benefits, and can be a democratic problem. Voting without
preceding attempts at alleviating conflict is not intrinsically more democratic than delibera-
tion exploring the potential for negotiated agreement. Minorities can end up being ill-treated
both with an agonistic and a communicative approach to planning. Empirical results do not
yet indicate which approach best caters for the interests of the weakest parties. It even remains
to be seen whether there is a significant difference between the outcomes of CP and agonistic
planning in practice.
Every social theory can be criticized from some relevant perspective. No form of govern-
ance or procedure for reaching a recommendation or a collective decision is without a weak
spot. This is certainly so also for CP. Academia has a predilection for reductionist speculation
purporting to disclose the ‘real’ function of a theory, usually miles apart from the intention of
its originators: Is the dialogical face-to-face kind of planning an attempt to spread the ‘ideology
of intimacy’ in the public realm? Increased emphasis on the communication of personal knowl-
edge might be conceived as a danger to public culture, because it contributes to the denial and
depreciation of impersonal life. Alternatively, is CPT an attempt at resurrecting the dignity of
public planners in the wake of public choice theorists’ attack? Economists in this field were a
heavy influence on neo-liberal thinking. They insisted that all actors – public as well as private –
should be treated as self-regarding utility maximizers, thus ending public planners’ charade of
being benign altruists. Or is CP just a Third Way political technology facilitating the inter-
weaving of social democracy and neo-liberalism? Consumer sovereignty, consultation, user
assessment, and client information fit well both with neo-liberalism and CP, and might make
neo-liberal policies appear more edible to social democrats. Despite such dismal and reductionist

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complaints that it ‘is nothing but this or that’, CP is still a conspicuous part of the planning
theory discourse. A simple Google search reveals that authors link CP firmly to topical themes,
such as e-democracy, use of social media, resilience, sustainability, multicultural cities, creativity,
partnership, and neo-liberalism.
The main ideas of CPT have for many years been crossing national borders (Tag-Eldeen
2015). The increased interest among Chinese planners is a noteworthy trend. Yingjie et al.
(2013) identify emerging elements of CP in China, and discussions of CP are appearing in
Chinese language in that country’s rapidly growing planning literature (Wang et al. 2012). This
indicates that the central idea of CP, that dialogue among contending parties in the process
of preparing for collective decision can benefit a broad range of interests, has relevance under
very different political regimes. The widespread acclaim for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize
for 2015 to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is a further indication. ‘The Quartet paved
the way for a peaceful dialogue between the citizens, the political parties and the authorities
and helped to find consensus-based solutions to a wide range of challenges across political and
religious divides’ (Norwegian Nobel Committee 2015). Embedded in this is an invitation to see
dialogue and the search for consensus on how to move forward, as much more than a potential
cooptation technique.

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 9
NEOLIBERAL PLANNING
Guy Baeten

One could provocatively wonder whether neoliberal planning actually exists, since neither plan-
ning practitioners nor planning theorists commonly mobilize the term neoliberalism to capture
the contemporary planning condition (Baeten, 2012a). At the same time, leading authors agree
that neoliberalism remains a ‘keyword for the understanding of regulatory reforms of our time’
(Brenner et al., 2010), which would certainly include (the dismantling of) planning regulations.
Neoliberal planning can be understood “as a restructuring of the relationship between private
capital owners and the state, which rationalises and promotes a growth-first approach to urban
development” (Sager, 2011). It is not a neatly defined set of policies, but rather a ‘restructuring
ethos’ based on a strong belief in the virtues of the market and the limited possibilities of state
intervention (Peet and Watts, 2004). For Springer (2010), neoliberalism simultaneously exists as
a hegemonic ideology promoting the superiority of market solutions, as a policy that effectively
increases the power of private actors in planning, and as governmentality: an ‘assemblage of
rationalities, strategies, technologies, and techniques’ that allows neoliberal principles to rule in
planning practices without major contestation. For Harvey (2005), neoliberalism is ultimately
‘the restoration of class power’ after the position of the financial and economic elites in the
western world was threatened by socialism and high levels of state interference in the 1970s – an
interpretation that gains credibility when observing the ‘birth’ of neoliberal planning in Chile
and Britain during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The neoliberalization of planning implies a partial retreat by planning as a public institution
from its conventional core, namely the improvement of the built and natural environment
through some sort of concerted effort. This ‘retreat’ should not be read as a mere withdrawal but
a complex reworking of relations between state and market in which the state does not simply
‘lose power’ but gains a more proactive role in the introduction of market principles in plan-
ning through local, national and international regulatory reforms (Eraydın 2012), alongside the
reinforcement of the repressive role of the state. Further, neoliberal planning, both as idea and
practice, does not constitute a clear break from a previous regime of planning, but will always be
a hybrid between existing planning regimes and subsequent gradual neoliberal transformations
(Baeten, 2012b). As Peck and Theodore (2010: 170) have pointed out, “mobile policies rarely
travel as complete ‘packages,’ they move in bits and pieces – as selective discourses, inchoate
ideas, and synthesized models – and they therefore ‘arrive’ not as replicas but as policies already-
in-transformation”. Brenner and Theodore (2005: 102) suggest that neoliberal practices are

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always “articulated through contextually specific strategies” and hence should be studied at the
local level to lay bare their spatio-temporal particularities. We will take the merger of neoliberal
ideas with spatial political-economic circumstances as a leading thread to reconstruct the spatio-
temporal development trajectory of neoliberal planning.

Pioneering
Neoliberal thought actually has multiple beginnings in various places – a phase that Peck (2008)
has called ‘proto-neoliberalism’. The cradle of neoliberalism as we know it is usually traced
back to the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, where Friedrich Hayek, Milton
Friedman and more than 30 other prominent liberal thinkers gathered to discuss how to renew
and re-energize the liberal tradition in a world ruled by Keynesianism and socialism, and recently
threatened by the rise of fascism and Nazism. The Society has had regular meetings ever since
and established an expansive global ‘neoliberal thought collective’ over the years in close coop-
eration with conservative think tanks (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009). However, it was not until
the military coup by General Pinochet in 1973 that these thinkers were offered an opportunity
to turn their liberal principles into a practical foundation for the organization of a national econ-
omy – and of planning. Economics students from the Catholic University of Chile had been
trained for decades at the University of Chicago, where Hayek and Friedman were teaching,
and at some other prominent US universities. These ‘Chicago Boys’ had prepared a blueprint
(called El Ladrillo or ‘The Stone’ because of its size) for the liberalization of markets in, then
socialist, Chile, and Pinochet, in search of liberal economic policies, appointed many of these
US-trained economists to key posts at government institutions and universities. One close ally of
Pinochet, former naval officer Roberto Kelly, was put in charge of the National Planning Office
which implemented the National Urban Development Policy in 1979. The plan was highly
programmatic and in line with the liberal economic principles outlined in El Ladrillo (Valdes,
1995). It did not regard land as a scarce resource in itself: land was scarce because of planning
restrictions that forced the city to grow ‘vertically’ through the construction of high-rise build-
ings. Without planning restrictions, the city would grow ‘naturally’ or ‘horizontally’ as the vast
majority of people would prefer a house with a garden. According to the plan, rescinding the
artificial limitation of land supply would also result in lower land prices. To let ‘the market’ do
its work, the plan lifted restrictions and the metropolitan area of Santiago expanded from 36,000
hectares to 100,000 hectares, almost tripling the potential land market instantly. This resulted
in unprecedented urban sprawl and, following speculation, increasing land and housing prices.
Meanwhile, illegal settlements or campamentos were systematically removed and some 150,000
families were forcibly displaced to peripheral settlements without acceptable facilities, resulting
in sharp segregation (Kusnetzoff, 1987). While the 1979 plan for Santiago can be regarded as the
first ever neoliberal plan, and it established the basic features of neoliberal planning that remain
constitutive today: an unbridled belief in the natural superiority of the market to allocate land in
the most efficient way; a principled distrust in state planning per se as it distorts the market; the
mobilization of the state to dismantle its own planning functions; the outsourcing of planning
functions to the private sector; and the reinforcement of the authoritarian state to fulfil repres-
sive functions (such as forced displacement) that private actors cannot achieve.
Shortly after the Chilean experiments with neoliberal planning, neoliberal planning’s most
iconic form, the Urban Development Project, and its most iconic form of organization, the
public-private partnership (PPP), would materialize in Britain in the early 1980s where the newly
appointed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had inherited a crisis-ridden economy accompa-
nied by serious social unrest, strikes, and riots in decaying inner cities. In the aftermath of the

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particularly violent 1981 riots in Toxteth, Liverpool, the then Minister for the Environment
Michael Heseltine was sent on a mission to Liverpool and reported back to the prime min-
ister under the apt title “It took a riot” (The National Archives, 2011). He proposed to
abolish the (left-leaning) county councils and to place urban regeneration under central govern-
ment control. He suggested cooperating with the private sector “to a far greater degree than
hitherto”, including the 30 banks, pension funds and insurance companies he had visited during
his mission. Urban Development Corporations (UDCs), first in Liverpool and London and later
throughout the country, put into praxis the call for economic regeneration to solve the inner-
city problems. A focus on economic regeneration to solve other problems was already present
in Labour’s 1977 White Paper ‘Policy for the Inner Cities’ (Edwards, 1984), and soon became
the cornerstone of British urban policies through the 1988 ‘Action for Cities’ policy document
(Deakin and Edwards, 1993). UDCs were given extensive powers, including land acquisition
and the abolition of local planning regulations and procedures. Just like in Santiago a few years
earlier, the British state would, in an authoritarian manner, partly dismantle its own planning
infrastructure and transfer it to private companies.
Barnekov and Rich (1977) demonstrate in an American context how PPPs in the field
of inner-city regeneration emerge in the spirit of so-called ‘urban privatism’, independent of
Chicago-style neoliberal theorizing. Their research was based on case studies of ‘development
committees’ bringing together political and corporate leaders in American cities in the 1960s
after local corporate leaders started to show a strong interest in urban redevelopment due to the
emergence of inner-city decline in the USA in those days. In an attempt to restore favourable
conditions for capital accumulation in the aftermath of the Fordist crisis, the Reagan adminis-
tration continued to implement the policies initiated by the Carter administration, including
serious cut-backs in federal budgets such as income-maintenance and rent support which hit
the urban poor disproportionately. Florida and Jonas (1991) describe Reagan’s implicit urban
policy as

a set of experiments in political-economic “destructuring” based on selective elimina-

tion or redirection of the income-maintenance and social programs of Great Society,
the re-routing of federal spending from Democratic constituencies in the older cities
to Republican strongholds, a transfer of administrative responsibility from the federal
government to states and localities, and an overall reduction of the social wage.

Strongly influenced by neo-conservative thinkers such as Charles Murray (1984), the Reagan
administration was convinced that the (urban) poor were disencouraged to support themselves
due to benefit dependency. Florida and Jonas (1991) insist that the increase of (mainly black
urban) poverty was no accidental by-product of these austerity measures but an explicit goal:
reducing benefits of various kinds would get the poor ‘back on their feet’. The penalization of
the poor and consistent social austerity policies have remained a key feature of neoliberalism
ever since.

Normalizing
Since the foundations for neoliberal planning were laid through these pioneering urban policy
reforms in Chile, the United States and Great Britain, neoliberal planning practices have been
spread across the globe, first in the developed world, and by now largely across the globe (see,
for example, Lees et al., 2015). Neoliberalization is a slow incremental process that mutates
over time and space. Peck and Tickell (2002) call the first phase of neoliberal policies ‘roll-back

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neoliberalism’ – the neoliberalism of Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s which sought to roll
back the state and its influence over labour markets, ownership of the means of production,
welfare provision, financial markets, land use planning, and so on. It was built upon a diagnosis
of the 1970s’ economic crisis as a crisis of overregulation and unnecessary interference of the
state in matters economic. Paradoxically, the retreat of the state required a strong state to push
through reforms that restored the power of the market. Jenkins (2006) calls Thatcher a ‘true
apostle of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’, or in her own words: “I believe in a strong
state, strong to break the power of socialism” (p. 106). The social fall-out of rolling back the
state – increasing poverty, rising segregation and income polarization between rich and poor,
growing social exclusion, long-term unemployment – gradually forced neoliberal governments
to rethink the neoliberal project. The 1990s saw the introduction of ‘roll-out neoliberalism’ –
the ‘Third Way’ of Blair and Clinton that reinvigorated the interference of the state, not in
economic matters, but in social and penal matters specifically dealing with the “aggressive
reregulation, disciplining, and containment of those marginalized or dispossessed by the neo-
liberalization of the 1980s” (p. 389). As in the pioneering Chilean experiments, the state under
neoliberalism once more showed its Janus face: on the one hand it seeks to withdraw from the
‘overregulation’ of capital and labour, and on the other hand it assumes a proactive role in the
management, suppression and punishment of the poor (see Wacquant, 2008 and 2009, for a
detailed analysis).
The rolling-out of neoliberalism into urban planning was famously abstracted by Harvey
(1989) as a transition from urban managerialism to urban entrepreneurialism. Managerial cities
were primarily focused on the local provision of services, facilities and benefits to the urban
population, while entrepreneurial cities in an age of heightened interurban competition more
than ever before had to concentrate on the attraction of investment and employment. Cities can
achieve this, first, through exploiting and promoting production advantages, which can be natu-
ral resources, location, but also tax incentives and the attraction of skilled labour forces – today
known as the creative classes. Second, the city can compete for increased consumption through
the promotion of tourism, the physical upgrading of the urban environment (for example,
spectacular architecture and the removal of unwanted sights and bodies), consumer attractions
such as sports stadia and shopping centres and the organization of mega-events. Third, cities can
concentrate on the attraction of command and control functions in finance and information
industries which necessitates heavy investments in prime transport and communication infra-
structures in order to prepare the city to become an informational city or a post-industrial city
with service exports as an economic basis. Finally, cities continue to compete for large govern-
ment contracts in the military industries and other research-intensive industries.
By now, cities across the globe have deployed these strategies to various degrees and in
various combinations, and it is remarkable how ‘normal’ and ubiquitous these policies appear
in contemporary urban settings. Indeed, Keil (2009) has suggested that the twin processes of
roll-back and roll-out neoliberalism have recently been complemented by a new form of neo-
liberalization: roll-with-it neoliberalization. It means “the normalization of neoliberal practices
and mindsets, the . . . acceptance of the ‘conduct of conduct’ of neoliberalism, a manner . . . ‘of
inciting the subjects to conduct themselves after the model of the enterprise and the general
norm of competition’” (p. 232). Roll-with-it is self-referential since it does not refer to some-
thing that has to be annihilated (like roll-back had to bring down the overregulating state). It
exists by itself, without strong counterdiscourses about alternatives: it is the way things are.
Planners today, after all, simply do not refer to their planning ideas and practices as ‘neolib-
eral’ or ‘third way’ (Jackson, 2009), rendering contemporary planning’s ideological foundations
largely invisible. It is important to keep in mind that these forms of neoliberalism exist side by

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side and do not simply supersede each other. Moreover, the relation between these different
forms of neoliberalisms takes on different forms in different places (for a refined account of
‘roll-back’ and ‘roll-out’ in an English planning context, for example, see Allmendinger and
Haughton, 2013).

Established Tools and Policies

Planners now have a set of neoliberal tools and policies at their disposal that goes largely uncon-
tested and is applied worldwide to different degrees and in different forms. Tore Sager (2011),
based on an extensive literature survey, has named 14 such typical neoliberal planning policies
and tools that have somehow gained a ‘natural’ status in the planners’ toolkit. We will highlight
some of the most prominent of these: city marketing, attraction of the creative class, Urban
Development Projects and PPPs.
City marketing, while in itself older than neoliberalism, especially started drawing the atten-
tion of researchers when Glasgow surprisingly won the title of European Cultural Capital in
1990 and managed to fundamentally change its image from a clapped-out industrial town to a
hip and cool cultural centre of North Britain through systematic marketing efforts. Paddison
(1993), Boyle and Hughes (1994) and Kearns and Philo (1993), among others, were astounded
by its impact but also by the blatant way in which the history of Glasgow was reimagined and
rewritten to fit the new economic exigencies. They already pointed at the obvious danger and
injustice of writing away certain neighbourhoods, places, buildings, historical events, memories
and individuals, while underscoring others, in an attempt to commodify a place ready for con-
sumption. In spite of these critiques, city branding has become a global neoliberal planning tool
which paradoxically has led to more uniformity, not diversity, among cities since the promotion
of signature architecture, mega-events and fine dining have become universal templates that
are no longer able to strategically position cities vis-à-vis other equally aggressive urban centres
(Lui, 2008).
Closely related to city marketing is neoliberal planning’s arguably most prominent contem-
porary paradigm: the idea that successful urban economies are dependent on the attraction of
the creative class. Florida’s (2002a) claims are bold and simple: it is the creative class that gener-
ates employment and those cities that manage to attract them will be prosperous: “Places have
replaced companies as the key organising units in our economy” (p. 30). Now it is ‘cool’ cities
with cutting-edge music and art scenes, tolerant gay neighbourhoods, and other ‘soft’ features
that will prosper best in an age of competition for creative people: “Cities without gays and
rock bands are losing the economic development race” (Florida, 2002b). Florida’s prescriptions
for planning flourishing urban economies have been proven wrong over and over again: it is
prosperous places with available employment that attract talented people, not the other way
around (Peck, 2005; Hansen and Niedomysl, 2009; Scott, 2006); most creative people live
ordinary lives that are not distinguishable from other people (Lang and Danielsen, 2005); cities
that do attract large numbers of creative people, such as Berlin or New Orleans, have not wit-
nessed positive economic outcomes (Malanga, 2004); and creative class policies paradoxically
exclude the low-income segments of the creative class (NION, 2010). Yet, cities across the
globe continue to take inspiration from Florida’s ideas. Their immeasurable appeal lies not in
their accuracy, sophistication or academic superiority but in their indirect message that cities do
have their fate in their own hands – a message that appeals not least to planners in rustbelt cities
in the absence of any credible alternative.
Urban Development Projects (UDPs), as pioneered in the London Docklands (Brownill, 1990),
by now belong to the most common planning templates to establish or radically renew city

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districts, which often comprise a mix of housing, offices, signature architecture, shopping malls,
transport facilities, exhibition halls and cultural centres. An extensive survey by Swyngedouw
et al. (2002) of 13 UDPs in Europe reveal some characteristics that most UDPs to a greater
or lesser extent share. First, large-scale UDPs are used as a “vehicle to establish exceptionality
measures in planning and policy procedures” (p. 547). A specific part of the city, often qualified
as deprived and in need of regeneration, is carved out and subjected to exceptional planning
procedures that (partly) sideline conventional municipal planning authorities. Existing demo-
cratic participation mechanisms are abolished or applied in a formulaic manner, hence creating a
democratic deficit. Second, these ‘stand-alone’ projects are either not at all, or poorly, integrated
in the planning of the rest of the city. As a consequence, both their integration in and socio-
economic impact on the rest of the city remain ambiguous. Third, UDPs often contribute to a
further polarization in the city through the establishment of new real estate dynamics that attract
high-income groups to specific places in the city while simultaneously stimulating (forced)
displacement of low-income groups to impoverished parts of the city. They have also been
criticized for pushing social problems such as poverty and unemployment further afield and for
failing to connect to local communities. This is partly because the financing of regeneration
projects often comes from land sales for property development which means that other regen-
eration objectives are put in the shadow of land sales and property investment (Raco, 2005).
This created a democratic deficit in planning since the control of major development projects
was effectively handed over to non-elected, appointed committees (Imrie and Thomas, 1999).
UDCs have proven successful as far as the sheer level of construction of offices, transport net-
works and housing is concerned (Imrie and Thomas, 1999). They also demonstrated in physical,
concrete terms the limitations and weaknesses of the existing planning system and possibilities of
these new ways of planning governance (Cochrane, 1999). In spite of their obvious shortcom-
ings, UDPs as planning vehicles have been used to implement large-scale projects that vary from
waterfront development (Desfor et al., 2012), to Olympic Games sites (Poynter and MacRury,
2009), to railway station neighbourhoods (Peters, 2009).
Like city marking, PPPs precede neoliberal forms of planning but have come to be regarded
as one of its prime manifestations. As mentioned, PPPs can be traced back to the 1960s when
corporate leaders started to cooperate with city officials to tackle American inner-city decline.
PPP remains a notoriously vague concept: they appear in several different forms and under dif-
ferent acronyms. However, what they have in common, according to Hildyard (2014: 6), is
that “they provide private companies with contract-based rights to flows of public money or
to monopoly income streams from services on which the public rely”. These ‘flows of public
money’ can take the form of (1) cash subsidies: the government agrees to provide a cash subsidy
for a project; (2) payment guarantees: the government agrees to fulfil the obligation of being the
purchaser; (3) or revenue guarantees: the government sets a minimum variable income for the
private partner and makes up for loss.
Proponents claim that PPPs are beneficial because private ownership brings competition and
thus lower prices; the private sector brings disciplines to public projects; PPPs bring improved
efficiency and lower costs, thus, better value for money: the public sector does not have the
resources and PPPs lower the costs by bringing in private finance; PPPs spur economies that
will trickle down to low-income groups and PPPs are therefore an instrument to enhance
welfare. The critics, on the other hand, claim that the improved efficiency, lower costs and
poverty reduction arguments are not valid since infrastructure does not automatically lead to
improvements for low-income groups and does not necessarily reduce costs (Stephenson, 1991).
Miraftab (2004) points at the false promise of PPPs as a win-win situation (the public sector
secures private investment while pursuing the betterment of local living and working conditions)

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since PPPs most often act as a ‘Trojan horse’ for further privatization of formerly public services
which in the end do not benefit deprived groups and neighbourhoods. Ultimately, PPPs “are
less about financing development than about developing finance” (Hildyard, 2014: 10).

Crisis and Its Aftermath

By the 2000s, it had become difficult not to be overawed by the seemingly global hegem-
ony of neoliberal thinking. Prominent scholars such as Perry Anderson (2000: 7) stated that
“Neoliberalism as a set of principles rules undivided across the globe”, and Edward Said (2000)
claimed that “Neoliberalism has swallowed up the world in its clutches”. The 2008 finan-
cial crisis would change that. In its immediate aftermath, Peck (2010) believed neoliberalism
had reached a zombie-like state, dead but alive, and Smith (2008) compared the condition of
neoliberalism with a dead rattlesnake that can still strike in its nerve-driven afterlife, while the
journal Development Dialogue (2009) was quick to introduce and discuss the term postneoliberal-
ism. However, as it rapidly became clear after massive state interventions to keep the financial
institutions (and hence neoliberalism) afloat, these early ‘hopeful’ positions had to be revised in
the light of the ‘strange non-death of neoliberalism’.

It is necessary to start from acceptance that political and economic elites will do eve-
rything that they can to maintain neoliberalism in general and the finance-driven
form of it in particular. They have benefited so much from the inequalities of wealth
and power that the system has produced, compared with the experience of strongly
redistributive taxation, strong trade unions and government regulation during the
social-democratic era. … They will cling to this model tenaciously.
(Crouch, 2011: 119)

Both Berry (2014) and Peck (2012) have recently demonstrated how the recovery of post-crisis
neoliberalism goes hand in hand with a new round of roll-back neoliberalism through sustained
‘austerity urbanism’.
While the literature on understanding the reasons behind and nature of the financial crisis
is vast, the impact of the financial crisis on planning remains underresearched. Holgersen (2014,
2015) has looked at the response of the city of Malmö, Sweden, to the breakdown of construction
activities in 2008–9. The municipal government reacted by offering municipality-owned land at
bargain prices to private construction companies since building activities had to continue at any
cost. More than anything, the 2008 crisis has demonstrated an absence of credible alternatives to
existing neoliberal planning and regeneration practices. But it also illustrates both the resilience of
neoliberal planning and the successful restoration of ‘business-as-usual’ planning; that is, pre-crisis
neoliberal planning. Meanwhile, urban regeneration, or more specifically green regeneration, is
put at the very core of the way out of crisis by some of the most prominent international institu-
tions. The World Bank (2013) claims that “Cities can become global engines of green growth”,
the United National Environmental Program (2011) believes that “Cities can and should play a
leading role in greening economies”, and the OECD (2013) is convinced that “Urban policies
are crucial for achieving national environmental and green growth goals”. If the urban green
economy or the production of eco-cities (Joss, 2009) will become the future cornerstone of eco-
nomic growth as these very powerful organizations seek to promote, then we are entering a new
variation of neoliberalism in which urban (green) planning will play a paramount role.
The biggest contemporary challenge for future planning, then, is certainly not its very
survival: there will be more (privatized) planning than ever before to meet the call for green

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planetary urbanization, alongside the continuing neoliberal desire for the annihilation of space
through spectacular transport infrastructures, for the overhaul of city centres to attract tourists,
investment and the creative class, and for the marketing of places in an imagined geo-Darwinian
globalized world. Paradoxically, then, in times when planning is met with considerable disre-
gard (see, for example, Gleeson and Low, 2000) and even acts as the very ‘scapegoat fantasy’ for
neoliberalism’s failures (Gunder, 2016), planning has a bright future under neoliberal conditions.
The expansion of neoliberalism, in blatant contrast with its own discourse, necessitates an ever
stronger state, not just to bail out financial institutions when needed but also to pro-actively and
relentlessly (re)shape neoliberalism’s spaces, places, cities, flows and bodies. Planning, whether
practised in architect consultant firms or in the town hall, plays a pivotal role in the formation
and continuation of neoliberalism.
In the process, it rewards the planner with the aphrodisiac of winning planning proposal
competitions, competing on a global scale, pushing through and implementing spectacular
development schemes, or bandying about rapidly increasing visitor numbers. A new neoliberal
planning subjectivity has downgraded customary concern that once steered planning theory
and practice: “What has happened to planning’s traditional concerns about fairness, equity, and
social justice which no longer seem to be burning planning questions when they should be more
than ever before perhaps”, wonders Gunder (2006).

Past the Political?

This cooptation of planning practice by neoliberal interests, alongside the realization that neo-
liberalism had successfully survived yet another financial crisis, has most recently triggered a
debate around the (post-)political nature of contemporary planning. Purcell (2009) argues that
communicative or collaborative planning is an excellent vehicle for neoliberals to maintain
hegemony while ensuring political stability:

What the neoliberal project requires are decision-making practices that are widely
accepted as “democratic”. But that do not (or cannot) fundamentally challenge exist-
ing relations of power. Communicative planning … is just such a decision-making
practice. … communicative action reinforces existing power relations rather than
transforms them.
(p. 141)

Bengs (2005) insists that communicative planning’s prime role is to lubricate the neoliberal
project, and Sager (2005) ponders whether communicative planners are the naive mandarins
of the neoliberal state. Grange (2016, 2014, 2012) laments the planning community’s fear of
conflict and antagonism. She wants to make planners aware again to what extent their practice
is driven by consensual neoliberal ideology and she stresses the need for ‘fearless speech’ if
planning wants to take up a more transformative role in society. For Gunder (2010), planning
has become the ideology of neoliberal space. Influenced by the notion of the post-political,
Allmendinger and Haughton (2012) have analysed recent reforms in planning law and discern a
reinvigorated effort in English planning to force consensus and displace dissent to other arenas
(such as the Court): “What we are witnessing appears to be a new moment in the post-political
management of dissent and the continuing selective displacement of the handling of controver-
sial issues to alternative modes and scales of planning” (p. 101). Baeten (2009) reconstructs the
history of planning and community on the South Bank in London from the resistance against
office development in the 1970s and 1980s, to the introduction of partnership planning under

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New Labour in the 1990s, to recent regime changes in which dissent and conflict have been
virtually eliminated through the successful cooptation of all stakeholders, whether originally
antagonistic or not.
While it is undoubtedly true that consensus and the suppression of dissent are all-pervading
features of contemporary planning, we should cast doubt over the perception that, lately, plan-
ning has somehow entered a new stage that some would label ‘post-political’. When going back
to the original writings of Rancière, Badiou, Žižek and Swyngedouw, among others, it becomes
clear that these authors understand the post-political condition as ‘normal’, as the way things
usually are. ‘Political’ moments, not the least for Rancière (1998), are rare events. The general
understanding of politics – a set of procedures that organizes collectivities and powers, distributes
places and roles for people, and legitimizes that order, should, according to Rancière (1998), not
be understood as ‘politics’ proper but rather as what he labels ‘the police’. It is primarily

an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing, ways of being, and ways
of saying and sees that those bodies are assigned … to a particular place and task; it is
an order of the visible and the sayable that sees that a particular activity is visible and
another is not, that this speech is understood as discourse and another as noise.
(p. 29)

The police order ultimately determines the distinction between those who have a name and
those who have not, those who can speak and will be listened to and those who will not be, in
short those who have a part and those who have not. Politics, then, is not about managing and
sustaining this order through negotiation and consensus (Dikeç, 2002). Politics is the opposite
of ‘the police’. Politics arise when the police order is broken, when bodies are shifted away
from the places assigned to them. An important implication of this is that politics do not auto-
matically occur simply because power relationships are at work. Power relationships might exist
between groups and result in conflict but not necessarily in politics as the police order might be
left untouched.
Seen through this lens, urban planning is not necessarily political simply because power
relationships between different stakeholders with conflicting interests exist and are dealt with at
the negotiation table. Planning politics, following Rancière’s thinking, would only occur when
someone leaves their negotiation role and puts forward a claim that threatens the existing police
order, existing plans, or existing negotiation procedures that underlie and reproduce existing
inequalities in urban neighbourhoods. The post-political condition of planning, in which com-
municative or collaborative or other fashionable planning regimes seek some form of consensus
around land allocation within the given parameters of an economic regime (for example capital-
ism), is then the ‘common’ state of planning. In line with the post-political literature, political
planning would rarely erupt, and the support of economic hierarchies would be a banal condi-
tion of planning, before, during and probably after the neoliberal age. As Allmendinger and
Haughton (2012: 94) remind us:

Planning tends to adapt very quickly to reflect the dominant ideology and priorities of
the age. This is not too surprising, perhaps: planning is, after all, the main mechanism
through which the state seeks to manage land use changes. As governments change
and societal concerns and priorities alter, so planning adapts and evolves through what
Reade (1987) termed a shifting consensus. Such shifts in the purpose of planning and
the accompanying tools have been criticised as being superficial, masking an enduring,
more market-supportive function.

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After all, according to Harvey (1978: 231), “The commitment of the ideology of harmony
within the capitalist social order remains the still point upon which the gyrations of planning
ideology turn”.

What next?
Planning theory has a notorious normative current, and planning theorists on the left are inclined
to overload planners with demands that they ought to stand up against existing power configu-
rations, or that they should fearlessly speak out against blatant spatial injustices. They can’t.
Neither do politicians, academics or activists as long as the left has no overriding alternative
vision of society at hand that could possibly compete with the eloquent and smooth neoliberal
mythologies (see Merrifield, 1993; Smith, 2008). This, of course, has pervasive impacts on
the nature and content of much of contemporary planning. But we have to remember that
neoliberal thinking, certainly in its early days when Keynesianism was hegemonic, was a mar-
ginalized intellectual stream. For decades, Hayek, Friedman and others were rowing upstream
until the Fordist/Keynesian regime came to a grinding halt in the late 1960s and early 1970s and
politicians started looking for economic policies beyond Keynesianism. Until then, neoliberal
thinkers were frustrated, and jealous of the success of the socialist body of thought. In ‘The
Intellectuals and Socialism’, Friedrich Hayek (1949: 384) laments the absence of an appealing
liberal programme that could withstand the attraction of socialism:

[W]e must be able to offer a new liberal program which appeals to the imagination.
We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a
deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia … a truly liberal radicalism which
does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is
not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as
politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal,
however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are
willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The
practical compromises they must leave to the politicians … The main lesson which the
true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be
Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence
on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly
remote … if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of
liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. The intellectual revival of liberalism is already
underway in many parts of the world. Will it be in time?

The contemporary frustration on the left is strikingly similar: one only has to replace ‘liberal’
with ‘socialist’ and vice versa in the quote above. Planning will not pursue fairness, equity and
justice if planning cannot draw ideas from a broader alternative utopia that has sufficient legiti-
macy like neoliberal ideas have just now. In the absence of such a utopia, we cannot impose
normative world-changing fantasies on the planning community.
If planners are forced to ‘mindlessly’ implement profit-maximizing land-use decisions while
unable to tackle their potential detrimental environmental and social fall-out, then any form of
‘sustainable’ planning becomes impossible under neoliberal conditions.
The challenge lies in how to continue to pursue the integration of economic, environmental
and social issues in land-use decisions when economic concerns are prioritized while social and
environmental concerns are coopted to fit into the profit-maximizing agenda. Growth, then,

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becomes a goal in itself that overrules other concerns, something that stands in contrast with the
conventional balance-seeking spirit that typically pervades planning (Baeten, 2012b).

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 10
NEO-PRAGMATIST
PLANNING THEORY
Charles Hoch

Introduction
Pragmatism has a popular cultural meaning that often generates misleading interpretations. The
pragmatist lacks principles and integrity, believing that the ends justify the means. The prag-
matist shaves corners and clips wings to keep moral problems within reach and so shirks moral
accomplishment. These distortions honor the pragmatist focus on practical consequences and
the provisional quality of human purpose. However, they ignore the pragmatist commitment
to collaborative inquiry that uses inclusive and intelligent problem solving to advance social
learning. The common sense appeal of the pragmatist approach can open the door to cynical
manipulation and caricature. But the pragmatist approach also offers an especially attractive
theoretical framework for urban planning because it focuses explicitly on human judgment as
purposeful, anticipatory and future oriented.
This chapter provides an overview of the re-emergence of pragmatist ideas among planning
theorists from the 1980s through 2015. After a brief introduction, the first part of the chapter
covers five contributions that neo-pragmatist ideas brought to planning theory debates among
scholars primarily in North America: power, fact–value dichotomy, problem solving, incre-
mentalism and structure agency. The second part explores some of the cross-fertilization of
pragmatist ideas with European postmodern and poststructural social theory.

PART I

Pragmatism and Planning Theory

Patsy Healey wrote an essay (2009) that offers a cogent account of North American neo-
pragmatist planning theory. She argues that pragmatist ideas re-emerged in response to the
social upheaval and social critiques that emerged in the wake of the late 1960s’ social protest
movements in the United States and Europe. The urban riots in US cities, the protracted war in
Vietnam, and increased sensitivity to environmental pollution challenged not only current pol-
icy, but confidence and belief in the systems of liberal governance and the rationales proposed
in their defense. The revival of more encompassing structural critiques using Marxist-inspired

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political economy and ecologically inspired environmentalism gained traction among planning
intellectuals offering systematic replacements for discredited welfare state liberalism.
Healey uses an article by Rittel and Weber (1973) to frame the crisis. The essay warned
planning scholars that the urban problems they hoped would be solved through rational analysis
remained wickedly untamed. Rittel and Weber argued that the social problems planners seek
to solve cannot be tamed by rational order, but stubbornly resist such formulation. They detail
how the underlying presuppositions of the engineering and policy sciences that planning theory
used to justify professional judgment (e.g., deterministic models) would not work for complex
urban problems. Healey describes how the work by John Friedmann (1973) and Donald Schön
(1983) adopted pragmatist ideas to reconceive these complex dilemmas as problems susceptible
to social learning. Friedmann developed his ideas focusing on forms of democratic planning,
while Schön and Martin Rein (1994) focused on recasting how professionals can use democratic
intelligence to enhance learning among their clientele.
Pragmatism emerged as a philosophical response to the success of scientific knowledge as a
persuasive and powerful mode of inquiry. The successful application of insights from the natural
sciences fueled technical innovation and invention accelerating the Industrial Revolution and
urbanization. The emergence of modernity not only expanded the rational means for mastering
navigation, railways, manufacture, mining, agriculture and the uncertainty of nature across the
globe; but intensified the spatial interdependence and interaction among these human systems,
generating new forms of uncertainty among emerging nations and colonies; as well as within
and among rapidly expanding urban regions. Instead of trying to redeem the salience of philoso-
phy as the intellectual foundation for scientific reason, the pragmatists embraced the practice of
scientific inquiry as the focus for philosophical reflection.
In the US, the pragmatists argued for a more hopeful conception of modernity in the shadow
of Civil War trauma, the closing of the frontier and massive waves of immigrants whose labor
produced an unprecedented bounty of goods. The exploitation of these workers and the whole-
sale destruction of natural resources were concentrated in urban and rural areas and became the
object of reform for settlement house reformers such as Jane Adams, landscape architects such
as Fredrick Law Olmstead, housing advocates including Benjamin Marsh, and many other mid-
dle- and working-class activists (Hays 1957, 1959; Wiebe 1967). The concept of a progressive
movement that historians later coined to describe the many reform efforts owes some of its
intellectual legitimacy to the early pragmatist ideas linking social action and knowledge with
democratic participation (Levine 2000). These disparate and ideologically diverse reformers
shared a commitment to the practical power of modern scientific knowledge as a remedy for
urban problems. Pragmatic ideas proved popular as justification for the application of science
to practical affairs. Urban planning emerged as a focus for professional collaboration that tapped
this knowledge even as splits emerged between those who insisted on a division between profes-
sional expertise and political involvement (Fairfield 2010; Peterson 2003) and those who argued
for integration. For instance, Mary Parker Follett (1998 [1918]) studied Dewey and envisioned
the political work of governing and administration as an integration of purpose and intelligence.
The practice of democracy, on her view, spreads responsibility as it integrates through delibera-
tion what to do and how to do it.
Pragmatist planning theory follows the same tack. Instead of casting theory as a conceptual
foundation for planning practice, pragmatists imagine theory as a different kind of deliberative
social practice. In the spatial planning world pragmatists avoid prescriptions tied to methodo-
logical rigor and certainty; making plans that fulfill rational expectations. The pragmatist scholars
focus instead on the relevance of social knowledge for the situation at hand attending to the

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meaning and impact of future consequences. They study what people making plans and plan-
ning institutions do to cope with messy, complex social and political problems that accompany
modern urban development.

Power and Planning: Forester

John Forester has emerged as one of the most popular proponents of a critical pragmatist
approach to planning theory. Forester studied at Berkeley in the 1970s influenced by the
insights of the post positivist language philosophy of Austin (1965) and the later Wittgenstein
channeled through the approach to political theory adopted by Hannah Pitkin (1972) and prag-
matist philosopher Richard Bernstein (1978). He was also influenced by the pragmatist systems
thinking developed by C. West Churchman (1979) and the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas
(1970, 1979).
Forester understood that the promise of professional expertise delivered through well-
intentioned bureaucratic reform did not offer an adequate response to systems critique and the
structural political economy accounts of power tied to global capitalism. Adopting a pragma-
tist approach enabled him to focus on power in a more integrated fashion. The conditions of
modern life that reproduce systemic interdependence not only exploit and dominate, but also
generate opportunities for resistance and innovation. Forester uses the insights of language phi-
losophy, critical theory and pragmatism to identify how differences in cognitive capacity, gaps
in organizational function, legitimation challenges, shifting emotional attachments and beliefs
shape choice and action. He elaborates a robust conception of planning practice that urges
practitioners to recognize the inherently political feature of their work, and describes how to
grasp this as an asset rather than impediment (1989, 1999, 2009). Forester combines interview
and observation of planners and managers to interpret how practitioners engaged in various
institutional bureaucratic settings conduct deliberations. How did these people embrace the
contingent features of the situation engaging others with practical possibilities for change?
Forester also expands the critique of social injustice inspired by the political economists
beyond the focus on class relations. Forester shows how planning relies upon deliberations
about practical judgment that include how exploitation, subordination and domination can
undermine the promise of meaningful discourse. The pragmatist approach integrates structural,
systemic and personal power asymmetries within specific situations framing deliberations about
practical possibilities for each context. The horizon for action does not flow from abstract ideals
about sincerity or legitimacy, but attention to the complex competing claims and expectations
for justice, efficiency and solidarity expressed in politically charged deliberations about ambigu-
ous and uncertain claims (Forester 2009). Forester adopts a progressive participatory liberalism.
Critical of instrumental conceptions of pluralist democracy he shows how the work of public
professionals requires learning how to collaborate and conduct democratic inquiry that invites
and addresses social complexity, inequality and diversity setting and solving problems for places.

Resolving Fact and Value: Harper and Stein

The work by Thomas Harper and Stan Stein has offered some of the most explicit links between
the pragmatist ideas of philosophers and their relevance and use for planning theory. They
explicitly reviewed several philosophers and political theorists in a 1994 paper that summarized
the neo-pragmatic view: Quine, Davidson, Wittgenstein, Rawls, Putnam, Rorty, Habermas
and Walzer. The quick overview helped planning analysts understand that philosophy in the
United States adopted a strongly analytical focus in the 20th century. Philosophers focused

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on improving the stature and relevance of logical analysis and rationality as a framework and
foundation for scientific and moral inquiry. The new pragmatist philosophers, especially Rorty,
critiqued this quest for rational correspondence, reviving and expanding the reach of the prag-
matist ideas from Dewey, James and Peirce.1 Harper and Stein (1994) identified the following
list of claims attributed to the neo-pragmatist philosophical approach:

1 Non-foundational: knowing tied to social learning and not some other authority
2 Anti-essentialist: we learn concepts through use and not correspondence with a core definition
3 Anti-dualistic: facts and values differ not by category, but by use relevant to context and
consequence
4 Non-reductive: the dynamic systems we make and inhabit cannot be broken into parts
5 Non-relativistic: truth varies with consequences in context, but not randomly or without
purpose
6 Fallibilistic: truth claims subject to revision based on future inquiry and changing conditions
7 De-emphasizes theory: knowing the meaning of an idea comes from using it and not just
possessing it
8 Incremental justification: trial and error remain central to how we learn to adapt – prudential
9 Integrates different frames of belief: focusing on outcomes enables people holding different
beliefs to find common ground
10 Democratically pluralistic: including deliberation from people holding diverse beliefs and
goals improves the quality of democratic judgments
11 Community vs. individual based: integrity is not something I possess, but something we
each acquire through practice with others
12 Rejects incommensurable differences between communities: we make and reproduce our
social lives as clever social animals. The differences we invent and use are all subject to
change. Recognizing and improving (or destroying) imaginative forms of solidarity always
possible.

Harper and Stein sidestep the fact–value divide by taking Darwin’s conception of evolution to
heart. Humans emerged not as rational animals but through species-specific random variation
and natural selection. Each of us acquires a version of rationality depending on our unique
developmental paths with biological contours shaped by genetic inheritance and environmental
setting. Cartesian doubt – the sort of philosophical thinking that imagines an intellectual escape
from the messy details of causal interdependence and social history fails us because each of us
lives and conceives as embodied persons living a life journey. The pragmatists turned away from
this Cartesian doubt with its focus on an epistemic foundation for truth within each individual
and focused instead on the conduct of social inquiry using the norms of scientific study to com-
prehend how the world works and what this means for democratic governance of public affairs
and the flourishing of individuals.
Harper and Stein’s list can be sorted into those pragmatist claims that critique the pursuit of
rational certainty (items 1 through 7) and the pursuit of the good (items 8 through 12). These
critiques apply not only to philosophical arguments, but the conventional understanding many
planners use to describe and justify what they do. Planners should consider getting pragmatic
as they seek justification for their arguments and ideas (being right), as well as when they try
to identify, compare and reconcile competing purposes (doing good). Practitioners have too
often learned to treat the first sort of problem as a technical problem of analysis or expertise, and
the second sort of problem as an ethical problem for professional judgment (Hoch 1984). The
pragmatist approach avoids the separation. Right and good merge as we conduct joint inquiry

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about problems we experience. We imagine solutions and evaluate the future effects in terms of
specific social purposes relevant for the situation we face. Instrumental and interpretive mean-
ings, together, shape practical judgment. But how does such inquiry work?

Problem Solving: Blanco

The wicked problems that planning addresses cannot be grasped adequately using conventional
rational expectations. We cannot develop knowledge to explain, predict and control complex
problems. However, a pragmatist planning can and should describe and interpret these problems
imagining alternatives that resolve them. How does this work? Hilda Blanco (1994) uses the
pragmatist concept of abduction to explain the composition of alternatives in plans. She cri-
tiques efforts to adopt deductive and inductive analysis from scientific inquiry. Abduction does
not offer prediction or explanation, but plausible possibility – educated hunches about what to
expect in some future imagined context. These imagined options offer cognitive grip as people
compare the meaning of a simulated change in light of current circumstances.
Blanco retains and revises the rational model using concepts from Peirce and Dewey to show
how each elaborated a form of critical social inquiry that gave abduction a prominent role in
how people conceive and respond to problems. Blanco adopts their insights to show how a
pragmatic account of plan making starts with the encounter of a problem in a specific situation
and not with goals. As people compose alternative accounts of an imagined future each intro-
duces select variations in the order of events. These plausible options might shift the purposes in
play, recasting the meaning of potential constraints and solutions. The deliberation with others
about the form and meaning of the future effects each option might entail describes the plan.
Plans do not implement goals, but articulate goals in relation to specific contextual conditions
offering practical alternatives for action and choice. Blanco celebrates Peirce’s conception of
abductive thought, but her conception of planning channels what philosopher Steven Fesmire
(2003) considers is Dewey’s idea of imaginative planning. Dewey integrated the consideration
of consequences, obligations and virtue as aspects of imaginative plan making. He envisions each
contributing to the qualities of practical action needed to address a specific situation. The dra-
matic rehearsal of detailed practical action invites the sensitive application of virtue, the detached
assessment of net benefits and the claims of duty. These are composed into a plausible narrative
comparison or elaborated as contrasting tests detailing assessments of future effects framed within
an imagined order. The plans we imagine may compose stories about future action that narrate
how prudent judgments reconcile competing claims about expected consequences and respect
for prior obligations. Problem setting and solving for the pragmatist contribute to the quality
of rational judgments used to anticipate and prepare for the future in specific ways. It combines
representation and intention (Hoch 2007).

Trading in Synoptic Rationality for Progressive Incrementalism

Pragmatism can help people cope better with complex problems, not because it resolves long-
standing philosophical disputes, but by shifting attention away from philosophy as the final
arbiter of theoretical respectability. The planning intelligentia to the extent they want to establish
a theoretical enterprise independent of and somehow more fundamental than the knowledge
of practice, should consider pragmatism as a competing framework. The pragmatic orientation
does not settle the issues central to the quest for basic or grand theory, but makes the pursuit
appear tangential and inconsequential to the business of coping with pressing problems of the
day. Harper and Stein argue that Charles Lindblom’s (1959) critique of synoptic rationality and

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emphasis on incrementalism were pragmatic in just this fashion and so a good example of a
pragmatist approach to problem solving.
Harper and Stein interpret incrementalism as a contextually sensitive experientially atten-
tive form of deliberation. Even cast narrowly as Lindblom’s partisan adjustment among parties
holding competing interests, the meaning of agreements still include consequences widely con-
ceived. The policy options, action alternatives or potential projects need not be held hostage to
a greedy synoptic rationality, but can be evaluated through purposeful systematic comparison.
Taking into account the contextual interests, concerns and expectations among the parties and
their constituents encounters practical limits that become part of any spatial plan for a place and
any meaningful agreement among those involved in making the plan. Deliberate incremental
adjustment enables the plan makers to recast options in light of prior attachments. This happens
as parties listen to others and weigh the differences among future outcomes for a plan they could
adopt. Increment in this sense does not mean ‘small’ and so unimportant, but cognitively acces-
sible, experientially relevant and morally acceptable to someone unfamiliar with how the option
works and what it entails (Fung 2007).

Relational Pragmatism
Patsy Healey recognized the efficacy of American pragmatism as she struggled to reconcile the
practical consequentialism with more ambitious structural demands for social justice and egali-
tarian democratic inclusion. Her influential book (1997) on collaborative planning made the
case for inclusive participation among those likely to be touched by the consequences of a plan.
Healey has consistently adopted a relational approach linking a pragmatically inspired concep-
tion of collaboration with a critical sensitivity to encompassing social and territorial relationships.
She has developed a more refined conception of democratic planning that responds to the con-
ditions of institutional and territorial complexity and plurality across the globe (2007). Healey
elaborates a functional vocabulary that she hopes will encompass and interpret complex changes
in urban regions – especially those changes susceptible to purposeful and useful modification
and those that resist. She uses the concept of strategy to capture the more informal, flexible
and dynamic assessment of relations susceptible to change within politically sensitive frames of
purposeful action. Healey envisions planning as inclusive strategic thought that informs policy.
Strategy refers to savvy decision making by clusters of stakeholders negotiating provisional col-
lective agreements about problems of vulnerable interdependence, common special interests or
other contextual situations demanding collective action. The geographic and functional classifi-
cation of so many relationships challenges the reader to interpret individual planning judgments
in light of their prospects for generating important changes in spatial policy and ensuing pro-
jects. Healey keeps the pragmatist sensibility, but in the end she focuses on forms of political
governance that, in her view, extend beyond planning. The relationships she studies include
institutional and geographic relationships that promise in her account to offer a more progres-
sive because inclusive alternative for spatial development than dominant corporate alternatives.

PART II

Postmodern Critique
Inspired by postmodern and poststructural theory from philosophy and the social sciences in
Europe, some planning theorists challenge the foundational quest for an epistemic trump and the

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confident pursuit of scientific progress as unambiguously transparent and benign. They criticize
pragmatist conceptions of planning for ignoring how power relationships undermine the delibera-
tions they champion and adopting a contextual relativism that fails to grasp the impact of structural
causes and so overlooks innovations that might effectively challenge and replace the source of
systemic problems (Allmendinger & Tewdwr-Jones 2002; Balducci et al. 2011; Hillier 2011).
The critique of pragmatism for failing to deal with power relationships flows mainly from a
difference in vocabulary. The critics insist that power refers to forms of economic, political or
social domination, exclusion, exploitation and subjection that inescapably impose themselves.
Pragmatists on this account naively describe power in terms of economic, political or social
legitimacy, inclusion, solidarity and consensus (Mouffe 1996).
The pragmatists imagine that each person is capable of the full range of vice and virtue, good
and evil and that what we learn to believe and how we are taught (socialization or encultura-
tion) to act locates us along the continua of multiple power dimensions. Pragmatists recognize
that we acquire our moral capacity and practice within the context of specific cultural and
institutional settings that include every sort of power relationship. Ethics always includes social
and political motivations, circumstances and effects. The moral meaning of our action depends
on the contextual efforts we each face acquiring standing as an individual whose actions speak
louder than words. These contexts include institutional, cultural and natural conditions that
shape the limits and meaning of our effort. So neo-pragmatists do not ignore power, they just
recognize that its inevitable presence does not trump or preclude creative practical moral effort
to resist and recast the nasty and destructive plans with less repressive and more useful ones. This
makes knowledge for plan making a central part of the effort to achieve practical grounds for
the moral recovery of individual freedom in places where this possibility seems remote (Dewey
1927; Bernstein 2010; Forester 2009). The modernism of experimental pragmatism, with its
emphasis on democratic inquiry, does not align with the efficiency-focused expertise of hard-
boiled instrumentalism that has little to say in response to postmodern critique. But reviving
and using pragmatist ideas that foster involvement and inclusion offers a useful and coherent
response. Snider (2000) sums this up nicely:

A century ago, pragmatism recast the terms of the debate between idealists and empir-
icists; today, it provides a bridge between modernism’s faith in human reason and
progress (Gergen, 1992, p. 211) and the seemingly relativistic, or even nihilistic, aspects
of postmodernism (Auxier, 1995).

The pragmatic theorist does not possess any less passion for freedom than the poststructural
theorist. Pragmatic planning theorists criticize the naturalization of uncertainty as an inevitable
force removing the possibility for individual freedom (Hoch 1984; Harper & Stein 2006; Verma
1998). The difference is that pragmatic theory recognizes that practical consequences matter for
the beliefs we hold and that the current conventions and techniques rely upon and reproduce
a complex moral mixture of good and bad, stupid and clever, useless and useful. This makes
purposeful planned compromise an important resource for improving the mixtures, even as it
entails conflicts (Hoch 2007). The pragmatic theorists focus here on kinds of democracy because
they do not believe people possess the knowledge and authority to prescribe a more complete
moral order, nor do they want to sacrifice the promise of individual effort to obtain it. That is
why pragmatists end up embracing versions of liberal democracy both as a resource for planning
knowledge and a target for improvement (Forester 1989; Harper & Stein 2006; Verma 2010).
This does not mean that pragmatic theorists squeamishly avoid or snuff out conflict
(Hoch 1992, 1994; Forester 1989, 1999, 2010). Pragmatists focus on what people do to subject

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a subordinate, punish a peer, cheat a client, subvert a rule, repress a wish, fix a bet, tempt the
weak, humiliate the vulnerable and so on; asking what difference this makes for the parties
touched by the situation at hand. The complexity of human personality and social involvement
precludes taking a theoretical position independent of the interactive flux and flow of judgment
and action. Planning provides a tool that we can use to compose and compare choices for what
we can and should do to anticipate and cope with the problems encountered as we make our
way in the interactive flux. Planning cannot protect us from temptation to evil or the willful
embrace of destructive personal and social acts.
The pragmatists turn to action and research rather than abstract theory to provide practical
insight and evidence about the consequences for purposeful plans (Forester 1983, 1989; Hoch
1987, 1988, 1992, 1994; Innes & Booher 2010). The differences in method and meaning that
ensue in these assessments remain open to debate and refinement. This liberal conception of
mutual learning does allow for revision by those who adapt it, even large dramatic revisions.
Insisting on adversarial conflict or agonism alone will not offer crucial protection for the liberal
polity especially facing complex problems. It can fail to offer practical hope as antagonists seal off
from one another. Neo-pragmatists do need to recognize and conceive differences more clearly
and fairly, and this requires greater tolerance and acceptance of social conflict. They also need
to recognize and conceive forms of solidarity and collective tools that we can use to cope with
complexity and plans can do this. The wish for consensus might be too simplistic and exclusive,
but expectation for a shared threshold of civility and social order seems necessary for plan making
that would remedy unnecessary and destructive forms of uncertainty. People can and do learn
how to make plans that better assimilate and balance antagonistic difference and shared civility.
This requires less attention to philosophical arguments about ultimate truth and more on how
cognitive, psychological, economic, political, spatial, . . . conceptions of the relationships gener-
ating practical problems combine causal attribution and purposeful action. The ideas about how
our world works and what we should do to change it cohere as people make plans for the future.

Pragmatism Unbound
Roberto Unger (2007) offers an ambitious revision of pragmatist ideas that recognizes the contin-
gent and provisional qualities of human social experience. We should not hand off our capacity
for critical awakening and individual development to the forces of nature or social structure. He
bridles at liberal compromise that treats the legacy of social convention as something only suscep-
tible to incremental adjustments. Unger reconstructs the pragmatist ideas of contingency, agency,
experimentalism and focus on the future rejecting a too restrictive naturalism and scientism.
Unger goes on to argue that efforts to realize the future should not rely upon blueprints
fueled by the contours of structural critique, but the active engagement of ordinary people in
practical efforts to expand and improve the cooperative democratic features of economic, social
and political life. The meaningful emancipation of individuals requires a vibrant political plural-
ism among ‘provisional conjectures’ that anticipate and articulate practical steps forward. But
Unger does not offer much practical advice for how we might make plans to turn his prophetic
pragmatism into useful reforms.

Cosmopolitan Pragmatism
Meg Holden and Andy Scerri (2014) explore how ideas from French critical pragmatists con-
tribute to understanding the kind of inclusive critical experimentation that Bridges explores in
his work. Holden shows how the complex and messy social interactions that accompany the

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active creation and response to plans for a place in liberal systems include forms of justification
that exceed the boundaries of any one mode of deliberation. Compromise and not consensus
becomes the crucial threshold for political agreement and collective action. The French schol-
ars Boltanski and Thévenot (2006 [1991]) identify multiple social orders to explain political
compromises formed in complex contested social situations that accompany urban planning
conflicts. For instance, in their analysis the economic and civic orders parallel and overlap one
another as competing justifications for the objects and actions centered in a specific urban dis-
pute. The justification offered for each domain appeals to a general good that exceeds the reach
of that specific order. For instance, arguments for profitability and sustainability each appeal,
respectively, to a more inclusive good that draws upon institutional practices and conditions
that frame the legitimacy of such appeals. Finding common ground justifying these domains
generates a new practical horizon for convergence and joint action if not consensus. Holden and
Scerri contend that these sociological insights extend the practical scope and efficacy of plan-
ning claims about problem situations beyond concerns about the quality of deliberation among
stakeholders to include the institutional, technical and material relationships that frame practical
changes in social habits. Boltanski and Thévenot appear neo-pragmatic because they provide a
theory that integrates the provisional influence of objects and events in the problematic situa-
tions where discursive orders compete for attention and support.
In their effort to avoid the seemingly idealist and relativist features of the collaborative prag-
matist approach, Holden and Scerri distance themselves from the hopeful liberalism that Dewey
set in motion and that still inspires scholarship by Forester (1989, 1999), Innes & Booher (2010),
Harper & Stein (1996) and Hoch (2010). Botanski and Thévenot, like Latour (1988), offer a
systematic scheme to capture the complexity of discursive practice that encompasses space,
objects and tools as well as language. However, they remain tied to the philosophical distinc-
tion between the epistemic and ontological; knowledge and reality. They hope to escape the
philosophical critique that focusing on practical situations as the context for understanding social
conflict and action will yield only partial truth claims. Their sophisticated analytical scheme
recognizes the pragmatic relevance of compromise as the proper medium for deliberative demo-
cratic practice among multiple actors. But the analytic dualism precludes making a normative
commitment to a good compromise. Hence they focus on discursive justification rather than
persuasion classifying the resolution of competing orders of value (market, industry, sustainabil-
ity, civic solidarity, . . .) mediating between knowing and being. The collaborative pragmatists
frame discourse as persuasive deliberation that promises to yield compromise plans offering bet-
ter consequences than no plan. The interpretation of the outcomes includes assessing the kinds
of justification people made discussing the plan, but also the impacts on changes in belief and
the problematic conditions contributing to the problem.
Gary Bridge (2005) provides an expansive conception of pragmatist planning that, like
Unger, envisions a more radical pluralism envisioning options for the future of places always
under construction. He assimilates the postmodern focus on difference to a less skeptical and
more engaged sensitivity to not only deliberations, but more expansive practical experiences.
Bridges reinterprets the Chicago School of Sociology, arguing that the conception of com-
munity and communication includes discourse, but also the unconscious emotional and social
habits that shape the contours for meaningful individual action. He proposes a pragmatist
rationality that embraces the recognition and pursuit of individual identity and difference across
multiple communities – what Dewey called publics. He frames this transactional rationality
as a robust form of integration binding instrumental, emotive and interpretive dimensions of
complex relationships within provisional judgments about ends and means. Bridges explores
how these work in different urban places and settings as situations susceptible to embodied

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social actions along complex continua that defy hierarchical order. The seemingly mundane
dimensions of social interaction often overlooked in dualistic and deterministic conceptions of
order provide multiple instances of resistance, innovation and compliance. The prospects for
change appear more practically hopeful, studying the many different ways that people respond
to shifting situations.
Barnett and Bridge (2013) take on the claim that poststructural agonistic conceptions of
democracy trump liberal conceptions of consensus-based democracy. They craft a neo-pragmatist
alternative. On their view poststructural accounts focus on theoretical differences that often exag-
gerate conflict. As a result they ignore the demands of coordination, institutional design and public
good that accompany any effort to put radical forms of democracy to practical use for planning.
Barnett and Bridge use the work by pragmatist political theorists (Bohman 2007; Fung 2007;
Dryzek 2005) that argue for a more robust democratic inclusion among multiple publics that
recognizes and integrates differences through pragmatic deliberation.

Conclusion
Pragmatism does not tell us what ends to pursue, but offers a kind of inquiry that compares the
value of different courses of action alternately weighing means and ends – facts and values. It
binds together what longstanding dualistic thinking kept apart – knowledge and action (or per-
haps a bit more precisely) theoretical reflection and practical judgment. Pragmatism provides an
antidote to the quest for certainty by exploring how multiple publics can democratically antici-
pate and prepare for different contingencies using practical and scientific knowledge to inform
purposes and plans for a contingent and uncertain future.
Pragmatist planning theory supports the historical division of intellectual labor and technical
innovation that has produced astonishing feats of invention and engineering; but does not con-
fuse the power of such specialized rationality as a resource for practical judgment. For instance
the advertising slogan ‘Smart Cities’ for the pragmatist does not mean adopting the technical
innovations of high tech corporations as a guide for slum removal and highway development.
Nor does it mean adopting clever professional expertise as a substitute for familiar institutions
and conventions. The pragmatist understands that high tech innovations rely upon a vast cul-
tural infrastructure of shared social convention and learning. The effectiveness of specialized
knowledge relies upon this taken-for-granted context – a context often ignored or dismissed
by undemocratic elites. The pragmatist insists that plans for change include the knowledge
and experience of people likely to be touched by the consequences. Their involvement offers
crucial insight about the practical meaning of the imagined effects for proposed changes, but
also acceptable and feasible means for reconciling complex differences in useful and legitimate
compromise.
A neo-pragmatist planning theory sidesteps theoretical foundations for practical insight
and improvement. Instead of knowing first what to do and how to do it, the pragmatist
emphasizes contextual inquiry closely tied to social learning, practical experimentation and
democratic deliberations. For the pragmatists everyone plans, so improving plans for complex
social and spatial problems requires improvement in the craft of plan making in different
cultural, institutional and geographic settings. The scaffolding of spatial breadth and tempo-
ral reach remains intact across the variety of uses, but not rigidly scaled or tightly defined.
The complexity of human interaction and interdependence requires flexible and provisional
practical judgments about the arrangement of future settlement. Then neo-pragmatist plan-
ning theory focuses on how to conduct such judgment more intelligently and wisely using
inclusive democratic inquiry.

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Note
1 Rorty (1982, 1998) was popular and controversial. His work stimulated an enormous amount of debate
among philosophers and also among scholars studying the social sciences and professions.

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 11
URBAN PLANNING AND
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Susan S. Fainstein

This chapter addresses the relationship between urban planning and social justice.1 Since the
primary way in which urban planning affects social justice is through spatial arrangements, spa-
tial justice constitutes the focus of the discussion. Underlying all spatial planning is the premise
that conscious choice of means and ends produces better cities and regions than unregulated
development. Normative planning theory explores the moral basis of planning; that is, what is
meant by “producing better cities and regions.” The term “better” implies more attributes than
simply more just—it implies more productive, more efficient, more beautiful, more sustainable
as well. I begin by addressing the question of why justice should be given priority, examine the
role of planners in effecting or blocking its application, look at the history of value emphases in
planning, consider current debates, and conclude by discussing what can be done. The issues
then become the appropriate process for decision making about the location, content, and form
of the built environment; evaluation of approaches to urban and regional growth and decline;
and formulation of the values by which process and outcome should be judged.
Justice is defined here as incorporating the values of democracy, diversity, and equity.2
Although all three of these principles are constitutive of justice, they exist in tension with each
other, and maximizing any of them can result in trade-offs. Within modern political thought the
argument for democracy as the basis for the legitimacy of the state began with Enlightenment
theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; as a stipulation within planning theory it
dates to the 1960s, when demands for community control and citizen participation asserted
themselves (Arnstein 1969). Emphasis on diversity, defined by race, gender, and ethnicity, is a
somewhat later phenomenon but is also rooted in the movements of the 1960s–70s (see Altshuler
1970; Fainstein and Fainstein 1974; Sandercock 1998; Young 1990). The call for equity can
also be traced back to the Enlightenment (Rousseau 1992) but more recently in the writings of
neo-Marxist theorists and critical geographers (Lefebvre 1996; Harvey 1973; Soja 2010) as well
as those of liberal philosophers (Rawls 1971; Sandel 2009).
This demand for justice does not preclude the use of efficiency or economic development
as criteria for evaluating policies but rather requires that justice be the first principle. If justice
becomes the yardstick for measuring public policy effectiveness, then policy-makers must ask to
what end efficiency applies and who benefits from economic growth. A policy that assists the
most disadvantaged without wasting resources meets the efficiency criterion even if it does not
maximize an aggregate benefit/cost ratio. In contrast, for those who take the position that the

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only measure of efficiency is maximizing utility in the aggregate, assisting the disadvantaged is
usually considered to waste resources by diverting public investments from their most produc-
tive use. Similarly if the measure of economic development consists entirely of increases in per
capita product, then distributive effects go unevaluated. Such uncritical applications of aggregate
approaches to policy evaluation, however, lead to increased injustice.
Within the scholarly literature a critique of urban planning as unjust, rooted in Marxist
political economy, began in the 1970s (Fainstein and Fainstein 1971; Castells 1977; Harvey
1978; Dear and Scott 1981; Foglesong 1986). This initial discussion of spatial injustice attacked
planning as inflicting disproportionate damage on vulnerable populations. It responded to
urban renewal and highway programs in the West, as well as demolition of informal housing
and markets in poorer countries. Inspired by the urban social movements of the 1960s and 70s,
radicals within the academy exposed the skewed distribution of benefits resulting from osten-
sibly progressive governmental actions such as slum clearance. Later, negative assessments of
planning reacted to neoliberal urban policies that aimed at increasing competitiveness through
subsidies to capital, megaproject development, gentrification, and privatization of public ser-
vices, all rationalized as serving economic development (Harvey 1989, 2005; Smith 1979;
Fainstein and Fainstein 2013). Most of these critiques of planning implied standards of justice
by which planning could be evaluated, but they did not specify what those standards were, nor
did they describe the content of more just policies. Explicit arguments concerning what consti-
tutes spatial justice are more recent (Fainstein 2010; Soja 2010; Campbell and Fainstein 2012).

Giving Priority to Justice

Making justice a primary goal for urban policy rests on both moral and practical arguments.
The moral argument goes beyond the position shared by Marxists and mainstream economists
that people act according to their material interests. While the economic mainstream begins
with individual choice, Marxists start with class and consider that the only way to bring about
desirable change is through changing the relations of production. Class interests, however, are
subject to interpretation, even under capitalism. How do you know what your class interest
actually is? There is an assumption that your class interest, if you are a businessperson, is to
exploit your workforce as much as possible, while your class interest, if you are a worker, is to
resist as much as possible. Normative theory breaks with this position by insisting that people
act in accordance with moral judgment not simply self- or group interest. Only by holding that
people should take actions because they are right—that is, moral—can one counter narrowly
defined interests (Mansbridge 1990). A society organized according to moral principles affords
every member the opportunity to thrive (Nussbaum 2000, 2006), and, in fact, class interests
encompass a broad spectrum of possibility, including that one’s interest is living in a decent
society. Even from a purely practical standpoint, business owners can benefit from a happier
and more stable workforce and from customers who have more disposable income. Moreover,
people have multiple identities and therefore multiple interests. Openness to difference derives
from the recognition of a common humanity; as Edward Soja (2010: 23) argues, a call for justice
constitutes a unifying goal among disparate groups: “[It] transcends the defined categories of
race, gender, class, nationality, sexual preference, and other forms of homogeneous and often
exclusive group or community identity.”
Within the currently dominant ideological framework of neoliberalism, governing groups
have used competitiveness as their chief justification for spatial policy choices. Efforts to reduce
inequality and provide advantages to minority groups, in this view, hinder the workings
of the market’s invisible hand, produce moral hazards, and cause the economy to perform at

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a suboptimal level. The counter-argument is that neoliberal policies have resulted in grow-
ing inequality and social exclusion, that this outcome cannot be morally justified, and that in
the long run it will result in social disruption. The intent of social movements, in the face of
neoliberal obduracy, should be to press for the attainment of a decent society and to promote
government policies aimed at furthering that end.
Formulating what constitutes a decent society requires examining theories of justice. Political
philosophy provides abstract definitions of a just society and thus offers a means for thinking
about social goals. In this respect the writings of John Rawls (1971), whose difference principle
requires governance that insures benefits to the relatively disadvantaged, has been particularly
important in framing debates among political philosophers concerning the meaning of justice.
In essence, Rawls argues that rational individuals would choose policies that promote equality if,
in the original position behind “a veil of ignorance,” they could not foresee where they would
end up in a social hierarchy.
Political philosophy, however, while supporting democracy, diversity, and equity, does not
usually spell out how to achieve its goals. What should be the aims of social movements? What
spatial policies would support those aims? Planning comprises the set of regulations and incen-
tives available by which to constrain and develop the built environment. It thus constitutes a
target for those demanding justice, but historically it has frequently been an instrument for social
exclusion.

The Role of Planning

The basis for modern spatial planning evolved in the late 1800s and throughout much of the
next century in response to the social and environmental effects of industrialism. It aimed to
produce a city organized along rational lines that would allow for the efficient transportation of
goods and people, preserve public health, and provide parks and recreation to relieve the effects
of overcrowding and environmental pollution. Early planners proceeded without much reflec-
tion about the process by which the desired spatial form was formulated—planning’s implicit
theoretical argument dwelled on the nature of the good city instead of the method by which
to formulate either goals or means. The public interest constituted the moral basis of planning,
but little systematic effort was directed at ascertaining its content. It was assumed that the public
interest was singular, and that a well-planned city would benefit all its users. Although social
critics emphasized the need to rid urban development programs of corruption, eliminate slums,
and provide decent housing, they did not differ from more mainstream planners in considering
that planning should be sharply separated from politics and that experts should do the planning.
The development of an explicit theory directed at prescribing the planner’s modus operandi
began with the publication of Karl Mannheim’s Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction in
1935.3 It laid the philosophical foundations for later theorizing by describing a democratic plan-
ning process that would enable experts to plan under the guidance of the public through their
elected representatives. Mannheim’s ambition exceeded that of city planning—inspired by the
ideals of reform liberalism, he envisioned the national state’s participation in economic and
social planning. He argued that, if the planning bureaucracy was subject to parliamentary con-
trol, it could apply its technical expertise to the solution of social problems without impinging
on freedom:

The new bureaucracy brought with it a new objectivity in human affairs. There is
something about bureaucratic procedure which helps to neutralize the original lean-
ings towards patronage, nepotism, and personal domination. This tendency towards

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objectivity may, in favourable cases, become so strong that the element of class con-
sciousness, still present in a bureaucracy which is chosen mainly from the ranks of
the ruling classes, can be almost completely superseded by the desire for justice and
impartiality.
(Mannheim 1940: 323)

As time passed, the demand for impartiality became translated into an emphasis on fair processes
based in scientific calculation. Peter Hall (2002: 362) describes how, after World War II, spa-
tial planners adopted methodologies based in economics and the natural sciences, which were
“independent of the thing that was planned.” The term used to describe the procedure for goal
maximization in planning was “the rational model.” Derived from the scientific method, the
model assumed that goals could be named in advance through the political process. Planners
would choose among alternative ways of achieving these ends based on an objective calculation
of aggregate costs and benefits. By making a sharp distinction between process, context, and
outcomes planners could evade responsibility for the normative content of their activities as long
as they demonstrated integrity in their analysis.
The belief that fact and value can be separated, which underlies the application of the rational
model, has been strongly attacked. People can only discern the impact of broad goals when the
means of their achievement are described; thus, goal formulation and policy in actuality proceed
in tandem. Furthermore, planners might lack the technical capacity to find the means to deter-
mine how to reach the desired ends (Altshuler 1965). Charles Lindblom (1959), whose work
echoed the skepticism of such management theorists as Herbert Simon, argued that the desire
for rationality was both impractical and undesirable. He characterized the actual planning and
policy making process as incremental. As reflected in the irony of the title of his famous article
on the subject, “The Science of ‘Muddling Through’,” he declared a cautious method of “par-
tisan mutual adjustment” to be more effective in reaching desirable outcomes than the synoptic
planning method idealized within the rational model.
In the 1960s and 70s, the intellectual current that had questioned the claims of planning to
rationality was strengthened by a dissident but nonetheless influential movement within the
planning profession itself. Participants in this movement expressed concern over the impacts of
decisions on the politically powerless—especially those displaced by highway and urban renewal
programs (Hoffman 1989). The view of the Marxist theorists discussed above that only the
demise of capitalism would enable planners to act justly proved very discouraging to progressive
planners who by then were also working for community-based organizations rather than solely
for city governments and business groups (Brooks 2002; Fainstein and Fainstein 1979). One
response to this seeming impasse was to chart courses whereby planning could, in fact, achieve
redistributional outcomes (Clavel 1986; Krumholz and Forester 1990). The underlying theo-
retical premises of these efforts, however, were rarely made explicit. Like the academic critics of
planning outcomes, practitioners who proposed exemplary remedies did not describe and justify
their value position (Fainstein 1999; Sayer and Storper 1997).
Beginning in the 1980s, efforts to develop middle-range theory that embeds planning prac-
tice within a larger theoretical framework looked at how planners could bring about more just
cities and regions (see Friedmann 2011). I use the term middle-range here because, although
some of these works extend to countries at various stages of political and economic develop-
ment, the primary focus was on principles to guide policy within democratic Western societies
rather than norms applicable everywhere. Although broad concepts of justice have a universal
resonance, their specific content is restricted in relation to both place and time rather than
applying to all geographic areas in an entire historical epoch. In the words of Campbell and

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Marshall (2006: 241; my italics), “Just planning which acknowledges its responsibilities to the
poor, vulnerable and relatively weak is therefore, we argue, fundamentally about situated ethical
judgement.”
Increasingly planning theorists have referred to political philosophers concerned with jus-
tice in their inquiries regarding the appropriate role of planners. Based on the philosophies of
Jürgen Habermas and John Dewey, discussions of communicative rationality have been promi-
nent attempts to give theoretical guidance to planning actions. Rejecting the positivism of the
rational model, proponents of communicative planning have accepted critiques of planning as
authoritarian. They argue that claims for technical expertise disregard local knowledge and fail
to develop understanding among the public subjected to planning. They call for an open process
of deliberation in which the planner encourages collaboration and mediates among discordant
views (Healey 2006; Forester 1993). Essentially their aim is to produce spatial justice through a
just planning process. Although they differ from the technocratic theorists who believed that the
planning process could be wholly fact-based, they similarly focus on procedure. In their case the
procedure calls for public participation, the acceptance of subjective viewpoints, and limiting
the planner to a mediating role. If conducted properly, the process should result in consensus
and just outcomes.
The concept of the just city has, likewise, been developed as a theoretical response to the
injustices of authoritarianism and neoliberalism (Fainstein 2010; Marcuse et al. 2009). The
concept applies to participation (Purcell 2008), public space (Mitchell 2003), infrastructure
(Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius, and Rothengatter 2003), the environment (Low and Gleeson 1998),
and tourism (Jamala and Camargob 2014). The thoughts of Henri Lefebvre (1991) have been
particularly influential in shaping the vision of a just city, especially his concern that all should
have a “right to the city.” Lefebvre’s approach goes beyond institutionalized participation
to project a utopian goal of space responding to popular will: “The right to the city is not
merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our heart’s desire”
(Harvey 2003: 939).
Initial forays into developing theories of spatial justice have led to a number of debates. They
concern the relationship between process and outcome, the extent to which meaningful change
toward greater spatial justice is possible within global capitalism, the question of whether dif-
ferences of race, ethnicity, and gender are analytically separate from income inequality, and the
tension between equity and environmentalism (S. Campbell 1996).

The Process/Outcome Debate

The process/outcome debate within planning theory has its roots in two articles criticizing
communicative theory on the grounds that power differentials prevent mediation processes
from attaining just results (Fainstein 2000; Huxley and Yiftachel 2000). In my article I criti-
cize the communicative theorists for overemphasizing the centrality of facilitating discussion,
assuming that all interests can be represented within the planning process, and ignoring the
possibility that any seeming consensus will be dominated by the views of the most powerful
participants. In addition, I maintain that when agreement did incorporate the interests of dis-
advantaged groups, implementation frequently did not occur. Huxley and Yiftachel similarly
contend that the communicative model seriously underestimates the issues of power, the state,
and the political economy.
The relationship between open democratic processes and just outcomes is problematic. The
equity outcomes of citizen deliberations are unpredictable and are likely to vary according to
the particular values of the active participants. The initial demands for citizen participation in

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bureaucratic decision making originated with low-income groups seeking increased benefits
and respect. As time passed, however, participatory mechanisms primarily became a vehicle
for middle-class interests. As such, they represented a move toward democratizing the plan-
ning process but not usually in the direction of redistribution. Context matters—if participants
are not backed by widespread mobilization or by powerful interest groups, they are unlikely
to prevail. Moreover, in cities suffering from a withdrawal of capital investment, neighbor-
hood participants are no more able than the mayor to stem the tide and often yield to the logic
that only through subsidies to developers are any investments likely to happen. In cities under
development pressure, they might be able to gain concessions in terms of community spaces,
social services, and affordable housing; their ability to halt gentrification, however, is restricted
by their lack of control over private-market activities.
If planners play a more active role in policy formulation, they can affect the character of
deliberation and move participants toward a greater commitment to just outcomes.Without
political backing they are unlikely to succeed, but by framing issues in terms of justice and
promoting redistributive policies, they can achieve more than by passively letting citizen delib-
erations take their course. Campbell, Tait, and Watkins (2014) discuss the potential for planners
to bring about progressive outcomes in a neoliberal world. They assert that the motivation for
planners is to change the world for the better and ask: “Must planning surrender to free market
agendas or might there be ways to resist this reductionist but totalizing position?” (Campbell
et al. 2014: 45). They argue that an ideally just city constitutes an overly rigid and unattainable
goal but that seeking a better—that is, more just—city is achievable. Therefore, planners need to
push the boundaries of the possible (Campbell et al. 2014: 56). If they must compromise, their
compromises should be principled; it is in silence that they betray their aspirations.
My critique of communicative planning does not dismiss the value of democratic participa-
tion, which is in itself an element of spatial justice. At the same time, however, it incorporates
the arguments that have been made since the time of Aristotle regarding the flaws of democracy:
demagogues might mislead the public; ordinary people might lack the necessary expertise or
simply the time to understand complicated issues; it is not possible for all interests to be rep-
resented in large, pluralistic polities. What we can say positively about institutionalized citizen
participation and deliberation is that bringing together affected publics increases the information
available to policy-makers by providing local knowledge (Corburn 2005). Further, by causing
decision making to be more democratic and open, it legitimates its outcomes. Although it can
lead to parochialism and corruption, in that respect it might not be any more dangerous than
traditional modes of governance. It is rarely transformative, but it does provide a training ground
for developing leadership skills and popular education. The important point is to recognize that
fostering participation will not in itself produce just results and that, in a society with unequal
power, it can work against the realization of equity and diversity.

The Potential for Reform under Capitalism

Within the left the possibility of achieving greater equity within global capitalism has been sub-
ject to disagreement since the nineteenth century. Marxists deny that genuine progress can be
made under capitalism. In criticizing my concept of the just city David Harvey argues:

From the start, it [the concept of the just city] delimits its scope to acting within the
existing capitalist régime of rights and freedoms and is thus constrained to mitigating
the worst outcomes at the margins of an unjust city.
(Harvey with Potter 2009: 46)

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My response is that continued pressure for justice can cause the system to change incrementally.
Furthermore, planners necessarily deal with decisions that have the potential to do harm, as
has happened often in the past—so simply mitigating these outcomes is progress. Even though
planners acting alone cannot force change, they remain the only people expressly charged with
governing spatial development and can cause issues to be reframed in ways that give justice
prominence (Storper 2013). More humane policies for urban redevelopment, open space, trans-
portation investment, and housing supply can improve the lives of people in the here and now.
Waiting for the demise of capitalism postpones moving toward justice in the present and at any
rate is not an inevitable event.
One aspect of the debate about creating more just cities derives from an assessment of exist-
ing cities. In The Just City I named Amsterdam as approaching an ideal of justice, but more
recently Amsterdam has retreated from its earlier commitment to social housing and high levels
of welfare and committed itself to the precepts of neoliberalism (Uitermark 2009). Novy and
Mayer (2009) dispute my identification of the social democratic cities of northern Europe as
models and contend that Latin America might be a better place to look, although there too
more recent events make their evaluation problematic. From this discussion we can perhaps
distill a few truths: European social democracy once presented at least a rough model of spatial
justice; such models are not static; and a combination of globalization, immigration, and neolib-
eral policies can cause them to break down (see Kuttner 2015).

Diversity and Justice

Many critics of Rawls and other liberal theorists of justice have asserted that they fail to take
group affiliations and gender biases into account.4 Iris Marion Young (1990: 47), who reacts
against both liberal individualism and Marxist reductionism of injustice to class oppression, has
framed her objection as follows: “I believe that group differentiation is both an inevitable and
a desirable aspect of modern social processes. Social justice . . . requires not the melting away
of differences, but institutions that promote reproduction of and respect for group differences
without oppression.” Under this conception the argument for justice shifts from a fair distribu-
tion to “social differentiation without exclusion” (Young 1990: 238). A further objection to
much of liberal thought arises from a feminist viewpoint that regards the concepts of reason and
rights, defended by theorists ranging from Locke to J.S. Mill to Rawls, as based on a masculinist
conception of adversarial democracy. This body of theory, it is argued, universalizes the stand-
point of white males, values disputation, and defines interests solely in selfish terms (Mansbridge
1990; Held 1990).
As used within planning the term diversity has a variety of meanings. Among urban design-
ers it refers to mixing building types; among land-use planners it can mean mixed uses or class
and racial-ethnic heterogeneity in a housing development or a public space. During the 1960s,
advocates of physical and social heterogeneity constituted dissident voices against the prevail-
ing doctrine of functional zoning and homogeneity. Most influential among them within the
discipline of planning was Jane Jacobs, whose call for a cityscape based on multiple uses reso-
nated widely. She (1961: 14) argued that physical heterogeneity would promote economic and
social diversity:

One principle emerges … ubiquitously, and in so many and such complex different
forms [that] … it becomes the heart of my argument. This ubiquitous principle is the
need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each
other constant mutual support, both economically and socially.

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Her reasoning anticipated the widely publicized argument of Richard Florida (2002: 30), who
asserted that urban diversity stimulates creativity, which in turn causes economic growth.
Neither Jacobs nor Florida were basing their observations on a justice-based critique, but
their concern with the relation between spatial development and social diversity was consonant
with emphases among philosophers and sociologists on recognition of the other. The planning
theorist Leonie Sandercock (1998) terms her ideal city Cosmopolis. Like Iris Marion Young she
links recognition of the other with justice. She describes a metropolis that allows people from
a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds equal rights to city space. The diversity she praises is
not the local color appealing to Jane Jacobs and creative class cosmopolitans but rather the one
captured by Lefebvre’s phrase “the right to the city.” It refers to the inclusion of all city users
within the space of the city, regardless of their cultural differences.
Still, despite the seeming unanimity of urban theorists on the merits of diversity, they differ
substantially concerning the kinds of environments planners should aim to produce—and how
and whether conscious planning can create them. Planned communities designed with the goal
of diversity, whether within inner cities or in new-urbanist or neo-traditional greenfield develop-
ments, seem inevitably to attract accusations of inauthenticity, of being simulacra rather than the real
thing. Thus, planners appear caught in an insoluble dilemma—either leave the market to take its
course or impose an oxymoronic diverse order. Although in the past market-driven development
produced highly differentiated landscapes as a consequence of local custom, small-plot ownership,
minimal regulation, and incremental development, today’s large developers, enmeshed within a
globalized architectural and property market, build on a grand scale and in each new project repeat
the successful formulas of everywhere else. The paradox is that the internally diverse character of
festival marketplaces, entertainment districts, and live/work environments replicates itself, so that
places lose their individuality just as much as had been the case under high modernism.
The relationship between diversity and equity as components of justice is not straightforward.
Richard Florida’s (2002) argument, referred to above, finds a happy reconciliation between the
values of economic growth and social diversity. Thus, diversity, until recently a value associated
more with politically left cultural critics than pro-growth coalitions, has become a mantra for
public officials aiming at fostering urban resurgence. Florida, however, is misinterpreted if he is
taken to imply that diversity promotes equity as well as growth. He explicitly states:

While the Creative Class favors openness and diversity, to some degree it is a diver-
sity of elites, limited to highly educated, creative people. Even though the rise of the
Creative Class has opened up new avenues of advancement for women and members
of ethnic minorities, its existence has certainly failed to put an end to long-standing
divisions of race and gender.
(Florida 2002: 80)

He could have added that it not only has failed to end racial and gender divisions, but it has
seemingly exacerbated income inequality.
Demands for diversity are particularly controversial in relation to policies for inclusionary
housing and zoning. Requiring housing in any area to encompass a broad income range and
forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or disability constitute standards condu-
cive to justice. However, requiring people to move against their will in order to achieve racial
balance or dispersion of poverty is counterproductive and an infringement on liberty (Goetz
2003). Furthermore, if neighborhoods become diverse as a consequence of gentrification, then
the remaining low-income residents might lose their sense of ownership of the area even if they
receive improved service (Freeman 2006).

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The touchiest and most difficult aspect of the question of forcing diversity comes in terms
of requiring exclusionary places to welcome people who are different. Supporters of increased
diversity are made uncomfortable by the seeming irreconcilability of community and diversity.
Peter Marcuse (2002: 111) tries to overcome the difficulty by distinguishing between ghettoes
and enclaves: ghettoes are involuntary spatial concentrations of a particular population group,
while enclaves are voluntary and promote economic, social, political, and cultural development.
When the enclave cluster is an ethnic minority or gender-identified group seeking to protect its
way of life or overcome disadvantage, the term has a positive spin. In fact, by offering sanctuaries
for cultural difference, enclaves, while being homogeneous in the micro, contribute to diversity
at the metropolitan level. Citadels, on the other hand, defined as exclusionary areas dominated by
the privileged, conform to Harvey’s negative characterization of community as “one of the key
sites of social control and surveillance, bordering on overt social repression” (Harvey 1997: 1).
Thus, urban neighborhoods characterized by lack of diversity might or might not contribute to
greater justice, depending on their contribution to equity and culture.
In sum, diversity as a planning doctrine reflects an aspirational goal; at the same time the
desirability of pressing for it depends very much on the process by which it is achieved and the
class and racial/ethnic context in which it operates.

Environmentalism and Equity

Planners have always tried to regulate the physical environment, preserve nature, and promote
health through limiting air and water pollution. Over the years the aims of the environmental
movement have broadened and, beginning in the 1960s, taken on a new militancy. Critics of
the mainstream environmental movement, however, charge that its middle-class social basis
makes it oblivious to questions of equity. They charge that protection of pristine environments
or forbidding high-density development is rationalized in the name of ecology, but functions
to exclude housing affordable to low-income people. These critics have also reframed questions
of the placement of undesirable land uses in terms of environmental justice (Harvey 1996) and
have sought to incorporate equity into definitions of sustainability.
The concern with justice is reflected in the aims developed by the UN’s Brundtland
Commission: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” For those in
the environmental justice movement, meeting “needs” includes fulfilling the basic necessities of
food, housing, and income as well as protecting the neighborhoods of vulnerable populations
from polluting sources. The term, however, is ambiguous. For mainstream environmentalists it
primarily refers to preservation of natural areas and other species. For right-wing governments, it
refers to stimulating economic growth so that prosperity will trickle down to the less fortunate.
In the last decade allusions to sustainability have receded, and they have been replaced
by references to “resilience” (Davoudi 2012; Gleeson 2014; Fainstein 2015). Prompted by
earthquakes, tsunamis, highly destructive hurricanes, and the expectation of global warming,
advocates for making places resilient argue for adapting to changed circumstances rather than
simply attempting to prevent disasters from occurring. In built-up districts resilience requires
restoring wetlands so that water will have somewhere to go under flood conditions. In rural
areas it means removing houses in areas where forest fires are a danger. In low-income coun-
tries it leads to forced rural to urban migration as fields become deserts. Like sustainability, use
of the term resilience connotes ambiguity. The question immediately arises: whose homes will
be removed? To the extent that low-income households occupy the areas most susceptible to
damage, they are the ones likely to face displacement and rarely receive adequate compensation.

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Environmentalism in its various guises of planning for preservation, sustainability, and

resilience, is generally considered a progressive force. Within the United States it tends to be
opposed by business interests invested in natural resources, by property developers who wish
to proceed unrestricted, and by right-wing politicians. Within developing countries opponents
consider that it limits the possibilities for economic growth. Yet it is frequently in contradiction
to demands for justice and can be used to block redistributive measures. A just environmental-
ism requires spatial planning that avoids placing environmental hazards where land is cheapest if
the outcome is to jeopardize the health of impoverished groups. It further calls for investments
in open space that benefit low-income communities and, in cases where households must move
to create buffers against water or fire, then they need to be fairly compensated and, if possible,
relocated en bloc.

What Can Be Done?

As discussed above, the disagreement as to whether or not just policies can be achieved without
structural transformation is a persistent one. Comparison of different places does, however, point
to situations where groups at the bottom of the economic structure enjoy greater amenities than
in other locations. While planning for spatial justice cannot overcome economic inequality, it
can provide lower-income populations with a higher quality of life than would otherwise be
the case. This is particularly true for housing, transportation, and public space provision. In this
respect Singapore provides a useful example. Although Singapore is capitalist, has enjoyed a high
rate of economic growth, encourages competitive markets, and promotes foreign investment,
it insures that certain economic sectors are insulated from market pressures. Most of the per-
manent population (85 percent) lives in public housing. Families buy their units and may resell
them, but the government subsidizes the buildings and regulates supply to insure that resale
prices do not rise too much. The three major ethnic groups of the nation (Chinese, Malay, and
Indian) are housed in each building proportional to their percentage of the total population,
thereby preventing ethnic segregation. Buildings are high-rise and clustered around establish-
ments that provide all the services needed for daily life. A highly efficient, cheap public transit
system connects all the housing developments to the central business district. Automobile travel
is minimized through using a combination of tariffs, licensing fees, and congestion pricing to
make car ownership and operation very expensive. Although this reserves automobile transport
for the elite and thus arguably creates a highly privileged stratum, it has a redistributional effect
since the wealthy are heavily taxed for their privilege.
Singapore’s government is formally democratic in the sense that it has a two-party system
with free and fair elections, and the government is sensitive to public opinion. Given the very
high proportion of the electorate that votes for the dominant People’s Action Party (PAP) (70
percent in the 2015 election), the ruling elite apparently enjoys considerable legitimacy. At the
same time, compared to cities within Western democracies, Singapore has very limited public
participation: critics of the government can be sued for libel; public demonstrations are gener-
ally not allowed (there is, however, a yearly gay parade despite homosexuality being nominally
illegal); the local media are mostly spokespersons for the government, although Internet access
is not restricted. The most egregious deviation from justice lies in the treatment of foreign con-
tract workers; they have no civil rights, may not bring in their families, are subject to arbitrary
dismissal, have few days off, and mostly live in undesirable conditions.
An overall assessment of Singapore would consider that it does excellent planning; that it
provides all citizens and permanent residents a reasonably high quality of life in terms of access
to amenities and good housing even though it has high levels of income inequality; and that it

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maintains ethnic peace in a part of the world where ethnic frictions are high. To the extent that
democracy is a component of justice, it is clearly lacking; on the other hand, its meritocratic and
authoritarian form of government makes consistent, long-range planning possible, and much
of that planning provides benefits to the entire population. Even foreign workers have access
to exceptional parks, potable water, clean air, and, as a result of recent initiatives, recreational
facilities.
Key to Singapore’s ability to do good planning is public ownership of most of the land within
the city’s boundaries. This enables the government to build public housing when and where it
chooses, to preserve rights-of-way for transit development, and to reserve large tracts for parks
and recreation. Land banking has thus been enabling, and it offers an important means by which
governments can enforce more equitable uses of space. Nevertheless, it alone is not sufficient
to guarantee an activist state that will use its resources to create wide benefits. Amsterdam and
Stockholm are other cities with substantial public land ownership. Until this century their
governments used their holdings to develop considerable amounts of social housing. Recently,
however, they have been privatizing the housing stock and retreating from their previous com-
mitments. These examples show that planning for broad benefits requires continued dedication
to principles of justice as well as the power to enforce a fair distribution.
These brief comparisons illustrate the tensions among the various principles of justice. Very
likely if Singapore were more democratic, it might have less income inequality and not rely on
cheap foreign labor to work in the least desirable employment categories. At the same time it
might be more susceptible to corruption and ethnic antagonism within the citizen population.
Moreover, there are far more examples of authoritarian states that are corrupt and do not do
exemplary planning, so Singapore is anomalous (Huat 2011). It does, however, show the pos-
sibility of using spatial planning within a predominantly capitalist system to implement policies
for diversity and equity.
Reforms that promote justice can be achieved within democratic capitalist political economies
when popular movements back progressive leadership. This outcome depends on the develop-
ment of programs for redistribution, allegiances that cut across differences based on ascriptive
characteristics such as race and gender identity while also recognizing difference, and which
respond to the desires of ordinary people. It requires countering the demagoguery of populist
leadership that plays on exclusionism, establishes justice rather than growth as the first priority of
policy, and encourages planning for equity and improvements in the quality of life even if radical
redistribution is not a possibility. The principles of democracy, diversity, and equity are in ten-
sion and involve trade-offs. In the ideal case democratic participation is benignly supportive of
the other two values; but as we are seeing in both Europe and the United States it is frighteningly
easy to arouse populist anger against outsiders and to blame deprivation on lower social strata.

Notes
1 Parts of this chapter are drawn from my book The Just City (2010).
2 The basis for this definition is developed at length in Fainstein (2010).
3 This book was initially written in German and published in Holland. The English-language edition
appeared later in 1940 when it was substantially revised and enlarged by the author.
4 Rawls in his later work attempted to incorporate the issue of difference (see Rawls 2001: 64–66).

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 12
THE GRASSROOTS
OF PLANNING
Poor People’s Movements, Political Society,
and the Question of Rights

Ananya Roy

We are not the grassroots of the city; we are its poisoned soil.
(Carolina Gaete, Blocks Together, Chicago, 2015)

On a blustery April day in Chicago, I met with Carolina Gaete at Blocks Together, a community
action organization on the west side of Chicago. Its entrance barely visible on a bleak street,
with roaring traffic cutting through the neighborhood, the offices of Blocks Together were
filled with sunlight, festooned with photographs and posters, and anchored by two dynamic
women leaders. I had been introduced to Carolina by Willie (JR) Fleming, the charismatic
co-founder of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, a radical urban social movement that
challenges foreclosures and evictions on the south side of Chicago. Drawing inspiration from
the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign which once led struggles against evictions and ser-
vice disconnections in Cape Town, South Africa, the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign has a
repertoire of tactics of resistance and militancy, from eviction blockades to the occupation of
foreclosed homes. At first glance, Blocks Together has a somewhat different agenda of action,
seeking to intervene in the city’s urban planning processes through participatory budgeting and
pushing for community benefit agreements in relation to tax increment finance funds. But as
in the case of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, it frames its work “through the lens of
racial justice and human rights,” and is keenly aware of the global and historical context of such
frameworks. When Blocks Together deploys the idea of community, it means, of course, that it
is a membership-based organization. But it also means that such community is formed through a
long history of racial exclusion, spatialized oppression, and repeated displacement. It is thus that
as we sat and talked at a table filled with posters of campaigns and rallies, with the sun streaming
in through the glass blocks that made up the street front of the office, Carolina insisted: “We are
not the grassroots of the city; we are its poisoned soil.”
In this essay, I draw inspiration from this brief moment in Chicago with Carolina to frame an
argument about the city and the grassroots. While such a frame refers to the important contribu-
tions of Manuel Castells to urban and planning theory, I broaden the discussion to signal how
postcolonial and poststructuralist theory makes possible new understandings of the relationship

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between the urban and the political. In doing so, I seek to reorient planning theory, shifting
emphasis from the ubiquitous frame of the “right to the city” to other concepts and debates.
I undertake such reorientation for three reasons. First, it is my contention that the theoretical
dominance of the “right to the city,” and the attendant reliance on Lefebvrian thought, occludes
other modes and meanings of spatial politics, be it those concerned with racial justice or those
evoking human rights or those negotiating claims through political society. Second, while the
“right to the city” has global purchase, and has its most well-developed institutional form in
Brazil, as a theoretical genre in urban and planning theory, it tends to ignore what Chatterjee
(2006) has called “popular politics in most of the world.” In this essay, rather than undertake a
survey of the literature on such popular politics, I foreground a few significant lines of inquiry
that emerge from the urban experience of the global South, that put forward conceptual frame-
works related to urban citizenship, political society, poor people’s movements, and the figure of
the human, and that have direct relevance for planning theory. Third, I pinpoint Castells rather
than Lefebvre as the starting point for this essay because I wish to emphasize the importance of
a theory of the state for an analytics of planning and politics. In his early work, notably The City
and the Grassroots (1983), Castells gives us a theory of the state that is also necessarily a theory
of the city. To take account of the state is to once again trouble EuroAmerican genealogies of
thought, in particular the reliance on an experience of austerity urbanism rooted in the con-
text of the global North. Whether enacting market rule or not, the state is a prominent force
in many parts of the world, and it is often in relationship to the state that a politics of claims-
making and rights-talk is fought and legislated. This essay hopes to illuminate the conceptual
vocabularies that are attentive to such geographies and conjunctures.

A Theory of the City

In a scarcely known working paper buried in the library at the University of California, Berkeley,
Manuel Castells (1985) reflects on the shift in his work from the seminal, The Urban Question
(1977), to the magisterial, The City and the Grassroots. Castells (1985: 1) notes that in the latter,
“there is a theory of urban social change as part of a theory of the city.” In particular, he pin-
points urban social movements as a key force in urban social change. But he seeks to broaden the
analysis of urban social movements. He argues that while this is “purposive collective action,” it
“comes from a plurality of sources and not just one” (Castells 1985: 2, 3). Indeed, such action
is not solely concerned with collective consumption, the emphasis of Castells’s early work.
Castells (1985: 3) asserts that The City and the Grassroots widens the discussion to consider urban
social movements that connect “three dimensions . . . collective consumption . . . political self-
management . . . and . . . cultural identity.” Castells (1985: 4) further argues that these urban
social movements have “consciousness as citizen movements and not just a derivation from
class or other types of movements.” In putting forward such a formulation, Castells (1985: 11)
valiantly reflects on theoretical legacies, arguing that for him “Marxist theory is . . . one source
of theoretical work among many others,” that it is “blind to some major issues, for instance,
feminism and with an inability to understand some key elements like culture, specific political
apparatuses etc.”
Castells’s work, especially The City and the Grassroots, has had a profoundly important
influence in urban studies and planning. It inspired several new generations of theorization
concerned with the “grassroots” of the city. It also made possible the conceptual imagination
of what Andrew Merrifield (2014: xi) calls a “new political subject,” specifically urban social
movements. Of course, there is the question of how Castells’ writings, including his seminal
book, The Urban Question, published in 1972, relates to other lines of thought in urban studies.

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Gottdiener (1993: 130) argues that both Castells and Harvey “owe an immense, unacknow­
ledged debt to Lefebvre.” In contrast, Keil (2003: 725) notes that Castells “was at great pains
to distance himself from any attempt to save both the city/urban as a distinct object of critical
urban research” and thus rejected “the specific brand of Marxism associated with Lefebvre.”
Indeed, while Castells sought to “spatialize Althusserian structuralism” by identifying the “func-
tional specificity of the urban,” a broad set of writings were to soon explore “the production
of space and spatial configuration under capitalism” (Brenner 2000: 363, 365). The translation
of Lefebvre’s writings into English in the early 1990s positioned his work as the main anchor
in such concerns.
However, in this essay, I return to The City and the Grassroots to draw out a conceptual theme
that has received less attention in the urban and planning theory debates: the theory of the state.
Castells (1985: 8) notes that

the theory of the state that underlines CGR sees the state as the crystallization of class
and other social struggles, that is both of processes of dominance of certain classes and
groups and genders but also as the expression of the process of resistance to dominance
by classes and social groups and genders.

This is indeed an important shift in Castells’s work, notably from The Urban Question to The City
and the Grassroots. But whether it is collective consumption or some other vector of struggle, the
state remains central to the figuration of urban social movements. Put another way, in Castells’
formulation, it is in relation to the state that social change is articulated and enacted. I find this
to be an important provocation, one that is valuable for planning theory and one that requires
continued theorization of the specific role of planning in processes of social change.

Urban Citizens
The relationship between the urban and the political is a matter of long-standing debate in
urban studies. While Castells draws our attention to urban social movements, urban theorists
have also relied on the ideas of Henri Lefebvre to conceptualize the urban as the site of the
political, particularly in the making of forms of life and meaning. This, for Merrifield (2014: 69),
is the “new urban question,” how the “complete urbanization society” yields “an urban politi-
cal movement [not social] that struggles for generalized democracy, that organizes a concerted
insurrection” (emphasis in the original). Most boldly, in the arguments of Warren Magnusson
(2011: 34), the urban becomes a political ontology, “a particular way of being political.” In my
recent essay, “What is Urban about Critical Urban Theory?” I challenge the equivalence of the
urban and the political, as I also challenge the claim of a “complete urbanization society” (Roy
2015). I suggest that we take up the question of whether the urban is a particular way of being
political as precisely this, a question, rather than an ontological truth. In addition, I argue that it
is worth considering how the urban is constituted and lived as a governmental category. In the
remainder of this essay, I foreground conceptual frameworks that provide insights into the urban
as a governmental category and that thereby return us to that oft-ignored aspect of The City and
the Grassroots, the theory of the city in relation to the theory of the state.
Nikolas Rose (2013: 95) reminds us that “the city, for at least two centuries, has been both
a problem for government and a permanent incitement to government.” Rose’s (2013: 98)
analysis of “advanced liberalism” demonstrates how “the activation of the powers of the citizen”
is entangled with ways of governing cities. I find this to be a useful way of approaching urban
citizenship, but only if we are willing to extend his argument. While Rose notes that this has

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been the case for “at least two centuries,” thinking outside and beyond the West might require
posing the formulation as a question rather than a declaration: at what historical moment does
the governing of cities become vitally important for the governing of citizens? When for-
mulated thus, this concern with urban government bears resonance with Chatterjee’s (2006)
concept of political society. As is now well known, in his conceptualization of the “politics of
the governed,” Chatterjee makes a distinction between “civil society” and “political society.”
Civil society is an arena of institutions and practices inhabited by a relatively small section of
people able to make claims as fully enfranchised citizens. By contrast, political society is the
constellation of claims made by those who are only tenuously and ambiguously right-bearing
citizens. For Chatterjee, the “paralegal” practices and negotiations of political society is the
politics of much of the people in most of the world: “The paralegal then, despite its ambiguous
and supplementary status in relation to the legal, is not some pathological condition of retarded
modernity, but rather part of the very process of the historical constitution of modernity in most
of the world” (Chatterjee 2006: 75). More recently, Chatterjee (2012: 46–7) has emphasized the
“deepening and widening of the apparatuses of governmentality,” to how “the activities of the
government have penetrated deep into the everyday lives of rural people,” and to the “constant
tussles of different population groups with the authorities over the distribution of governmental
services.” I draw attention to this expanded formulation because it explicitly links the politics
of the governed with modes of governing. While Chatterjee does not tell us much about urban
government, his reflection provokes the following questions: Is there a distinctive “politics of
the governed” that is at work in the realm of the urban? What is the relationship between such
politics and what, following Rose, can we conceptualize as the city as “a problem for govern-
ment”? I take up these questions in relation to two examples, one drawn from the urban studies
debates and one drawn from my recent research.
In a series of arguments, Holston (2007), and more recently Caldeira and Holston (2015),
have made the case for urban citizenship in Brazil. Theirs is not a formulation of an essential
ontology, the urban as a necessarily political identity and identification. Instead, it is a careful
argument about historical conjuncture and the activation of citizenship. Caldeira and Holston
(2015) trace the history of democratization in Brazil noting that “insurgent citizenship move-
ments” were a vitally important part of this transition. And such forms of citizenship were
urban, emerging in the auto-constructed peripheries of Brazilian cities and shaped “not primar-
ily through the struggles of labor but through those of the city” (Holston 2007). Urban residents
built homes and neighborhoods “brick by brick” and also organized to “fight for housing, prop-
erty, infrastructure and services . . . in other words, for the right to the cities they were making”
(Caldeira and Holston 2015: 2002). In fact, Caldeira and Holston (2015) go one step further in
their argument, noting that the institutional form of such citizenship was also indelibly shaped
by the urban experience.

The main mark of this democratisation was … the explosion of popular participation
in urban social movements, neighbourhood associations, trade unions and political
parties. It was the invention inside of these organisations of new forms of citizen par-
ticipation itself that … established the importance of text-based rights and innovative
legislation in democratic struggles.
(Caldeira and Holston 2015: 2002)

What we have here is the imbrication of city, citizenship, and state. That imbrication is neither
a relationship of equivalence nor of ontological necessity. Instead, it is conjunctural and con-
tingent. My call to consider the urban as a governmental category is also then a call to craft a

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 The Grassroots of Planning

conceptual framework attentive to conjuncture and contingency in the contemplation of the

relationship between the urban and the political. Under what historical conditions does the
urban become the terrain of government and the territory of politics?
Caldeira and Holston’s (2015) analysis of urban citizenship in Brazil suggests that the process
of democratization, intertwined as it was with the making of urban peripheries, produced dis-
tinctive modes of governing the city, most recently participatory urban planning. In my recent
research, I take up a related inquiry, focusing on how “inclusive growth,” as a new mode of
governing in India, is activating urban local government and urban citizenship (Roy 2013).
In India, the start of the new century has been marked by the launch of ambitious national
programs of urban modernization and urban governance. If in a previous era of development,
the building of infrastructure was the enterprise of building the nation – dams, highways, elec-
tricity grids, water systems – then today the city is the site of infrastructural interventions. Urban
infrastructure is also the conduit of “reform,” a broad term that includes both economic reforms
and the recalibration of systems of governance, notably building and strengthening institutions
of local democracy. While the 74th Constitutional Amendment of 1992 created the urban local
body as the instrument of urban governance, it is not until the recent proliferation of these
national programs and policies that municipal governments have had significant urban planning
functions. In particular, slum upgrading initiatives have recast the relationship between city
and slum from that between sovereign and encroacher to that between government and ben-
eficiary. It is urban local government that mediates this relationship and that allows the urban
poor (more appropriately understood as the rural-urban poor) to stake claims and register com-
plaints as beneficiaries. In fact, my research indicates that each tranche of programs engenders a
new repertoire of claims and complaints, managed and negotiated by both local politicians and
municipal officers. It is worth noting that the urban politics at work here is not the insurgent
citizenship of which Caldeira and Holston write. There are no rights-based social movements,
no street politics of occupation and squatting, no auto-constructed peripheries. Instead, there
are self-styled beneficiaries, keenly aware of the nature of benefits and the scope of government
programs. But it is through this collection of beneficiaries that the urban comes to take shape as
a governmental category.
Such processes engender a supplemental question: who constitutes urban local government?
Needless to say, local political elites play an important role in the distribution of infrastructure
and services. This is a familiar story in many parts of the world. But my research indicates that
what is much more interesting and much less predictable is the role of local urban planners.
I use this term in two ways: to pinpoint those municipal positions that are named as such
and thus are seemingly committed to urban planning, and to extend the term to the much
broader ambit of planning tasks, which includes municipal engineers and technical assistance
consultants. The provision of infrastructure and services, the creation of plans, the shaping of
municipal budget allocations takes place in this broader ambit, through the involvement of
numerous actors, but especially through a municipal cadre of urban planners. In West Bengal,
where I conducted my research, they produce the plans and documents demanded by succes-
sive rounds of national government programs. They supervise the unending surveys. They fuss
over the social and spatial distribution of benefits. They map and analyze land tenure arrange-
ments. Whether or not they intended this to be the case, they have become keepers of the 74th
Constitutional Amendment. They, in dispersed fashion, constitute the state and its relationship
to urban citizenship.
But in providing these two examples of urban citizenship, I do not mean to suggest that
urban planning always serves as the conduit for redistributive policies or that the urban poor are
always able to claim the right to the cities they make through their labor and spatial practice.

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 Ananya Roy

Instead, I am interested in the contingent nature of such conduits and claims and how a theory
of the city, that is also necessarily a theory of the state, might account for such contingency. As
Watson (2012: 8) notes, in various contexts, such as Brazil and South Africa, “relatively pro-
gressive constitutions have conferred extensive citizenship rights, but in both countries major
income inequalities have left lower income groups unable to realize them.”
Rolnik (2013: 54) thus points out that while Brazil’s City Statute, as “an innovative national
legal framework,” emerged from “a rights-based . . . urban reform movement,” its implemen-
tation has had to contend with a “market-driven competitive cities spatial regime paradigm.”
And while Caldeira and Holston (2015) emphasize that insurgent citizenship movements, not
electoral politics, was the hallmark of democratization, Rolnik (2013: 58) argues that the “polit-
ical electoral game – and its connections to economic interests in urban development” largely
shape urban policy in Brazilian cities. The City Statute, she concludes, has meaning but only
when mobilized by urban social movements as a “form of resistance and litigation.” Rolnik’s
(2013: 62) attention to the “litigation of rights” returns us to the “grassroots” of the city, to
urban social movements and their role in shaping the city. In the following section of the essay,
I analyze poor people’s movements as one instantiation of the relationship between the urban
and the political.

Poor People’s Movements

In their landmark book, Poor People’s Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail, Piven and
Cloward (1977: x) call for a “dialectical analysis” of poor people’s movements, one in which
they are understood to be “both formed by and directed against institutional arrangements.”
Building on such an analytical approach, I am interested in how poor people’s movements are
articulated in complex and contradictory ways with bureaucracies of poverty. The emphasis
on poor people’s movements does not suggest that “poorness” is the sole or even dominant
category, worldwide, of political mobilization. Nor are such movements necessarily urban. I
foreground the question of poor people’s movements as a method of understanding the relation-
ship between the urban and the political, and one with direct relevance for planning theory. In
this conceptual realm, my own ethnographic and increasingly archival work pays attention to
how radical practices of self-determination are often sutured with ideologies of self-help. For
example, in the United States, during the 1960s, community action was rapidly transformed
into programs of community development, especially those animated by the ethos of self-help.
But in cities such as Oakland, the bureaucracy of poverty, notably War on Poverty programs,
became the platform for radical visions and practices of self-determination, specifically by the
Black Panther Party (Roy, Schrader, and Crane 2014). Piven and Cloward’s “dialectical analy-
sis” is thus immensely useful in thinking about the “grassroots” of the city in relation to urban
government. But it is also a provocation to think about the analytical and political category of
the “poor” as a mode of organizing and governing.
However, the term, poor people’s movements, can raise ire. At a recent conference in Brazil
titled “Cities of the Global South and the Rest of the World,” scholars explicitly rejected that
term, arguing that “poor” was a label imposed by the government, often marking the humiliat-
ing negotiation of welfare programs and their categories of eligibility. Social movements, they
noted, did not organize on the basis of poorness. But as I have already indicated in the previ-
ous section, the term “poor” might be useful as an analytical category to mark the relationship
between citizen and state, specifically the relationship between beneficiary and programs of
government. Indeed, it this relationship – this negotiation of the category of “poor” – that
might be the linchpin of postcolonial self-government, notably the renewal and reinvention of

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human development in the crucible of new hegemonies in the global South. I also use the term
poor when it is a native category for social movements. In these instances, poor is an articula-
tory politics. Following Stuart Hall, we can think of articulation as a cultural practice crafted in
the interstices of hegemony, moments of suturing that congeal subjectifications of solidarity but
that are not fixed or permanent identifications. It is worth asking then about the historical con-
junctures at which movements organize around poorness. Richard Pithouse thus argues that,
in South Africa, poorness is an important category of identification and mobilization for urban
subalterns, a way of being out of place with proper politics, be it the proper politics dictated
by trade unions or by black consciousness (personal communication). For example, during its
iconic mobilizations, the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was organized as a movement
of the “poor . . . not working class people” (Losier 2015).
Such ways of thinking about the category of “poor” returns us to Castells and the grassroots
of the city, to a consideration of forms of urban politics that are not simply derivative of class-
based movements. But such urban politics cannot necessarily be marked as urban citizenship.
In the previous section, I outlined some of the contingent conditions under which urban citi-
zenship is expressed and negotiated. As a political category, “poorness” exists in relation to the
prescribed and self-inscribed categories of urban citizenship but also exceeds, and possibly defies,
these categories. Building on Pithouse’s provocation I want to suggest that “poorness” might
provide an important entry point for thinking about the relationship between the urban and the
political and for expanding Castells’ theory of the state or even the notion of “political society”
advanced by Chatterjee. Thus, it is worth considering how Pithouse (2012: 485) foregrounds
the “shack settlement as a political site – be it of an assertion of equal humanity, a defence of
clientelism, or xenophobic or homophobic violence.”

It is because it is a site that is not fully inscribed within the laws and rules through
which the state governs society … The unfixed way in which the shack settlement is
indexed to the situation opens opportunity for a variety of challenges … to the official
order of things.
(Pithouse 2012: 485)

In particular, Pithouse (2012: 486) notes that to think about the shack settlement as an impor-
tant political site requires thinking beyond familiar frameworks of historical agency and familiar
tropes of the revolutionary subject: “It is merely to note that a wide range of modes of politics,
including emancipatory politics, does exist in the shack settlement and must be taken as seriously
as any other expression of human agency.” Indeed, he goes further to note that often the quest
for the revolutionary subject has led to a marginalization of the urban poor from the domain of
proper politics: “It is a plain fact that Marxism, whether wielded by states or oppositional left
projects, has often been mobilized to endorse the expulsion of the urban poor from the agora”
(Pithouse 2012: 486). In the concluding section of this essay, I explore how such poor people’s
movements generate a distinctive politics, one that can be understood as the transformation of
waste into the human.
But, once again, the questions of conjuncture and contingency must be raised. Under what
conditions does poorness become the grounds for urban mobilization? In what contexts is such
identification and collective action rendered fragile? Thus, in the case of India, Bhan (2014)
reveals the workings of what he calls the “impoverishment of poverty” – a reduction in the effi-
cacy of poverty and vulnerability as the basis of claims to the elements of citizenship, to resources
and entitlements as well as to a place within narratives of belonging and personhood. Such
impoverishment uses a range of political technologies, for example, the framing of habitation

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and occupation of the city by the urban poor as “encroachment.” Bhan’s analysis stands in con-
trast to Appadurai’s (2007: 33) hopeful exposition of the politics of hope: “the galactic explosion
of civil society movements,” the democratic practices of poor people which express the “capac-
ity to aspire” and thereby rearticulate cities as places of “deep democracy” (Appadurai 2002).

From Waste to Human

In a provocative essay, Gidwani and Reddy (2011: 1642) put forward the concept of “eviscerat-
ing urbanism” as a “diagnostic tool to investigate both urban transformations in metropolitan
India and their associated architectures for managing bodies and spaces designated as ‘wasteful’.”
Conceptualizing the “urban present” as a “post-development social formation,” they argue that the
state no longer has an “ethical engagement” with the poor (Gidwani and Reddy 2011: 1642,
emphasis in the original). This, they note, is a rupture with “governmental power” which “pre-
supposes nominal engagement with the subjects whose lives it seeks to manage and cultivate”
(p. 1640). What is the political when the grassroots of the city has been rendered waste? What
is the theory of the city when superfluity and disposability are at work? When the “poisoned
soil” – Carolina Gaete’s poignant and poetic phrase – is brought into view, can urban social
change still be imagined?
Gidwani and Reddy’s formulation of waste, and lives that are rendered waste, is an important
challenge to theories of urban citizenship, whether they are formulations of insurgency or politi-
cal society, all of which assume an ethical engagement by the apparatuses of the state with the
governed. Yet, drawing on the ideas and practices of poor people’s movements, I want to note
the conditions under which waste is transformed into the human, when the “litigation of rights”
demands ethical engagement, and when poorness becomes not a matter of humiliation but of
collective action. It is thus that in an essay on democracy, Mbembe (2011) issues the invita-
tion to “retrieve the ‘human’ from the history of waste,” insisting upon humanism in a context
shaped by “brutal forms of dehumanization,” including “slavery, colonization, and apartheid.”
Mbembe notes that such ideas of the human cannot derive from the West, by which I take him
to mean Western legacies of liberal democracy. Instead, the traditions of freedom struggles,
Black thought, and decolonization might point to a different possibility of metamorphosis from
waste to human. Indeed, in an essay written in homage to Fanon, Mbembe (2012) pinpoints the
importance of such “metamorphic thought”:

If we owe Fanon a debt it is for his idea that in every human subject there is something
indomitable and fundamentally intangible which no domination – no matter in what
form – can erase, eliminate, contain or suppress, or at least completely. Fanon tried
to grasp how this “something” could be reanimated and brought back to life under
conditions of subjugation.
(Mbembe 2012: 26)

It is this type of metamorphic thought that I find present in the work of poor people’s move-
ments, especially those that, like Blocks Together, seek to advance racial justice and human
rights. Take for example the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign which is steeped in rights-talk.
Eviction blockades and home liberations are waged in the name of defending human rights;
members of the campaign enthusiastically endorse the human rights and global goals frameworks
of the United Nations. At first glance such an emphasis on human rights might seem to be an
expression of global liberalism, precisely the recovery of the human via Western blueprints of
liberal democracy. But Hoover (2015: 1092) argues that the invocation of human rights by the

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Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign must be seen as having “radical potential” because it “uses
the ambiguous but universal identity of ‘humanity’ to make claims on the established terms of
legitimate authority.” He sees this as related to, but distinct from, human rights as a project of
global liberal governance.
Here it is worth returning to the question of historical conjuncture: at which historical
moments do poor people’s movements invoke an international framework of human rights?
Which conjunctures enable, and require, the yoking of militancy and humanism? With these
questions in mind, I want to draw attention to some aspects of the present historical conjuncture
and genres of metamorphic thought. In a provocative articulation, Opal Tometi, one of the
founders of Black Lives Matter, and Gerald Lenoir argue that the movement is not

solely about civil rights … it is about the full recognition of our rights as citizens; and it
is a battle for full civil, social, political, legal economic and cultural rights as enshrined
in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
(Tometi and Lenoir 2015)

What is at stake, they insist, is “a struggle for the human rights and dignity of black people in
the U.S., which is tied to black peoples’ struggle for human rights across the globe” (Tometi
and Lenoir 2015). Here then is a humanism that hinges on, and creates, a global imagination of
struggle. Steeped in the language and practices of decolonization, it asserts an ethics of freedom
that far exceeds the politics of neoliberalization.
But such human rights-talk is also a vitally important political strategy. In my recent research
and alliances with movements such as the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign and the LA
Community Action Network, I seek to uncover how militant urban movements deploy the
framework of international human rights and engage the symbol of the United Nations. That
deployment, it turns out, is a crucial way in which racism in the United States is made legible
not only to global audiences but in fact to American ones. If global liberalism, and its defense
of human rights, is the familiar language of American progressive thought, then these move-
ments strategically invoke such vocabularies to make evident how human rights violations take
place not only “elsewhere” but also “here” – in South Central Los Angeles, on the south side
of Chicago, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
As Miraftab (2009: 36) has noted in the case of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign,
rights-based discourse and even the litigation of rights exist in combination with “informal
survival livelihood practices and with oppositional practices.” These, she notes, range from
blocking and postponing evictions to running soup kitchens to “defiant collective actions such
as reconnection of disconnected services . . . and relocation of evicted families back into their
housing units” to the persistent use of the courts and the legal system. While she describes
the repertoire of practices at work in the South Africa movements, quite similar processes are
also evident in the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. “They use formal spaces when they are
advantageous, and defy them when they prove unjust and limiting. When formal channels
fail, they innovate alternative channels to assert their citizenship rights and achieve a just city”
(Miraftab 2009: 36).
In the case of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, the metamorphosis of waste into
human takes place through the occupation of foreclosed homes, or what the movement calls
home liberations. In other words, human rights, and humanism, are defended through claims
to property. This presents an important puzzle, one also signaled in Castells’ The City and
the Grassroots as he makes note of the ambivalence of certain squatter movements toward
the formalization of land claims. In previous work (Roy 2003, 2014), I have suggested that

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poor people’s movements disrupt but also maintain the ideology of property. From slumd-
weller mobilizations in the global South to homesteading on the American urban frontier,
such movements present claims of rightful occupation and legitimate ownership. In doing so,
they often shed light on the inherent illegality of assured, state-sanctioned property relations,
but they also assert rights to those very same property relations. It is this dilemma that Porter
(2014) dubs “possessory politics,” noting that the “frame of possession” dominates struggles to
challenge dispossession and claim restitution.
Porter’s critique of possessory politics is not simply a concern about the assertion of property
rights or other forms of individual rights. Instead it is about personhood. She asks: “For what is
to become of those who cannot prove their worth across the thresholds of recognition?” (Porter
2014: 12) and thereby reminds us of the subject who is waste, always less than human, super-
fluous. This relationship between property and personhood lies at the heart of poor people’s
movements contesting urban displacement and their forms of metamorphic thought. It is what
haunts the endeavors to create political potentiality amid urban dispossession and displacement.
While it is possible to ponder such questions via Lefebvre, as have quite a few of the current
debates in urban studies, I seek to do so via postcolonial thought as well as via poststructuralist
feminism, in other words through lineages of inquiry that do not take for granted the figure of
the human. In Dispossession: The Performative in the Political, Butler and Athanasiou (2013: 32)
thus ask a vitally important question:

How might claims for the recognition of rights to land and resources, necessarily
inscribed as they are in colonially embedded epistemologies of sovereignty, territory,
and property ownership, simultaneously work to decolonize the apparatus of property
and to unsettle the colonial conceit of proper and propertied human subjectivity?

Butler and Athanasiou additionally ask (2013: 32): “Who or what holds the place of the human?”
Their questions invoke the “sovereign self” not as pretext or precondition but as a problem.
Who is authorized to be this sovereign self? Who has the historical permission for such sover-
eignty? And what are the stable locations from which such a sovereign self can be deployed,
represented, and performed? Who then can claim to be human? Who then can litigate human
rights? The power of poor people’s movements is that they claim humanity for those who have
never been granted historical permission to be human, for those who through processes of
colonization, slavery, and imperialism have been traded as property, for those who are rendered
superfluous in the flows of global capitalism.
It is obvious by now that such rights-talk far exceeds even the most expansive meanings of
the right to the city as derived from Lefebvre. In particular, it reveals the suppressed history
of dehumanization that lies in the shadows of EuroAmerican liberal democracy and radical
thought. That “sanctioned ignorance” – Spivak’s (1999) felicitous phrase – has pervaded urban
studies and its celebration of certain templates of the political. Following Gilroy (1993: 44)
these tropes of urban studies can be understood as “an innocent modernity,” “readily purged of
any traces of the people without history whose degraded lives might raise awkward questions
about the limits of bourgeois humanism.” It is in Black thought, in postcolonial theory, and
in the traditions of decolonization that alternatives might be traced. Gilroy (1993: 55) thus
calls for the history of modernity to “be reconstructed from the slaves’ points of view.” I see
this to be the work of poor people’s movements that are engaged in metamorphic thought.
From South Central Los Angeles to the Cape Flats of Cape Town, South Africa, many of these
movements invoke Fanon’s notion of revolutionary humanism, of a humanity asserted by the
colonized and enslaved.

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Beyond Neoliberalization
In this essay, I have analyzed the imbrication of city, citizenship, and state in order to explore the
political potentialities of what, in homage to Castells, I term the “grassroots of planning.” While
there is a tendency in contemporary theorizations to celebrate the urban as a political ontology
and to conceptualize the urban as a revolutionary subject mobilized by the forces of global neo-
liberalization, I have sought to foreground other instantiations of the relationship between the
urban and the political. In particular, I am interested in how the urban is constituted and lived
as a governmental category. Such an approach requires careful attention to a theory of the state,
which I believe to be one of the most important contributions and yet an oft-ignored aspect of
The City and the Grassroots. But there are at least three ways in which this essay expands Castells’
arguments and its implications for critical inquiry within planning theory.
First, I argue that a theory of the state must be advanced in relation to a theory of the city.
Whether it be the auto-construction of the Brazilian urban periphery, or the South African
shack settlement as a political site, or formations of political society as expressions of urban
claims-making in India, such processes are necessarily urban. I have also suggested that planning,
understood as urban government, mediates this relationship between city and state, whether as
a mode of governing or as expressions of insurgency.
Second, I have insisted on the question of historical conjuncture. My call to consider the
urban as a governmental category is also a call to craft a conceptual framework attentive to
conjuncture and contingency in the contemplation of the relationship between the urban and
the political. Under what historical conditions does the urban become the terrain of govern-
ment and the territory of politics? This is a question to be taken up not only outside the West
but also in relation to the seemingly stable and teleological history of liberal democracy in
the West.
Third, while I have relied on conceptualizations of urban citizenship, I have also argued that
the imaginations and practices of poor people’s movements exceed the formats and tropes of
citizenship. Whether it is “poorness” or revolutionary humanism, the “poisoned soil” of the
city often yields political vocabularies and oppositional practices that mark the limits of liberal
democracy. At a historical moment when decolonization is once again the matter of visible
politics – from city streets to universities – urban planning has an ethical urgency to wage strug-
gle not only against the immediacy of global neoliberalism but also against the long histories of
slavery, colonialism, and apartheid through which planning has been constituted and instituted
around the world.

References
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Chatterjee, P. 2006. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York:
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Pithouse, R. 2012. “Thought Amidst Waste” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47:5, 482–497.
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 13
THE DILEMMAS OF DIVERSITY
Gender, Race and Ethnicity
in Planning Theory

Suzanne Speak and Ashok Kumar

Introduction
Socio-cultural diversity takes many forms. This chapter explores diversity in the forms of gen-
der, race and ethnicity. It considers how theories relating to gender, race and ethnicity have
been absorbed into and expanded on by planning theory.
We recognise that planning theory has brought great insight into the way diversity and ‘oth-
erness’ can be created, supported or constrained by the urban environment. However, we seek
to present evidence of the limited influence of theoretical developments on planning practice.
In particular, the chapter considers how these theories have influenced planning in countries
experiencing rapid economic development and urbanisation resulting in social change and social
and economic marginalisation of certain groups. We refer to these countries as ‘countries of the
South’. However, many of the issues highlighted can equally be seen in cities of Europe, the
USA and other countries that do not fit this pattern (referred to here as of the North).
The chapter looks first at gender theory and gendered planning theory before tracing theory
on race and ethnicity and how this has been adopted by planning. Next we draw some over-
arching critiques and challenges relating to planning theory and diversity. We conclude by
highlighting what we see as the challenges planning theory faces in the 21st century, especially
in light of growing civil unrest and right-wing politics resulting from war, fiscal austerity and
international migration.

Gender Theory
Discussion of gender theory must acknowledge its origins in feminism. As recently as the mid
to late 1970s psychologists were trying to present a biological, ‘scientific justification’ for gender
difference (Hare-Mustin and Marecek 1988). Early feminists fought against this, highlighting
the individual and institutional practices contributing to the reproduction of gender inequality
(Ingraham 1994).
Initial feminist thinking assumed women to be united by their subjugation by men, social
conditioning as girls and their lived experiences, which were perceived as significantly different
from those of men (Lennon and Whitford 1994). The Poststructuralist scholars of the late 20th
century identified a coercive discourse that tied women to an identity and conception of what

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it means to be a woman. However, assuming homogeneity among women overlooks their

inherent empirical differences, based for example on race, age or ethnicity (Hemmings 2005;
Braidotti 1997). Hassim and Gouws (1998: 59) argued that feminist frameworks could not be
universally applied and must be relevant to specific socio-cultural contexts. This is unpacked
well by Agarwal (1994a: 249), who identifies the different standpoints she can take on Northern
feminism, as an educated, privileged Indian woman.
Recognition of the limitations of early feminist thinking, and the realisation that changes to
women’s lives had a corresponding effect on men’s lives, broadened our understanding of the
complexity of socially constructed identities, and the interplay of gender, race and class. By the
late 1980s, there was a shift from focusing on women to theorising gender. Gender relationships
became recognised as central to every aspect of human experience (Kemp and Squires 1998).
The concept has been adopted particularly by sociology and urban geography, where feminist
and gendered enquiries opened up deeper and more critical social enquiry into other forms of
oppression and disempowerment (Ingraham 1994).
There are, however, much broader understandings of the concept of gender. Critical gender
studies also include lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and the trans-gendered states, as these are equally
conditioned by, and performed within, social relations (Connell 1987). Butler expresses these
different genders as a ‘heterosexual matrix’: ‘that grid of cultural intelligibility through which
bodies, genders and desires are naturalized’ (Butler 1990: 115). Waites (2005), however, explores
the matrix phenomenologically, cautioning that an individual’s ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender
identity’ should not be considered as either a definitive natural psychological condition, or as
irrevocably socially constructed.

Gender and Planning Theory

As more women began to work outside the home, feminist epistemology of the late 1960s
and 1970s generated insight into women’s experience of and access to the city, housing, pub-
lic transport or the public realm (Hooper 1992). They also made visible the way in which
these experiences served to further their subordination (Ritzdorf 1995; Milroy 1991). Indeed,
Markusen (1980) argued that urban policy should be a target for feminist critique.
A challenge to the role the planned city plays in reinforcing gendered roles was voiced by
Hayden (1980), asking ‘what would a non-sexist city be like?’ In doing so, she called for a new
paradigm of the home, neighbourhood and city that would support women’s changing roles.
The importance of Hayden’s question for women is obvious. However, of equal importance
was the fact that this began to break apart the perceived dichotomy between city and suburb,
between productive and reproductive spaces. Reviewing socialist-feminist studies of the interface
between production and reproduction in space, Milroy (1991) noted that men’s and women’s
activities do not, in reality, fit easily into that dichotomy but play out more along a continuum.
In the early 1990s, theorists began considering the role of feminist and gendered approaches
in reconstructing the very nature of the planning discipline (Sandercock and Forsyth 1992).
Hooper (1992: 49), concerned about what she saw as continued marginalisation of contempo-
rary feminist ideology within planning theory, argued that feminist contributions could have
a ‘revitalizing, transformative effect on planning theory and practice’. Both Hendler (1994)
and Ritzdorf (1995) challenged planners to question societal norms, arguing for greater use of
feminist ethics. Hendler (2005) went on to identify the need for a specific feminist code to both
understand what the profession is about and to support planners to make ethical choices. Greed
(1993), however, saw planning’s gender blindness as the manifestation of stronger societal forces
and the discriminatory attitudes of dominant groups seeking to render others powerless.

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Gendered planning theory was, and we assert remains, largely predicated on a Northern
understanding of women’s lives. However, by the mid to late 1980s, gender conscious approaches
to planning were becoming evident in development literature focusing on the Global South.
Moser (1993), discussing a broad range of gender issues within the context of low income
countries, recognised that women in those countries generally had triple roles, performing
domestic-reproductive, productive and community management roles. Rakodi (1991) made
suggestions for more gender sensitive approaches to the planning of transport, land, shelter and
infrastructure in the Global South. However, she went further in highlighting that ideas of male
superiority and patriarchal control, embodied within the colonial state, had continued post-
independence. We argue that this lives on today in the planning policy and practice of many
post-colonial nations. Wieringa (1998) criticised the way in which the realities of women’s lives
in the Global South were being ‘bent’ to fit planning theoretical frameworks. We agree that
they are certainly bent to fit planning’s agendas in many countries of the South.
Modernist planning principles, geared toward market demands, have been widely adopted
by countries of both the global North and South. In India, for example, the satellite cities of
Dwarka in Delhi and Gurgaon in Haryana but close to Delhi both provide housing in gated
estates. In both areas retail facilities are clustered separately, away from housing. Public trans-
port is minimal and assumes that the occupants will drive to shops or to work, which, in India,
remains a male domain for the middle classes. These communities play directly to concerns
about deteriorating urban environment and fear of rape and violence toward women in the
city. Only the ubiquity of the motorcar among the middle classes, saves women from complete
isolation but now the fear is of carjacking between islands of perceived safety – another gated
estate or the city centre in daylight.
Conversely, for the urban poor, work is not only a male domain and women’s work is critically
important for household livelihoods. As they are predominantly of lower caste, urban poor women
are, as Deshpande (2002) argues, doubly disadvantaged, being both poor and having to observe
the performance of respectability more associated with such castes. However, in Delhi, many have
been relocated from city centre slums to the Municipal relocation colonies. One such colony,
Bhalaswa Jahangir Puri, some 15 kilometres from the city centre, will eventually consist of 18,000
three- or five-storey walk-up apartments. It is reminiscent of early Northern, peripheral, isolated,
social housing estates. Work and livelihoods, easily and safely accessible from the city slums, are
now too distant for a woman to reach safely, respectably or economically (Speak 2011, 2012).
As in many other cities of the South, public transport in Delhi can be unsafe for women.
Delhi’s approach to encourage women to use the very efficient Metro system was to put a
‘women’s carriage’ on each train, furthering exclusion. The Metro does not reach Bhalaswa but
in any case, a woman has to be able to first reach the station safely and second afford the fare.
Thus, planning in Delhi, like many other post-colonial cities, has failed to address the disem-
powering, even threatening, nature of the urban realm for women. It continues to substantiate
Tinker’s (1990) concerns about women’s persistent inequalities in the face of development.
These settlements discussed above completely overlook feminist planners’ critiques of suburban
neighbourhoods as being too rigidly zoned to allow for diverse land uses, isolated, car depend-
ent and lacking a sense of place. Both trap women in location and domestic activity, entirely
perpetuate male dominated urban environment and perceived gender roles and reinforce per-
formance of respectability through seclusion. Indeed, one might argue that in these Indian
cases, planning has not given women improved access to what still remains a socio-spatial world
founded on masculine norms, let alone challenged those norms or offered alternatives. These
cases demonstrate that planning in India still sees women as a homogenous group, despite their
inherent differences of race, ethnicity, caste or income.

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In many countries of the South, planning’s adoption of rational, modernising agendas

impacts on women’s livelihood strategies. As Payne and Majale (2004) note, ill-conceived regu-
latory frameworks, often underpinned by a belief in modernisation, render traditional forms
of compound housing illegal in favour of nuclear family, villa style dwellings. In some parts of
Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, such housing does away with secure, private external space,
where women in secluding societies can be at ease, safe from the view of strangers. From the
same premise, the upgrading of informal or poor settlements also often brings with it a series
of zoning regulations that prohibit certain home-based economic activities so often vital for
women’s livelihoods (Tipple 2005).
However, there are countries of the South where any attempt at gender sensitive planning
is even more constrained by political, institutional and cultural misogyny. Speak (2005) suggests
that despite growing acceptance of international conventions, such as the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), many countries of the
South have failed to undertake action to ensure women’s and girls’ rights to land and property,
the fundamental tools of planning. Where women’s land rights are enshrined in law, the com-
plexity of customary, religious and constitutional laws often prevents women from owning land.
This is true in Uganda and Swaziland, for example, where many women still do not have equal
rights to buy or inherit land or property (Asiimwe 2014). As Agarwal (1994c), writing on rural
women’s lack of land rights in India, notes, until women’s land and property rights are upheld,
planning cannot possibly produce gender sensitive cities.

Race and Ethnicity

Race and ethnicity are concepts frequently used without definition, but the terms need untan-
gling. Race categorises populations or groups on the basis of physical characteristics, generally
derived from genetic ancestry. Ethnicity, however, refers to the way in which groups of people
identify with each other on the basis of common nationality or shared cultural or religious tradi-
tions (Smedley and Smedley 2005).
Until the early 20th century, the concept of race was firmly located in a biological rationality,
as gender had been (Markus 2008). Winant (2000) suggests that the concept of race is arguably a
European invention, developed with, and in support of, the rise of a world political economy. It
helped rationalise the abuse of one group of people to support the economic goals of another. A
belief in white European supremacy justified, for example, the trade in slaves across the Atlantic
or the domination of natives by the East India Company. However, ethnicity has long been
used as justification for abuse and exclusion within racial groups, as witnessed, for example, by
both pre- and post-colonial Hindu–Muslim violence in India (Chakrabarty 1994). However,
Blanton, Mason and Athow (2001) argue that even inter-racial ethnic conflict in some parts of
Africa can only be understood in relation to the different forms of ethnic stratification, left by
contrasting forms of colonial rule.
Du Bois’ (1903) early work on race offered the concept of the ‘double consciousness’ of black
people, which, as Winant (2004) argues: ‘both afflicts and transfigures the black soul: dividing its
experience and self-awareness, “introjecting” racism into the racially oppressed self’ (Winant 2004: 1).
Presenting ‘black’ as an overriding identity, condemns the black man or woman to see them-
selves within the perceived constraints of that identity and to seek to be free of them. In 1905
Washington suggested that Black Americans’ agency was to be earned by material and financial
success through which they would ‘buy-in’ to a white world (Schrager 1996). This echoes the
way in which early feminist thinking sought to enable women to access a male world while
offering no alternative paradigm.

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In the mid-1960s, race riots in the USA added power to the American Civil Rights
Movement. By the time of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Loevy 1990) racial struggles had
begun to encompass recognition of African American identity. More subtle, institutional forms
of racism led to the development of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the USA (Bell 1995). CRT
highlighted racism’s structural foundations (Crenshaw 1995), reframing issues of oppression as
both social and institutional. However, CRT is open to criticism about its own critical peda-
gogy (see, for example, Ladson-Billings 1998).
In Britain, arrival of Caribbean immigrants in 1948, as the answer to post-war labour short-
ages, made race more visible. From the 1970s, increasing migration made racial and ethnic
difference more nuanced within British society, raising discussions of the supremacy of ‘white-
ness’. This is increasingly relevant today in relation to migration within the European Union.
For example, Fox (2013: 1) notes the way in which some Eastern European migrants use their
‘putative whiteness’ to gain racial supremacy over other immigrants.
However, just as Waites (2005) suggests that gender is not necessarily fixed, it appears that in
some senses, elements of ethnic or religious identity might be similarly mutable. This chapter is
written at a time when protesters from the Gujjar tribe of India are demanding they be effectively
downgraded as one of India’s ‘scheduled tribes’, made up largely of the former ‘untouchables’
with whom they would not normally have wished to be associated. In this way they would
benefit from reserved jobs and educational places.

Race, Ethnicity and Planning Theory

The Chicago School of Urban Sociology began theorising race in relation to planning of
American cities by 1945 (Pacione 2002). Concentric Zone Theory argued that, as demand
for housing by poor immigrant labourers increased, it pushed middle- and high-income white
populations to outer rings of a city. It associated multiple negative aspects of city life with
immigrants and ethnic minorities without considering causes. The theory was criticised for its
physical determinism by both Castells (1972) and Harvey (1973). Nevertheless, it continued
to be used, for example to analyse the sprawling growth of Ibadan, Nigeria (Splansky 1966) or
black townships in South Africa (Beavon 1982).
Scholars identified that urban policy makers were producing segregation between social
groups based on class, race and/or ethnicity, through policies relating to housing, public space
and land use (Smith 1989; Eyles 1990). By the mid-1990s growing cultural and ethnic diversity
in the global North demanded a shift away from procedural approaches in planning, which
Fenster (1996) argued are mainly concerned with difference if it interferes with that which is
planned for. A new paradigm of pluralism was developing in many, although not all, Northern
countries which acknowledged the rights of diverse groups to have their ethnic differences
understood and respected. Recognising the logic and rationales upon which differences are
based, Watson (2003, 2006) offers some of the most valuable considerations of what these dif-
ferences, and conflicts between them, might mean for planning. Unfortunately, respect for
difference too often has to give way to political and economic demands. It is questionable, for
example, whether an ethnically nuanced understanding of ‘adequate housing’ can override an
authority’s need to capitalise on increasing land values by maximising density and minimising
construction cost, as is discussed below.
Throughout the 1990s communicative planning came to dominate planning theory. Healey
(1992) suggests that it has at its heart the promotion of social justice, requiring planners to
understand social diversity and its rationality in order to arrive at a consensus as the basis for
decision making. There are a number of critiques of communicative rationality pertinent to

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issues of diversity. It is questionable whether there can ever exist a democratic context in which
Habermasian communicative consensus might allow anyone to question the claims of anyone
else. Some suggest that such a communicative process might actually negate diversity and dif-
ference, hence it can only potentially work in, or to produce, a monoculture (for example,
see Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger 1998). Others, however, note that consensus might not
necessarily counter an acceptance of difference as long as parties agree to concur with positions
that they cannot refute (Poster 1989).
There are criticisms that communicative or collaborative planning is too strongly focused on
the process to the detriment of outcomes, that it assumes an equal voice among disparate and
diverse parties and overlooks the power structures both within and between communities and
within planning itself (Beauregard 1998). However, for this work, perhaps the most pertinent
criticisms come from Huxley and Yiftachel (1998: 7) who have criticised communicative planning
theory for its Anglo-American or Northern stance. They argue, and we agree, that communica-
tive planning does little to overturn the modernist assumptions of planning ‘as an unproblematic
global activity, adhering to similar rationale and logic everywhere it is found’. Nevertheless, com-
municative planning did contribute to a rethinking of the role of planning and planners and press
for the importance of a multiplicity of knowledges. It called for planners to engage in dialogue and
negotiate with minorities based on multiple epistemologies (Sandercock 1998).
Watson (2006) recognised, however, that difference exists not only between social or ethnic
groups but between the people and governments. It is here where a pluralist paradigm fails, in
that we are yet to see a true politics of diversity. Indeed, governments are increasingly driven by
their own ethno-nationalist ideals or by dominant, increasingly neo-liberal values (Falah 1989;
Yiftachel 1991, 2006; Bollens 1998). Thus, in some countries, far from upholding the right to
difference, planning operates as a tool of government to obliterate it. What Fernandes (2004)
calls the ‘politics of forgetting’ sees ethnic and other marginalised groups become hidden and
invisible both within national political discourse and literally. This is done by reshaping urban
space either to further specific ethnic or racial supremacy (Yiftachel 2006) or to pander to the
demands of the market (Escobar 1995) and further what Schuurman (2000: 10) considers as ‘a
global, exploitative capitalism’. In many cases, this drives the eviction or relocation of diverse
ethnic communities through processes of ‘spatial purification’ (Sibley 1995: 78).
This is particularly evident in India, where economic growth has given rise to major cor-
porate developments displacing many hundreds of thousands of poorer people, their structures
and cultures. In Delhi, a city of multiple ethnicities, planning’s aim is for economic growth and
‘world class city’ status. Expansion, modernisation and privatisation see the laying down of what
Speak (2014) refers to as a ‘new urban orthodoxy’, within which behaviour and culture of poor
migrant settlers are as much the target of planning as are their spaces and physical structures. This
crystallises in the case of the informal settlement of Kathputli.
The settlement was established in the early 1970s by artisans and performers from Rajasthan
(Banda, Vaidya and Adler 2013). Originally in a relatively peripheral location of limited develop-
ment value. As the city expanded the community found itself occupying prime development land.
Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has kept a watchful eye on the Kathputli settlement for
many years. Eventually, using the agendas of adequate housing and improvement, DDA planned
an in-situ upgrading project to ‘rehabilitate’ and relocate the community into a 15-storey apart-
ment block. Eviction and relocation, although frequently unjust in themselves, are not the key
points here. What is pertinent is the couching of the upgrading in terms of ‘rehabilitation’ and
the form of accommodation planned for the community. One artisan noted: ‘Our art dictates our
lifestyle and our lifestyle is our identity; the lifestyle of a multi-storey concrete building is not for
us’ (Bhowmik 2014).

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We can see from this case that planning in Delhi, as in so many other cities of the South,
has not engaged with pluralism at all. Nor has planning considered the impact of its actions but
focused entirely on the product, the criteria for which are dictated by economics, rather than
social justice. The ethnic and cultural nuances of Kathputli, and other settlements like it, are
subsumed by authorities into an overarching ethnicity of poverty and multiple deprivation. This
is used to categorise residents in support of the authority’s agenda of economic development and
modernisation. The resulting planning prescriptions undermine the rationality of long held ways
of life and livelihood, either destroying them or imprisoning them in inappropriate solutions.
Those inappropriate solutions are overtly used to constrain and render invisible a group of peo-
ple whose ethnic lifestyles do not fit an unfolding middle class model of the city by normalising
not only the physical housing but also the behaviour of its residents.
In some respects the area might be seen to be epitomising Yiftachel’s (2009) ‘grey space’, in
that it is informal and has existed under a form of ‘permanent temporariness’ (p. 90). We agree
also that the authorities saw it as a place to ‘be corrected’, as expressed through the discourse of
‘rehabilitation’. However, we find Yiftachel’s concept does not quite fit our experience. We
do not see these spaces as being totally excluded from, or in the shadow of, the city polity and
economy. In many cases, in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan at least, they are strongly engaged
with, and influential in, the formal polity and governance, through patronage, vote banking and
other forms of reciprocity, which very often involve issues of planning and resource. They also
have an integral role in the formal economy and the provision of services, such as dry waste
control. This gives such places power to negotiate to a greater or lesser extent around issues of
planning and resource (Bari 2016). We do accept the limitations of that power, however.
We caution, however, that disrespect for ethnic preferences is not only found in the Global
South. Ethnic conflicts around planning and land are common also in Europe and the USA.
A number of scholars have discussed, for example, the treatment of Gypsy and Traveller or
Roma communities in Europe, noting that their lifestyles and housing preferences are often
perceived by authorities, and presented by the media, as deviant (Sigona 2005).

Critiques and Dilemmas

There have now been decades of rhetoric within planning theory about the importance of
understanding and accommodating difference. We agree with Sandercock (1995) about the
cultural specificity of social justice and accept, therefore, that diversity must be accommodated
within this specificity. However, in accepting that as basis for critique we establish a conun-
drum. While we are instinctively arguing against the imposition of normative values, a great
deal of what planning theory has ‘achieved’ in relation to diversity is itself driven by, and has
indeed emboldened, those values that are now normative within the largely Northern contexts
where that theory was developed. It is indeed normative to argue that diversity should be accom-
modated, that gender equality is right and that ethnicity should not be discriminated against.
Although we agree with all three suppositions, there are very many in the world who would
not, but planning theory has not presented a framework to accommodate this clash of values.
Planning theory remains driven by an educated elite with a largely coherent and arguably
predominantly Northern sensitivity and value system. We should not reject existing theory,
nor accept it uncritically, simply because of this. However, there is an urgent need for planning
theory developed by and for other value systems. This might seem to suggest that, in an extreme
scenario, we could end up with different theories for different countries, cultures and peoples.
In an increasingly globalised society this would be unworkable. However, we do suggest that
the development of theory should be a dialectic, evolving in ways that enrich, refine, transform

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or even dispute the original theory. Indeed, values themselves are not static but constantly
evolving as they encounter other values. Planning theory is important here as Rosenberg (2008)
suggests that theories in social science have a role to play in influencing values.
However, planning practice and theory is, perhaps, too rooted in normative ethical reason-
ing about the right way to make things better, with little consideration of the validity of those
ethical judgements. We suggest that this requires us to step back from normative ethical frame-
works for deciding on the fair and just processes and outcomes of planning, to scrutinise how
we have arrived at our concept of fair and just. Winkler and Duminy (2014) unpack this well,
drawing on Meta-ethics, a branch of moral philosophy that demands a reconsideration of the
very nature of what is good, better, just. They point out that there is an assumption that ‘planners
know the nature and meaning of “better”’(p. 3).
Seen from a normative ethical stance, the danger is that this might drive planning theory
away from tolerance and accommodation of diversity and toward different judgements of dis-
crimination, normative in other contexts. It will certainly generate conflicts and concerns that
Northern scholars might find uncomfortable. For example, this work has argued in favour of
gender sensitive planning. However, that argument grows from a series of ethical assumptions,
about equality, fairness and human rights, which most scholars, including the two authors, do
not wish to entertain as anything other than absolute truths without scrutinising our deepest
basis for that belief.
McIntyre’s ‘disquieting suggestion’ (2013) is helpful for the discussion above. He describes
a fictitious world in which genuine scientific knowledge has been lost yet pseudo scientists
continue to misuse and confuse science’s ideas and language unquestioningly presenting it as
objective reasoning. Although contestation and counter theories exist, they are all based on the
same invalid and confused language, logic and knowledge. This is valuable in two ways.
First, it prompts us to consider what happens when the basis of our ‘knowledge’ is lost. This
is helpful at a time when the contexts from which theory on diversity grew (deep misogyny,
intense racial discrimination and segregation) are less visible, if not necessarily less experienced,
within Northern societies.
Second, Macintyre suggests that the contemporary language of morality and ethics is in a
similar state to the language of science in the imaginary world. It cannot be challenged effec-
tively because objective challenges are themselves constrained by the state of knowledge and
language.
The need for planning theory to revisit the grounding for its ideas on diversity is made
evident by the fact that much recent planning theory is guilty of homogenising difference by
referring to gender, race and cultural diversity collectively. Moreover, in revisiting the origins
of our values, we may identify a greater commonality among core human values than current
socio-political struggles around the world would suggest. For example, Agarwal (1994b) noted
a significant cross cutting of ideas among global feminist thought. This does not, however, over-
come the problems that many may still not accept feminism at all.
Lessons might also be drawn from Arkaraprasertkul’s (2010: 128) concept of ‘Crypto-
urbanism’, which refers to urban activities, and we would add cultural behaviours, which rest
‘at the border between the acceptable and unacceptable’. They might not be desirable to many
but they are essentially what allows a rich and multi-valued society to exist. Crypto-urbanism
is valuable for exploring issues of diversity because as Mishra (2016: 94) suggests it ‘questions
the whole gamut of prevalent moral understandings’. Crypto-urbanism is very strongly associ-
ated with place and the specific locations within which these contentious activities take place,
indeed, literally in some cases, ‘take the place’. It might, therefore, address concerns about the
diminution of place as a key element in social analysis of gender, race or ethnicity (Dirlik 2000).

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Planning education must also accept its own role in developing new theories and approaches
to managing social justice under pressure from politics and the market. By the Indian co-
author’s own admission, planning education in India maintains the dominance of the architect
or urban designer planner and does too little to engage students around issues of ethnicity,
gender or power. Indeed, theorising these issues in many countries makes a very difficult and
self-critical reading of how these aspects are socially practised and performed in the city.
In some, although not all, countries what is taught of planning theory is only that generated
in the North from an Anglo-US tradition. Watson (2008: 118) notes the suggestions of one
UN advisor that: ‘African universities should restructure themselves to become engines of local
“community development”, working closely with the private sector’.
If this suggestion was followed there would be no academic arena for the production of con-
text-specific theory in Africa. Moreover, without the development of theory for that cultural
context, there would be nothing to challenge the dominance of existing theory more generally.
Healey (2013: 1513), discussing the international transfer of planning ideas, suggests that criti-
cal practitioners of the South have, in the past, struggled to be heard and we fear many still do.

Conclusion
Arguments for the celebration of difference have failed to find a convincing theoretical frame-
work to help practitioners mediate the multiple and conflicting demands on land, resources or
the environment that lead to social injustice. Unless it does so theory will become even more
disconnected from practice than it already is, especially in the South, where the demand for
rapid economic growth often overshadows concern for justice.
However, in both North and South, in the 21st century the fallout from war and civil con-
flict in Africa and the Middle East has produced critically high levels of migration and asylum
seeking. At the same time, in Europe and the USA, we are witnessing increasingly right-wing
politics. The certainties of adequate housing, welfare provision and employment are diminishing
rapidly. The relative plenty that has underpinned tolerance of a pluralist society is under threat,
making Bollens’ (2002) fractured public interest increasingly evident. As a result social tensions
within our cities are reawakening as different groups jostle for position in a hierarchy of ethnic
acceptability or economic rights. In Europe, concerns about radicalisation and terrorism take on
a spatial dimension as the spotlight falls on specific cities and neighbourhoods within them. In
the UK, right-wing political murmurings can be heard about gender rights, for example in rela-
tion to employment legislation. Never before has it been so important for planning to engage
with diversity in pursuit of socially just cities at all scales (Speak and Kumar 2016; Davoudi and
Bell 2016). It is important, therefore, not simply for planning theory to acknowledge or celebrate
diversity but to learn from countries that have experienced the conflicts of diversity for longer.

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 14
POSTCOLONIAL
CONSEQUENCES AND
NEW MEANINGS
Libby Porter

Introduction
No matter the definition applied among the many hundreds possible, ‘planning’ as it is con-
ceived in contemporary scholarship and practice is undeniably a Western concept and practice.
This is not to say that ‘planning’, in the more broadly conceived sense of organizing people-
place relations, does not happen within, or is irrelevant to, other philosophies and cultures. But
the fundamental concepts we work with in the field (the state, property, space, governance, civil
society, markets, regulation) derive their central tenets from Western presumptions about what
is in the world, and therefore what can be known and ordered. Maori scholar Hirini Matunga
reminds us that planning is “an imperial scholarly discipline and colonial practice located in the
‘West’” (2013).
Given the dizzying scale of European imperialism, and the central complicity of planning in
the colonial processes of accumulating territory, planning theory can hardly expect to remain
unchallenged and unchanged by critiques ‘from below’ that have emerged from these relations
of colonial power. This chapter provides theoretical lenses for and upon planning that derive
from and are inspired by those critiques and the concepts they articulate. I provide a combined
reading across a range of scholarly literatures including settler-colonial studies, postcolonial
theory, and critical Indigenous theories. Reading all of these under the awkward phrase, ‘post-
colonial theorizing’, I argue that they offer a necessary approach for planning to see, explain and
transform situations where colonial power relations are present and where planning is enrolled
in colonial processes of domination and subjugation.
The chapter proceeds with a very brief sketch of these fields of scholarship, and some
qualifications and clarifications. I then set out what I see as the primary points of departure
and ethico-political commitments of postcolonial theorizing. Read into planning, such points
of departure throw into sharp relief key questions about: difference and identity; land and spa-
tiality; and representation, resistance and recognition. Three substantive sections discuss each
in turn before pointing in the final section to areas of work that offer possibilities for ways of
theorizing planning that de-privilege colonial viewpoints.

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Postcolonial Theorizing: A Short Overview and Some Qualifications

Postcolonial critiques seek a critical cognizance of colonial relations of power and the operation
of imperialist ideologies by deploying concepts and philosophical lineages that try to render the
familiar strange (Sheppard et al. 2013). This achieves what Ananya Roy calls “paying attention
to the ways in which the field of action is structured by imperial practices” (2006, p. 8). There is
a strong focus on discourse, cultural analysis, and deconstructive criticism, or what Judith Butler
has elsewhere called a “variable practice of reading” (Butler 2000, p. 136).
While the fields of debate are diverse enough to defy a reductive representation, there are
some core projects and concepts that can be discerned. One is an insistence that Western cate-
gories, concepts and histories obscure colonial relations of domination and subjugation, because
they see ‘from the West’ and occlude the West’s own cultural position of power (see Guha
1998; Chakrabarty 2000; Spivak 1985; Connell 2007). In doing so, Western perspectives are
not only privileged, that privilege is operationalized as normal and indeed natural. The West
comes to exist in contra-distinction from its Other, always defined in a relation of subjugation
and domination (on these points see Said 1978, 1993; Fanon 1963, 1967; Spivak 1994, Spivak
1996). This has both material and psycho-affective consequences for colonized peoples. Not
only does it result in the dispossession of land and the economic subjugation and geographic
marginalization of colonized people, it also produces, as Fanon (1967) argued, a certain kind
of subjectivity and identification of colonized peoples with colonial rule. Consequently, the
system of colonial power is reproduced not only through the material operations of power but
also through the way that colonized peoples identify with the forms of recognition that maintain
colonial rule (Fanon 1967).
An important commitment in postcolonial theorizing is to instate and insert definitions,
voices, epistemologies and theories ‘from below’ that challenge and unsettle the dominance
of Western modes of knowledge production and the processes of Othering in the service of
hegemony. Debates in Subaltern Studies have sought to reframe the agency of colonized subal-
terns, though not without extensive critique (see, for example, the masterful critique by Chibber
2013). Settler-colonial studies and critical Indigenous studies bring a critical acumen to fields
that have had an orientalizing and naturalizing approach to the production of knowledge about
and of, rather than by and for, Indigenous people (Coulthard 2014; Moreton-Robinson 2000;
Simpson 2014; Smith 1999; Cowlishaw et al. 2006; Watson 2002). In so doing, they seek to
recover Indigenous histories and knowledge in an anti/de-colonial stance.
I acknowledge that the term postcolonial theorizing over-simplifies, and might even distort,
the diverse set of literatures and theoretical perspectives that I sketch here. This chapter is also
heavily colored by my own interests, life story and perspective, and so the chapter speaks most
closely perhaps to settler-colonial contexts (and especially British settler states) than other colonial
contexts. I cannot include every author, much less every important author – exclusions are not
a comment by default. I have tried to overcome these necessary shortcuts, omissions and skewed
perspectives by discussing the threads that offer real illumination for planning theory. Readers will
find my characterization in this chapter rather too abstracted, hardly a service to the depth of the
discussions that are actually present in each sub-field and so I urge readers to make their own way
into these debates. Hopefully this chapter helps point the way.
In regard to definitions, I reject the use of the term ‘postcolonial’ as a unified theory, or sin-
gular body of work. Most importantly, I reject the definition of the ‘post’ as signaling a moment
in time, a historical break articulated at a moment of national independence or the divestment of
formal colonial rule. My use of the ‘post’ in postcolonial does not mean after, despite persistent
and mostly unhelpful debates about that question. Colonialism does not have an end-date, even

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if the prefix ‘post’ is used as the framework for discussion. It is a present and contemporary phe-
nomenon. Nor is it a geographical site, although it certainly has a geography.
Rather, postcolonial theorizing in the way I use it in this chapter is as a mode of critical
inquiry. This explains my awkward use of the verb ‘theorizing’, the purpose of which is to draw
attention to core political and conceptual commitments to the work of theoretical practice: to
expose how colonial relations of power are constituted and reformulated, and with what effects
for colonized peoples. It is to signal a way of asking questions, conceptualizing the specifically
imperialist modes of power evident in so many situations around the world with which planning
is engaged and consequential.

Seeing from Elsewhere: The Ethico-Political Commitment

of Postcolonial Theorizing
Colonialism is a contemporary, persistent phenomenon. This means that any planning activity,
interaction, policy, mediation or conflict that occurs in a context where colonial relations of
domination are present is already saturated with all of the complex, ambiguous, hybrid and con-
tested issues to which postcolonial theorizing draws our attention. Consequently, excavating,
making visible and in so doing destabilizing the discursive and material operations of planning
in the service of colonization are essential.
A central part of this work is to expose how the West produces its Others, through discursive
and material practices. Using the verb ‘orientalizing’, Edward Said (1978) unraveled what had
been long accepted as normal geopolitically determined social categories – the West and the
rest, with the West at the pinnacle and the rest subservient and available for study, labor, and
appropriation. Recognizing this effect, as Said inspired an entire generation of work to do, then
rightly demands a serious questioning of the categories and presumptions of Western thinking
because they can now be seen as fundamentally obscuring certain relations of power.
This particular conceptual and empirical commitment has found some purchase in urban studies
and to some degree also in planning (Robinson 2006; Watson 2006, 2009; Roy 2011). The notion
that theory and praxis can come from elsewhere – from ‘the South’, from insurgent practice, from
anticolonial struggles – means that concepts of the urban and of planning can be reformulated,
allowing different definitions, practices, issues, composition and methods to be foregrounded.
Raewyn Connell has called this ‘Southern Theory’ (2007), a project that rejects the homogeneous
domains of knowledge as not merely false (although that too) but enrolled in the service of power.
This critique is of an urban theory approach that universalizes and extrapolates its explanatory
categories. This is much more significant than simply a call for doing more urban and planning
research in lots of different places to include more cities under the purview of urban theory.
Rather, the assertion is that this is a theoretical blindness arising from an imperialist presumption
that only the West can produce a proper form of urbanization, and all other types of experience
are diminished as either different from the proper typology and norm of city development, or
as interesting case studies of something different. Thus, urban theory has been found to be par-
ticularly wanting in its assumption that the political economy of globalization over-determines
all urban process everywhere, which connects postcolonial theorizing with work that demands
taking seriously the more-than-capitalist processes that structure relations of domination such
as racism, gendering and colonialism. This critique has been mounted not only in the places
where researchers study, but also operate in the very locations at which scholarly knowledge is
sanctioned and legitimized. To this end, some debates in postcolonial urbanism have been criti-
cized for merely locating interesting cases of subaltern resistance and agency (Ong 2011), rather

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than relocating the sites of theorization, an ongoing theme for debate in urban geography (see
Robinson 2016; Derickson 2015) that is reigniting earlier calls (Chakrabarty 2000) for scholar-
ship to ‘confront its Euro-centricity’ (Robinson 2016, p. 7).
These debates bring into view the complicity of urban theory and its categories with impe-
rial ideologies. They expose the normalizing discourses of improvement and benevolence
intrinsic to contemporary urban theory. Poor cities, under this purview, require improvement.
Improvement means to become more like wealthy Western cities. Western city experience
and expertise will help those Othered poor cities to get there. Such normalizing discourses are
evident in both contemporary urban scholarship and urban practice. Categorizations such as
formal/informal (Roy 2005; Al-Sayyad & Roy 2003), global city and megacity (Roy 2011),
planned and impossible cities (Roy 2009) are not innocent categories of analysis. They are
projects of power/knowledge, uniting apparently static analytical categories with discourses of
developmentalism and improvement.
Planning, and our theorizing of it, have been equally charged as having a “duplicitous rela-
tionship to processes of capitalist accumulation and liberal notions of benevolent trusteeship”
(Rankin 2010, p. 183). The categories of state, citizenship, property and law that we regard
as both normal and normative in planning theory miserably fail in the face of quite different
organizations of social life in other contexts as the work of scholars such as Vanessa Watson has
shown (2008, 2009, 2012, 2014). My own work has attempted to show the limits of planning
theory in the face of deep-running conflict over land and sovereignty in settler-colonial contexts
(Porter 2010; Porter & Barry 2015, 2016). Theories of governance, state action, deliberation
and civil society that misrecognize these contexts not only have little purchase, when dressed
up as universalizing standards for planning thinking they work in the service of hegemony. But
what should we make of this theoretical commitment to difference?

Identity and Difference in Postcolonial Theorizing

Difference exists. Regardless of what it is that makes difference real in the world, it is clear
that our experiences of the world are shaped by our position within that world. Postcolonial
theorizing seeks to analyze the way colonial hegemony constructs difference in the ser-
vice of its own power. In this way, difference is mobilized not as a descriptive category of
sociological or anthropological interest but as a mode through which power operates. The
construction of a core subject position and its Other is quite obviously a relation of power
in which planning is also engaged. The demarcation of the urban poor in the majority
world as ‘informal’, ‘slum’, ‘illegal’ as against the formal, regularized, legal and proper (Varley
2013; Roy 2005); the imposition of Western planning systems upon Indigenous societies
and cultures because the latter are seen to have intrinsically inferior modes of socio-spatial
governance (Porter 2010); the appropriation of essentialized cultural traits in the service of
urban development (Anderson 1991; Jacobs 1992) – all are clear indications of the Othering
processes of planning.
Postcolonial theorizing seeks to disrupt those binaries and does so with at least three politi-
cal projects with significance for planning. First, is to expose Othering as a relation of power
where stereotypes of ‘culture’ serve to maintain racial, cultural and geopolitical orders of power.
Developmentalist presumptions say less about local conditions than they do about Western
perspectives about what there is and should be in the world. Logics of improvement and better-
ment, based on a stigmatization and Othering of difference serve not only the colonial frontier,
but also the frontierist ideologies of urban renewal and redevelopment.

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Second, is to demote Western cultures from their status as not-a-culture (Latour 1991).
An essential part of the argument and struggle against the dizzying levels of colonial disposses-
sion and subjugation, has been to illuminate the cultural modes and norms specific to Western
worldviews in practicing that dispossession. Important conceptual debates have been made in
this regard by Indigenous scholars, who have successfully demonstrated that there are in fact
two systems of law, government, culture and economy – indeed two sovereignties – present in
settler-colonial states (Coulthard 2014; Alfred & Corntassel 2005; Watson 2015; Dodson 1994;
Langton 2002). My own work has tried to demonstrate that the particular spatial rationalities
that operate within planning are no less a cultural artifact than the specific spatial rationalities that
operate within Indigenous societies (Porter 2007, 2010). Many of the universalizing conceits
that operate within planning theory today are derived from being able to artificially remove
from planning any hint of its own cultural specificity. Consequently, to hold planning properly
to account for its complicity in colonial (and especially settler-colonial) projects of dispossession,
first of all demands that we take seriously that planning comes from a cultural perspective – it is
not a view from nowhere.
Third is to reclaim and restore those subjectivities and voices that have been marked as dif-
ferent (and thus subjugated), so that they can speak on their own terms. Much work has been
done on making visible the invisible histories and stories of planning theory and praxis and thus
deconstructing the modernist pillars of planning (Sandercock 1995, 1998), and recovering other
voices that are speaking to, and about, planning (Sandercock & Attili 2010). The vitality of
Indigenous planning has been especially important (Jojola 2000, 2008; Matunga 2013; Hibbard
2006; Walker et al. 2013) with the express purpose to “reclaim and assert Indigenous planning
as a necessary field of scholarship and planning practice” (Walker et al. 2013).
Yet an immediate problem should strike us here. The critique of binaries inherent in
postcolonial theorizing has a real tendency to produce its own binary, Othering forms of
thinking (precisely the critique that Chibber (2013) mounts against the Subaltern Studies
work). For of course, the ontological categories of cultural difference reproduce all sorts of
other binaries, by necessity. Postcolonial theorizing seeks to recover that pole of the binary
that has been profoundly subjected to colonial rule. Yet such a project of recovery imme-
diately signals a paradox. What is it that is being recovered – some essential, pure form of
voice and subjectivity? The kinds of philosophical lineages and commitments present in
postcolonial theorizing usually reject the impetus to locate origins and pure essences, precisely
because such an effort can play right back into the hands of colonial power. If the colonial-
ist mentality is that the natives are backward, primitive and uncivilized, then it can hardly
be argued that the same mindset can be used to invert the conclusion: that the natives in
their pure form are closer to nature, their traditions unsoiled by the West, their solutions and
forms of governance alternative, sweet and just. This is merely a reversal, not an undoing, of
primitivist binary logic.
Significant and important critiques of postcolonial theorizing have been made along these
lines. There is a deeply essentializing tendency that lies within the work of recovery and recon-
stitution, particularly when the form that it takes is a static, essentialized version of colonized
peoples, stripped of colonial context. And what would it mean for colonized subjects to speak
on their own terms? If culture is not static, as a postcolonial stance would claim, then how
can an authentic voice from colonized subjects be asserted and recognized? In social settings
marked by the violence of colonialism, dimensions of representation, agency, identity and
recognition can never be neutral. It is to those tricky postcolonial questions that I turn in the
next section.

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Representation, Resistance and the Politics of Recognition

From early periods of frontier violence in settler-colonial contexts, to independence and anti-
colonial resistance movements in the franchise colonies, to vigorous land rights political claims,
labor struggles, court cases and any number of other modes of direct and claim-making action,
colonized peoples have asserted their identities, sovereignties, laws and voices. Many of those
struggles by necessity utilize the essential characteristics of an intrinsic cultural, religious or
ethnic difference from the colonizing power because the point is to articulate and claim an
ontologically separate space from colonial rule. This essentialized difference is utilized in two
ways: as a source of strength, identity and agency; and as a critically important weapon against
the standardizing hegemonic forces against which they struggle. What Gayatri Spivak has called
‘strategic essentialism’ becomes defensible when used to “fight off domination by outsiders in
order to make themselves heard within their own experience” (Weaver 2005, p. 227).
Much of the struggle, especially in settler-colonial contexts against colonizing forces, has
been on gaining access to forums of decision-making, reclaiming subjectivity and asserting
control over both space and cultural modes of representation. For representation is power-
ful – words and symbols can be used to harm, to diminish, to objectify as much as they can to
acknowledge, recognize, recover and empower. Culture is a powerful trope through which
resistance and state recognition is articulated and negotiated, particularly in settler-colonial con-
texts. It is a keyword signifying difference, rights and sovereignty (a ‘strategic essentialism’ in
Spivak’s terms), but is also uttered in a language colonial powers can understand. In Western
terms, culture is something different from nature, and thus culture can be mobilized especially
in the service of “cultures that know nature differently” (Jacobs 1996, p. 136).
Yet we should pay close attention to the profound costs entailed in such an approach. For
these acts of anti/de-colonial struggle are by definition and circumstance bound into the per-
sistent shadow of coloniality. Such questions of representation and agency were the subject of
Gayatri Spivak’s essay Can the Subaltern Speak? in which she concluded the answer is both yes
and no (Spivak 1994). The subaltern must try but cannot speak because in trying, the speaking
can only be heard if it is in a language recognizable to the very force against which the subaltern
speaks. Trying to be heard automatically marks the limit of being able to speak.
The distinct context of settler-colonialism also entails a massive cost for the speaking subal-
tern, in this case Indigenous people speaking back to settler society. For in settler-colonialism,
the politics of position is not just a central issue it is the issue (Wolfe 1999) due to the logic of
elimination. Settlers remain, and in remaining seek to reproduce and perform anew their insti-
tutions of sovereignty, belonging and property. Indigenous societies are not only superfluous to
that endeavor, they have to be eliminated for settler-colonialism to succeed. This means that any
practical recourse for Indigenous recognition in settler-colonial states is largely ideological, and
the question of who speaks “goes far beyond liberal concerns with equity, dialogue or access to
the academy” (Wolfe 1999, p. 3).
The assertion of difference and the articulation of a politics of marginality and struggle thus
conjures a rather paradoxical politics. For by speaking in certain kinds of ways, the presence
and persistence of colonial modes of subjugation are normalized and reified, precisely as Fanon
concluded. While colonized subjects most certainly speak, and speak they should, the colonial
relations from which they speak are impossible to transcend. The only language through which
they can be heard and recognized is the very language they speak against.
For this reason there has emerged vigorous debate about the extent to which such forms of
representation and recognition are merely a “politics of distraction” (Corntassel 2012). This is
not to deny the legitimacy of struggle, but to seek clarity on the actual forms of recognition

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that come to be open for negotiation. This debate has been particularly pronounced in settler-
colonial studies. Demands by Indigenous people center on sovereignty, political authority, return
of or access to lands and self-determination. They are overwhelmingly cast as claims for recog-
nition upon the settler-state, who seek to settle those claims, either by rejecting them outright
as the recent claims of the Bedouin in the Negev attest (Amara & Miller 2013; Yiftachel et al.
2006) or by finding ways to accommodate those claims within existing orders of governance,
sovereignty and land ownership (Povinelli 2002). Whether or not those claims are successful,
they are all heavily structured through a mode of recognition that seeks to reconcile the affir-
mation of cultural difference, encapsulating liberal freedom, with the requirements of universal
citizenship and state authority assumed by the liberal settler-state (Butler & Athanasiou 2013).
The forms of cultural difference might be accommodated, even perhaps positively affirmed,
but only within a framing that does not undermine the ultimate sovereignty of the settler-state.
James Tully (1995) has called this logic ‘monological recognition’, and a recent very impor-
tant text by Glen Coulthard (2014) maps the contours and limits of this profoundly seductive
contemporary operation of colonial power. The subject position always holding the authority
as recognizer is the settler-state. Those asking to be recognized become objects of recognition
upon which the settler-state might choose to dole out its benevolence. The asymmetry of such
a situation, and the perpetuation of colonial relations of domination that such a mode of recog-
nition performs, are stark.
It becomes clear how important the questions of who has authority and the power to rep-
resent and create representations of things in the world are for planning in postcolonial settings.
Professions, like planning, that authorize certain skillsets and anoint the people who recognizably
have those skillsets, produce voices of authority that have the power to represent others and to
mark out spaces within which other forms of representative debate can take place. Social subjects
marked as Others have less legitimacy (at earlier colonial moments, no legitimacy at all), and are
cast as the objects of representation. We only need to think of planning’s invocation of ‘repre-
senting the public interest’, and the core aspiration to create consultative settings where different
voices representing different perspectives can all be heard, to see with great clarity how expertise,
authority and representation are all potentially modes of colonial power in contemporary planning.
And yet, this is both an accurate and at the same time fundamentally constraining perspective
of postcolonial representational politics. It is, of course, clear that mounting claims for recogni-
tion of an essential difference within the very systems against which such claims are asserted is a
profound ethical limit. But it is also a functionalist argument: any utterance is immediately dis-
torted by its location in a world after (but not beyond) colonization, rendering any Indigenous
or subaltern struggle immediately as opposite to that of colonizer, and automatically co-opted
into its workings of hegemonic power. It has the distinct feeling of a dead-end. If this knotty
paradox is not worked at both in theory and practice, then nothing can ever be undone, no
transformative politics will ever become possible. A number of possible conceptual avenues,
with less of a dead-end feeling, present themselves in contemporary scholarship. I will return to
them in the concluding section below. For now, the discussion turns to land. For just as post-
colonial struggles are about identity and representation they are also, like the colonial conditions
that produced them, about space and place.

Planning and the Production of Colonial Space

It is not too radical a claim now to reject conceptions of space as a neutral container unencum-
bered by historical relations, and instead see space as a social product (Lefebvre 1991), soaked

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with processes of domination and subordination, solidarity and cooperation (Massey 2005).
Producing colonial space (for an empire must have a space) has been the primary location of plan-
ning’s enrolment and complicity. Colonialism, through either explicit or nascent practices of
planning, dramatically and violently imposed a different spatial order on other societies, recon-
figuring geographical activities, social relations, and institutions. In settler-colonial contexts this
did the work of dispossession along the way.
Oren Yiftachel has called this the dark side of planning (Yiftachel 1998), one that imposes
“ethno-national spatial control, often in conflict with groups holding counter territorial claims”
(Yiftachel 2006, p. 217). In that essay he lamented the lack of theoretical conversation about
it in planning theory. A robust theoretical conversation is even today still emerging, but its
contours are present and offer fertile ground for further development and discussion. Two par-
ticularly important dimensions for a postcolonial theorizing of planning’s production of colonial
space are accumulation by dispossession, and the spatial cultures of planning.
For colonial rule to work, it must spatialize. This means it must assert sovereignty: (political)
rule over (geographical) territory. This makes Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation particu-
larly important to postcolonial theorizing efforts, and it has indeed been a central theme. But in
so doing there has been an important emphasis on reworking primitive accumulation, delink-
ing it from the stadial definition Marx gave it (primitive accumulation came first, and then was
superseded by other forms of accumulation) to a view more akin to Rosa Luxembourg’s, who
argued that far from being finished, primitive accumulation is a constitutive feature, always, of
capitalism. Such an approach has been advanced by David Harvey who has argued that primitive
accumulation can be rethought as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ – a colonization of spaces to
be accumulated (Harvey 2003), which constitutes an ongoing phenomenon, an ‘omnipresence’
(Roy 2006) in colonial contexts.
Settler-colonial contexts exemplify the omnipresence of primitive accumulation par excel-
lence because it is only in settler colonies where the focus of colonial practice is appropriating
native lands, rather than native labor. Settlers stay. And in order to stay, lands must be expro-
priated and brought into the enactment and justification of an imposed sovereignty. The
expropriation of land is the foundation on which a replacement society is built in settler
colonies, or as Patrick Wolfe (2006, p. 388) put it, “territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific
irreducible element”.
Dene scholar Glen Coulthard (2014) reads Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation through
an anticolonial lens, to make a related argument. For settler-colonialism, the hunger for land
is relentless as it is the basis of rule, thus “Settler-colonialism is territorially acquisitive in perpetuity”
(2014, p. 152, emphasis in original). Primitive accumulation is thus not a historical event or
backdrop, but the mode through which colonial capitalism occurs. Colonialism is a structure
of dispossession. Consequently any regime purportedly designed to recognize contemporary
Indigenous claims for land is embedded in a system that will insist on denying those claims.
So what then of planning in this rather depressing reading of colonial space production? The
nascent and explicit practices and impulses of planning are emerging as a key site for understand-
ing exactly how colonialism does its work, for example in relation to settler-colonial contexts,
how dispossession is operationalized (Harris 2004). To be produced, space has to be activated,
and continuously re-activated, into the social, through specific technologies and practices. As I
observed in earlier work (Porter 2010), these actively produce their own mediated realities and
this cannot be innocent neither in settler-colonial nor other kinds of colonial contexts. These
‘spatial cultures’ that I define as the “activities, readings, desires, philosophies, technologies and
regulatory methods that the historical record shows actively and materially constructed colo-
nies” (Porter 2010), are a diverse set of practices. Our best method to apprehend them is to

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investigate the specific processes that produce space in colonial contexts and ask what forms of
domination and subjugation they enlist.
There is much important work that planning theory can draw on to do this kind of analy-
sis. Rabinow (1989) articulates colonial design sensibilities and their imposition, indeed full
articulation, in colonial settings, while others expose colonial orderings of space through the
regulation of colonial space (Legg 2007; Yeoh 1996). Jacobs’ work in settler-colonial Australia
(1996) has analyzed not only the hard face of regulatory control of urban space in particular, but
the psycho-affective state of settler-colonial relations (Gelder & Jacobs 1998). The importance
of city-building to colonial efforts has been well articulated (Edmonds 2010; Yiftachel 1996),
and Yiftachel has importantly argued for attention also to the time dimension of colonial spatial
control, through his conception of ‘gray space’ (Yiftachel 2009).
Such a critical reading is, in my view, essential, and not only for exposing the operations of
power. It is also intrinsically important to the search for more hopeful possibilities – in short, for
grasping ways of doing, thinking and imagining planning that seek to decolonize. For “exposing
the details of the ‘dark side’ is never an end in itself . . . it is only the beginning of unpacking the
distorted ‘truth’ disseminated by power, as a necessary foundation for transformative mobiliza-
tion” (Yiftachel 2006, p. 219). I turn to this issue in the final section.

The Challenge: Decolonizing Planning Theory?

Like it or not, planning actors, whether we are scholars, students, researchers, consultants, prac-
titioners or activists, each have a role to play in this twin process of exposing and undoing
colonial dynamics. This is so even as we acknowledge the limits imposed by our own positional-
ity. Spivak calls this unlearning our privilege as loss (see Landry & MacLean 1996), marking the
dimension of our own personal and structural privilege as a constant focus for critique, given
the way it operates to obscure relations of domination. Usually none of us is aware of the daily
privileges we inhabit until perhaps we are confronted with a situation where our privilege sud-
denly becomes uncomfortably obvious.
It is patently uncomfortable to have privileges, positionality and even the fundamental tenets
of planning so viscerally challenged. Problematizing what has been taken for granted and expos-
ing how we are each implicated in relations of power that produce domination are not easy
things to think about. Doing so can often lead to a deep sense of gloom, and anxiety (Gooder &
Jacobs 2011) a charge that is often leveled at critical social theories. That bleak view can inculcate
what Kowal (2015) has recently identified as an anxious disavowal, particularly, for example,
among white settlers who support, in the settler-colonial context of Australia, Indigenous rights.
Writing from the context of Canada, Regan (2011) positions this anxiety rather differently,
showing how it can produce a more positive process of understanding the ‘settler within’.
These are serious concerns of political, theoretical, scholarly and practical import. I want to
argue that such critical attention to the structures of power we all inhabit is not only necessary
but also offers hope: a promise that allowing our perspectives to be unsettled produces new and
potentially transformative possibilities. Critical theoretical stances can be very helpful ways of
thinking, as they demand examination of long-held assumptions. They are a reminder that none
of us are outside the web of potentially oppressive social relations, none of us innocent of all the
various ways that socially unjust practices are perpetuated today. And that is promising because
it calls us to account, demanding humility, respect and a critical open-mindedness.
Conceptualizing the spaces within which such postcolonial politics unfold as hybrid, rather
than one thing or another, is a useful starting point. Homi Bhabha calls this the ‘thirdspace’
(Bhabha 1994), or in Mary Louise Pratt’s terminology the ‘contact zone’ (Pratt 1991), in which

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 Libby Porter

there is an inevitably hybrid and unsettled grappling of cultures and worldviews, never sym-
metrical, but resulting in unstable, hardly predictable and always contested cultural outcomes.
This is hopeful, at the same time as critical, because that unsettled grappling might, tomorrow,
just turn out differently. The future is up for grabs. Saturated with coloniality, yes, but not fully
over-determined.
Counter-hegemonic agency exists and is being thoroughly articulated from the social worlds
of those who have been subjected to colonization processes, reminding us of Fanon’s insistence
that transformative praxis emerges from the lifeworlds of the colonized (1967). That agency is
articulated in modes that are hybrid and relational at the same time as they express a firm oppo-
sitional stance and differentiated position from Western hegemony. Two important examples of
this kind of work from settler-colonial contexts offer potential analytical frameworks and ethi-
cal commitments. Glen Coulthard’s 2014 book is a fine example of this kind of thinking, as he
articulates together Marx, Fanon, Dene Elders and a relationship to land to build a theoretical
and practical framework for transformative anticolonial praxis. Irene Watson (2015) similarly
offers a combined reading of Western and Indigenous law, one that reasserts a primal position
of the latter in the face of the power of the former in highly productive ways. These kinds of
theorizing toward praxis offer models for the kind of theoretical work ahead for planning.
The conceits of research itself, and the systems through which planning knowledge is produced
(funding and granting bodies, the structural exclusions of universities) must also be transformed.
Linda Tuhiwai-Smith’s work (1999) should be important for planning researchers and theorists
for its crucial teachings about how social science research methods reproduce colonial subjectivi-
ties, and about the alternatives possible to transform those subjectivities. Those methods must
pay attention to knowledge not in the narrow social science sense, but as a relational, active and
embodied engagement with the world, as for example Sandercock and Attili (2010), Leanne
Simpson (2014) and Irene Watson (2015) do, each in their own way. Also important will be
a commitment to theorizing from any context or location. Recent advances made by theorists
such as Robinson (2016), Simone (2011), Connell (2007, 2014), Watson (2003, 2006, 2014),
Roy (2006, 2010, 2011), Yiftachel (2006, 2009) and Avni and Yiftachel (2014) show how north-
ern sites of theory-making can be de-privileged and the ‘everywhere else’ of northern theorizing
re-articulated as much more than simply empirical fodder for naturalized categories. Instead, we
could try what Robinson calls ‘thinking cities through elsewhere’ (2016) which involves at least
in part an ‘ungrounding’ (ibid., p. 17) rather than a stabilization of concepts about urban life.
These approaches offer forms of accountability in the production of planning knowledge
and theory, as much as in its practice. Ananya Roy articulated some years ago the importance
of planning taking such accountability seriously as part of a more transformative postcolonial
‘praxis in the time of empire’ (2006). Part of the challenge for planning theory, then, is to
unlearn the categories and forms of theorizing that have become naturalized in our thinking.
But most important is to unlearn them in a way that acknowledges how the privilege intrinsic to
those categories and forms has always been a profound loss, obscuring from view other possibili-
ties and purposefully creating conditions of subjugation and domination. This painful process of
unlearning is one of producing accountability, as well as a necessary step in liberation.

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 15
POSTPOLITICS AND
PLANNING
Jonathan Metzger1

Recent years have seen a flurry of discussions about postpolitics or the “postpolitical condition” in
relation to a wide range of issues broadly concerning contemporary urban planning and gov-
ernance. These include – but are not limited to – the regeneration of the London South Bank
(Baeten, 2009), the structure of the UK planning system (e.g. Allmendinger & Haughton, 2012,
2015), the professional urban discourse in Sweden (Tunström & Bradley, 2014) mega hospital
projects in London (Raco, 2014a), golf courses in Singapore (Neo, 2010), highway tunnels
in Melbourne (Legacy, 2015), the enactment of complacent consumerist subjects in urban
planning in Helsingborg (Ek, 2011), football-related city branding in Russia (Makarychev &
Yatsyk, 2014),‘Big Box’ retail development in Vancouver (Rosol, 2014), Irish “ghost estates”
(O’Callaghan et al., 2014), new urbanist developments in Scotland (MacLeod, 2013) and sus-
tainability-related regional development policies in Sweden (Hilding-Rydevik et al., 2011).
What unites these scholars is their diagnosis that a number of aspects of contemporary plan-
ning practice are deeply troubling, particularly from a democracy perspective. The primary
cause of worry is that an exaggerated and uncritical infatuation with ideas of partnership gov-
ernance and “participatory” consensus-building risks leading to a situation in which planning
procedures merely function to window-dress democratically deeply deficient governance pro-
cesses. Postpolitical practices are thus seen to “paper over the inequalities which run through
society, disavowing the rifts in society, and foreclosing potential struggles for alternative political
futures” (Van Puymbroeck & Oosterlynck, 2014: 87). Accordingly, the workings of postpolitics
must therefore be understood as (anti)political mechanisms that continuously work to veil the
possibility of a radically different society.
From this perspective, contemporary governance innovations such as stakeholder-based gov-
ernance regimes and various forms of invited participation, are by no means innocent technical
improvements that tackle democratic deficits, but rather produce such deficits by providing “ever
more effective forms of disavowing the contingency of contemporary societies” and hiding
from sight “the multiple hierarchical differences that structure them” (Van Puymbroeck &
Oosterlynck, 2014: 103). In the process they generate “Kafkaesque” governance arrangements
(Metzger, 2011) which all but completely lack transparency and legitimacy. Nevertheless, these
same opaque networked policymaking mazes of vague responsibilities and blurry accountabili-
ties often become labeled as “good governance” (Deas, 2013), despite the fact that they lead to

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policymaking situations in which it can be difficult to even know if a decision has been made,
let alone by whom or on basis of what authority.
Thus, the literature on postpolitics and planning aims at pinpointing and flagging up new
forms of politics in planning processes which function to suppress or preemptively foreclose
possibilities toward dissent through bypassing, short-circuiting or circumscribing difficult and
contentious issues concerning the specification of desirable futures (Allmendinger & Haughton,
2010; Metzger, 2011). Yet, this fairly new strand of planning scholarship is far from uncon-
troversial. Some critics fiercely question whether the phenomenon under debate really exists
at all outside the pages of scholarly journals. Others agree that what the postpolitics literature
tries to describe might well be real, but nevertheless question the productivity of labeling this
phenomenon as postpolitics – arguing that an excessive focus on this type of analysis might risk
reproducing the very effects it claims to be exposing.
However, there are also more ambivalent commentators to this emerging corpus of scholar-
ship who do not unreservedly pledge allegiance to the postpolitics thesis, but nevertheless see
great value in the work being performed under its banner. I, for one, admit to being among
these. Therefore, in this chapter I will let this ambivalence shine through by, on the one hand,
attempting to do justice to the important contributions made by postpolitical analysis in con-
temporary planning research, but, on the other hand, to also be forthright about some of the
flaws and internal contradictions in parts of the existing literature. Further, and relatedly, I
believe that for postpolitical analysis to stay relevant to planning research it needs to keep evolv-
ing. Perhaps most important is the need to shed the idea that just labeling something as being
postpolitical could ever be a final, enlightening explanation in itself. Rather, for the concept to
ever have any real bite it must become a flexible, yet precise analytical tool that can be used to
trim the eye to specific and otherwise difficult to grasp insidious developments within contem-
porary planning practice.

Diagnosing the “Postpolitical Condition”

Discussions about postpolitics generally take as their starting point the post-foundational strands
of political philosophy that were developed in the 1990s (see Metzger et al., 2014; Wilson &
Swyngedouw, 2014; and further Marchart, 2007). The concept is commonly associated with
the work of philosophers Chantal Mouffe (2005), Slavoj Žižek (1999) – and probably most dis-
tinctly (even though he himself does not use this specific term), Jacques Rancière (1998 [1995]).
One of the things that unifies these thinkers is that they all reacted against a specific post-1989
zeitgeist in Europe which was marked by hyperbolic proclamations about “the End of History”,
and dreams of a unipolar world imagined to usher in the permanent global reign of liberal
democracy and free market capitalism. Within the sphere of political thinking, the corollary
of this discourse was the rise to prominence of “big tent” consensual politics, quintessentially
embodied in the so-called “Third Way” market-oriented social democracy. The general spirit
of the time has been characterized as building upon the assumption that “[p]artisan conflicts are
a thing of the past and consensus can be achieved through dialogue” (Mouffe, 2005: 1).
For Chantal Mouffe, the postpolitical zeitgeist of the 1990s was marked by a democratically
dangerous colonization and suppression of the political by politics. In Mouffe’s vocabulary, the
latter refers to the concrete everyday practices, procedures and institutions through which the
social is ordered and organized into societies (‘governance’, so to speak), while the former refers
to the various fundamental conflict lines that run through any given society. Mouffe’s substantial
argument is that the political is an ubiquitous feature of society that risks exploding into violent

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confrontation at any time unless recognized and constructively engaged with. Thus, it is of
utmost importance that democratic, open societies do not seek to suppress or deny the exist-
ence of fundamental political differences. These must instead be allowed to find public forums
in which they can be explored and articulated in ways that can contribute to “taming” poten-
tially violent antagonism into democratically productive agonism. The latter term implies that
fundamentally opposed political ideals and interests are allowed to play out against each other in
democratically acceptable forms based on – if not sympathy or understanding – at least a mutual
recognition of legitimacy and respect for difference (Mouffe, 2005).
In contrast to democratic political processes in which violent antagonisms are transformed
into productive agonism, Mouffe identifies postpolitical situations as those in which the insti-
tutions of politics come to function as a mere managerial apparatus that effectively suppresses
the political, i.e. fundamental issues regarding the organization of society, in the name of broad
consensus and stability. In such situations the ostensibly democratic state becomes so only on
paper, forcing truly political issues to play out in more or less violently antagonistic forms in
other spheres of society – further generating a general sense of alienation from the institutions
of formal politics, thus undercutting the legitimacy of democratic decision-making institutions.
In his influential work Disagreement (1995), Jacques Rancière makes a similar analysis to
Mouffe, but with some important divergences. In contrast to Mouffe, who places her hope
in a re-invigorated representative democracy, Rancière asserts that any apparatus of govern-
ance must constitute a “police order” based on a particular “partition of the sensible”, i.e. an
assignment of “proper places” and roles in society to various portions of the population. Such
an order always inevitably builds upon direct or indirect ascriptions of who or what belongs
where and with what rights and obligations. To Rancière, the only properly political moment
(or “democratic sequence”) is when the existing police order is put into question by the “part
of no part” in the name of equality – i.e. when the entire existing system is put into question
on the basis of the exclusions it performs, and those who are not accommodated for within the
existing order. Rancière does not himself use the term “postpolitics”, but nevertheless turns
vehemently against what he sees to be the blight of democracy in our age – a condition he
dubs “post-democracy”,2 marked by a consensual politics within which it is taken as given who
and what matters and should be taken into account, and in which ways. Rancière identifies
three specific contemporary forms of depoliticization (arche-, para- and meta-politics) that are
employed to disavow (in the sense of deny and oppose) that any governance order is fundamen-
tally arbitrary and by necessity exclusionary – and therefore always obfuscates the fundamental
conflicts that will mark any specific society.
Perhaps most contentious and controversial among the philosophers associated with postpo-
litical theory, and the originator of the concept itself, is Slavoj Žižek. In contrast to Mouffe who
defines the postpolitical condition as one in which the political is repressed but returns as violent
antagonism, or Rancière who sees the repeated disavowal of the political which is nevertheless
eventually always challenged by “the part of no part”, Žižek (1999) reserves the term postpoli-
tics to describe a situation in which the political is effectively foreclosed (Wilson & Swyngedouw,
2014). Postpolitics to Žižek thus generates a “seemingly complete symbolic order”, in which
the political (antagonistic, power-laden and by necessity repressive) foundation of any society is
all but completely obfuscated (Žižek, 1999).
Thus, for Žižek postpolitics sets a political frame in which disagreements about specific issues
are accepted and to some degree even welcomed, but where questioning the frame itself becomes
completely out-of-bounds and unacceptable.3 The result of this is that “today’s predominant form
of ideological ‘closure’ takes the precise form of mental block that prevents us from imagining a fundamen-
tal social change, in the interests of an allegedly ‘realistic’ and ‘mature’ attitude” (Žižek, 2000: 324,

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emphasis in original). This in turn generates a “suffocating” political climate, leaving violent
outbursts as the only outlet for suppressed political energy. For Žižek, the only way to get out
of this cul-de-sac is through a repoliticization of the structure of the global economy (Žižek,
1999: 432) and a return to attention to that which MacLeod (2013: 2213) has highlighted as the
“mammoth unmentionable” of postpolitics: class.
Wilson & Swyngedouw (2014a) suggest that a central difference between the key theorists
of the postpolitical is that whereas Mouffe is interested in the repression of antagonism and the
consequences of failing to transform it to productive agonism, Rancière is more focused on the
disavowal of equality, and Žižek’s specific preoccupation is to criticize the foreclosure of a specific
form of politics: that of class struggle. Quite obviously, these differences are more than cosmetic
and have profound implications with regards to the crucial question concerning the possible
remedies against the postpolitical condition that planners (among others) now supposedly find
themselves operating within. Somewhat harshly construed, it could be claimed that Mouffe’s
correlate project is to find ways to reconfigure the institutional order, Rancière’s to constantly
disrupt the institutional order, and Žižek’s to once and for all overthrow the institutional order.
These inclinations also map onto the three broad strands of possible responses to postpolitics
and other forms of depoliticization suggested by Van Puymbroeck & Oosterlynck (2014: 89):
the three-term approach, the purification approach and the relational approach. The three-term approach,
which closely dovetails with Mouffian agonism, aims at the creation of distinct spaces that might
generate affordances for articulations of the political, i.e. the contentious and fractured foun-
dations of society, in such a way that antagonistic positions can be translated into agonistic
encounter, but without highly circumscribed role-scripting (‘stakeholder’ representation). Such
forums would further allow for actors to disagree about the issue(s) at stake, how they are
involved, and what kind of issues are of relevance in the present context.
The purification approach, on the other hand, is based on a call for a full-scale revolution to
bring forth an entirely new society. To the thinkers within this fold, such as Žižek, any response
to postpolitics but a full-scale revolution will inevitably only provide “palliative damage-control
measures within the global capitalist framework” (Žižek, 2000: 321). As a consequence they
argue that to break away from postpolitics there is a need for a “violent act” of revolution and
an acceptance of the self-proclaimed right of the committed few to speak in the name of the
“community as a whole” (Swyngedouw, 2014: 180) – to some degree thus echoing aspects of
classic Leninist vanguardism.
As an alternative to the above sketched positions, a relational approach to the enactment of
the political, primarily inspired by Rancière, centers its attention on moments of interruption
that expose the arbitrariness of the existing police order (governance arrangement), thus paving
the way for processes leading to its consecutive, iterative reworking. Such an approach, Van
Puymbroeck & Oosterlynck (2014) argue, allows for a more concrete examination and discus-
sion of the manifold ways in which fundamental political tension can be addressed, and how
the existing order as a consequence can become twisted or jolted into new configurations and
vectors of development.

The Postpolitics of Planning

In a paper that has become foundational for the postpolitics literature, Erik Swyngedouw (2009)
discusses the emergence of what he calls a “postpolitical and postdemocratic condition” in
contemporary urban governance which correlates closely with “the rise of a neoliberal gov-
ernmentality that has replaced debate, disagreement and dissensus with a series of technologies
of governing that fuse around consensus, agreement, accountancy metrics and technocratic

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environmental management”. He goes on to specify such arrangements as forms of “governance-

beyond-the-state” in which traditional government actors in cooperation with select experts and
NGOs form a political arena that is evacuated of any deeper conflicts, thus leading to a narrow-
ing of the parameters of democracy itself (Swyngedouw, 2009: 608).
An eerie aspect of this form of governance regime which is picked out by Swyngedouw is
the way that any form of dissent or disagreement of opinion becomes framed as merely specific
and local, or else at least technical – and best solved by reasoned discourse and compromise.
Thus, under the postpolitical condition, anything can be made into a point of contestation,
but only in a non-committal way, as a “non-conflict”. Compromise and consensus-building
become the privileged figures for the negotiation of admittedly contentious issues, such as the
reshaping of urban environments, and difficulties or problems along the way are supposedly to
be solved by way of managerial and technical expertise.
However, within these postpolitical consensus-oriented governance settings, questions
regarding fundamental divergences and universal values are all but foreclosed and the articula-
tion of divergent, conflicting and alternative trajectories of future environmental development
are effectively forestalled. Thus,

[t]here is no contestation over the givens of the situation, over the partition of the
sensible; there is only debate over the technologies of management, the arrangements
of policing and the configuration of those who already have a stake, whose voice is
already recognized as legitimate.
(Swyngedouw, 2009: 610)

Further, those that question the givens of things are labeled as irresponsible, unreasonable and
dangerous. As a consequence, you either become part of the consensual pluralist order, or you
are radically excluded from deliberations.
In a more concrete operationalization of postpolitical analysis, Guy Baeten (2009) performs an
investigation of the redevelopment of London’s South Bank. In his analysis, Baeten shows how
the political has been practically “evacuated” from the regeneration process by means of “post-
political regeneration tactics”, and he particularly pinpoints an “obsessive focus” on cooperation
between different interest groups, based on the underlying logic that “communities are now
supposed to unite and fight for scarce regeneration resources, leave ‘old’ antagonism behind and
become reasonable, rational, sensible, communicative, responsible agents with smooth relations
with central government and funding bodies” (p. 248). Adversarial and skeptical groups are dis-
missed as irresponsible, unreasonable and extremist, which generates a clear line of antagonism
between the sensible “us” and the mindless “them”: those “who do not understand how regen-
eration ‘works today’”, and thus can be safely ignored. This in effect entails what Baeten labels
as the “moralization” of political conflict, where instead of discussing fundamental differences
between e.g. “right” and “left”, conflicts are instead enacted as between “right” and “wrong”:
“With the ‘evil them’ no agonistic debate is possible; they must be ignored if not eradicated.
Condemnation, then, replaces proper political analysis”.4
A further tell-tale sign of postpolitics is, according to Baeten, a disarticulation between local
issues and universal demands for e.g. welfare, justice or governmental responsibility. Local
demands become efficiently “localized” and residents are summoned to participate in the
building of local “community”, but at the expense of wider political mobilization – and as a
consequence local concerns become precluded from functioning as a starting point for a more
general critique of the current governance order and political priorities.5 This practice of par-
ticularization is a central aspect of postpolitics also in the eyes of Oosterlynck & Swyngedouw

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(2010: 1581) who argue that within postpolitical governance arrangements, the only actors that
become accepted as legitimate are those that do not demand the fundamental transformation of
the system, but instead make their demands negotiable within the already given policy frame-
work, which in itself becomes placed beyond questioning.
Perhaps the most thorough and long-lasting theoretical engagement with the conceptual
apparatus of postpolitics in relation to planning has been provided by Phil Allmendinger and
Graham Haughton (e.g. 2010, 2012, 2014). In their analysis of the rise to prominence of the
“spatial planning’ paradigm within British planning theory and practice, Allmendinger and
Haughton argue that this, in effect, constitutes a form of neoliberal spatial governance, under-
pinned by a variety of postpolitical techniques. In this governance setting, conflict has not
been removed from planning, but has become displaced and “carefully choreographed” with
the help of e.g. partnership-led governance arrangements centered around vague objectives
and seemingly uncontestable “feel-good” concepts such as “sustainable development”, “climate
change”, “zero carbon development”, “urban renaissance” and “smart growth”. Allmendinger
and Haughton (2012: 94) argue that such concepts are deeply postpolitical on merit of their
fuzzy self-evident desirability, since, as the authors exclaim, “who could be ‘for’ ‘dumb growth’
or ‘unsustainable development’?” (cf. Gunder & Hillier, 2009).
In their analysis, Allmendinger and Haughton are very careful to point out that postpolitics
in planning does not just occur by a happenstance. It has a purpose: to legitimate hegemonic
strategies and projects, which in this case more specifically refers to the expedition of a “rolled
out” version of a neoliberal economic growth agenda in ways that generate the “buy-in” and
“lock-in” of selected policy partners by way of the inclusion (but also subordination and taming)
of issues such as quality of life, sustainable development and social justice in the form of lower
order issues that are not allowed to eclipse the mainstream growth agenda. By ostensibly cham-
pioning such “progressive” causes postpolitical planning practices contribute to “bolster[ing]
the legitimacy of the overall approach with some minimalistic concessions” (Allmendinger
& Haughton, 2012: 93). Thus, what postpolitical spatial planning efficiently achieved was a
reworking of the institutional and discursive framework of planning in such a way that diverse
groups such as planners, developers, land owners and community groups all could feel that they
became important parts of the system, that they were listened to, even though many of the
issues in their hearts were only paid lip-service to and subsumed under an unassailable broader
economic growth imperative (cf. also Hilding-Rydevik et al., 2011).
Another aspect of the spatial planning paradigm’s “sophisticated obfuscation of the political”
was the harnessing of participatory methods to garner support and supplant opposition in planning
processes with the help of “carefully stage-managed processes” with “subtly but clearly defined
parameters of what is open for debate”. The result was a planning system that presumably promoted
involvement, but at the same time actively obscured the contextual restraints on influence –
thereby generating a superficial appearance of legitimacy, while minimizing the potential for
those with conflicting views to be given a meaningful hearing. In relation to this development
Allmendinger & Haughton (2012) slam the planning profession for being at best “compliant and
naïve” by persuading themselves that the “public interest” (and their own professional standing)
was best served through this democratically corrosive circumvention of democratic process, which
has contributed to alienate the profession from the communities they were supposed to serve.

Some Criticisms
As already indicated in the introduction, postpolitical analysis is surrounded by quite an amount
of academic controversy – even to the degree that some critical commentators fundamentally

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question the existence of the phenomenon itself. Jodi Dean (2009, 2014) has for instance repeat-
edly argued that the identification and critique of postpolitics more than anything else signals
the failure of the contemporary political left. Dean argues that what has been labeled as “post-
politics” simply denotes a very efficient assemblage of right-wing hegemony-building practices,
which all but completely disarmed and co-opted leftist dissent to conservative and neoliberal
policies. Claiming that this successful activism somehow forecloses the possibilities for genuinely
political action according to Dean amounts to a cry-baby attitude over the left’s own failure to
properly mobilize against a tidal wave of neoliberal and conservative reform.
Apart from those who completely dismiss the concept of postpolitics, there are also those
who instead aim toward identifying and possibly remedying specific weaknesses in the theory
of postpolitics. These less hostile authors often specifically hone in on how the conceptual
apparatus of postpolitics needs to be worked through in greater detail. Many of these argumen-
tations particularly focus on how much of the currently dominant theorization of the concept,
strongly influenced by Swyngedouw’s writings, often comes across as somewhat sweeping and
vague. They therefore suggest that the theory needs to become more sensitized to the nuances
of postpolitical phenomena, such as the various types of techniques of depoliticization that are
associated with postpolitics, as well as the possible limits of any postpolitical event or episode
(see e.g. Paddison, 2009; O’Callaghan et al., 2014; Bylund, 2012; Raco & Lin, 2012; Beveridge
et al., 2014; Van Puymbroeck & Oosterlynck, 2014: 95–6). The main focus of this discussion is
thus the demand that the analysis of postpolitics needs to become much more precise and specific
to be of any real help, and to be guided by nuanced and empirically attentive questions of where
and how politics operates in relation to specific policy developments (Johnstone, 2014: 707).
An important component of the latter discussion is also the oft-repeated worry that if the
analysts of postpolitics fail to become more fine-grained in their efforts, they actually risk play-
ing into their avowed enemies’ hands by efficiently reproducing the effects they profess to
uncover and criticize. In this vein, e.g. Davidson and Iveson (2014: 4) posit that “Labelling cities
‘post-political’ risks treating depoliticization as a condition that has been realized, rather than a
tendency that has taken hold” and others agree that this risks making planning research “blind
to the more subtle mechanisms at work in political power” (Grange, 2014: 56; cf. Loepfe & van
Wezemael, 2014). Developing this argument in some more detail, Beveridge et al. (2014: 73)
warn that by “universalizing apparent and disturbing trends” analysts of postpolitics could risk
contributing to the very tendencies they profess to criticize, and by over-stating the case risk
“encourage helplessness rather than action” (cf. also Metzger, 2011).

Potentials for Further Development

In light of the more nuanced criticisms of postpolitical analysis it is evident that there still exists a
need to work through and explore a number of remaining ambiguities and lacunae in the theo-
retization of postpolitics. In an attempt to provide some impetus for this I have identified three
areas in which new research on postpolitics and planning can be productive by not only simply
applying the theory to specific empirical cases, but by also contributing to the further refine-
ment of the theory itself with regard to the definition, specification and contestation of postpolitics.

Defining Postpolitics
One of the key issues that remains to be more carefully thought through is the character of postpo-
litics. What type of “thing” is it really? Here the existing literature on postpolitics is unhelpfully
imprecise. The postpolitical has interchangeably been described as an era (e.g. Žižek, 2000), a

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condition (e.g. Swyngedouw, 2009), formation (Kamat, 2014), city (Paddison, 2009), arrangement
(Swyngedow, 2009), imaginary (Raco & Lin, 2012), managerial framework (Raco, 2014b), rhetoric
(Raco, 2014b), governance techniques (Metzger et al., 2014) and forms and practices (Van Puymbroeck
& Oosterlynck, 2014).
Relatedly, Van Puymbroeck and Oosterlynck (2014: 103) have challenged analysts of post-
politics to become much sharper and more precise in their identification of what in effect
constitutes the postpoliticizing devices and elements of contemporary governance arrange-
ments, urging researchers to “crack open the black box of the post-political condition to see
the multifarious generic policing tactics that combine to depoliticize society”. Along the same
lines, Loepfe and Van Wezemael (2014: 86–87) identify clear “post-political tendencies” in
contemporary Swiss planning, yet remain aloof to any claims of there existing some form of
saturated “post-political order” in the Swiss planning system, since there are still ample points
of intervention in the planning process at which the issues are open to politicization (cf. also
Allmendinger & Haughton, 2010, 2012).
Such a more precise understanding of postpolitics as enacted through specific techniques and
practices also raises demands for a more concrete interrogation of the specific spatio-temporalities
of the postpolitical. If postpolitics is not always everywhere, where does it appear? Under what
conditions? And through the application of which techniques and practices? This is not only an
academically interesting issue, considering that the answers given to such questions will also set
the parameters for the discussion on relevant and efficient responses to the consequent question
concerning how these developments then can be efficiently opposed or contested.

Specifying Postpolitics
If, as suggested above, postpolitics is more helpfully understood as the effect of concrete prac-
tices rather than as an all-encompassing “condition”, what differentiates it from other practices
and techniques of depoliticization? Is there anything distinct about postpolitics or should the
concept simply be treated as a synonym for depoliticization in general? But if the notion of
postpolitics is widened to such an extreme degree, analysts of planning might perhaps find them-
selves asking: so what’s new? For as Inch (2012: 523) has noted, the fundamentally anti-political
side of planning, which can function to defuse conflict by masking value-based decisions in a
rational-technical jargon or “efficiently” imposing development in the interest of investors and
landowners, has been long recognized (cf. also Metzger, 2011; Allmendinger, 2016).
One recurrent way of attempting to specify the particularity of postpolitics in relation to
other anti-political practices is by highlighting the connection to neoliberal governance regimes.
The problem with such a move is just that postpolitics then risks becoming too much of an
imprecise place-holder, substantially merely denoting any and every form of allegedly devious
technique of political hegemony construction associated with the neoliberal political project,
or even more broadly “really undemocratic ways of governing” in general. In contrast to such
a very broad and variegated definition of the term, for instance Japhy Wilson (2013) insists
that postpoliticization must be understood as a quite specific modality of depoliticization. In this
more specific definition, postpolitics is most often referred to as practices of depoliticization that
function less through a direct suppression of dissent than by way of circumscribing, containing
and diffusing opposition through the careful engineering of its format and outlets – i.e. through
manipulating the places, temporalities, context and focus of how and when issues and grievances
can be articulated. In relation to participatory practices in urban governance and planning, often
highlighted as a key arena for postpolitics, this has for instance been described as a move from
planning practice as characterized by DAD (Decide-Announce-Defend) instead being replaced by

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the more insidious and manipulative UNCLE (Unlimited Never-ending Consultation Leading to
Exhaustion) (Johnstone, 2014; Metzger et al., 2014).
As described by Deas (2013: 2301) such policy processes are characterized by how the
parameters of debate are circumscribed to focus on a narrow range of nonessential issues, but
where more fundamental substantive disagreement is deemed “unacceptably and unhelpfully
‘political’ and therefore off-limits” (cf. Allmendinger & Haughton, 2012). The consequential
result is a superficial charade of politicality centering on narrowly articulated technical issues,
which defuses opposition by preemptively channeling contestation and questioning toward
relatively minor matters. Thus, fundamentally political questions often curiously appear to
always have already been determined “somewhere else” on the basis of some “general interest”
which no one in his right mind can supposedly disagree with – thus posing the choice presently
at hand as always being one of detail, not principle (Metzger et al., 2014; cf. Johnstone, 2014).
“Participatory” processes of this type do not at all function as the arenas for debate and
questioning that they are sometimes imagined to be, but instead serve to choreograph events
in such a way that they effectively garner consent to potentially contentious policies by way of
“techniques of consensual persuasion” (Paddison, 2009; cf. MacLeod, 2011). The ultimate effect
of such an arrangement is, as pointed out by Raco (2014b: 27), that under such a regime of
“participation”, communities and citizens are paradoxically told that they are “being empow-
ered” at the same time as their capacities to influence policy are being undermined in the
drive to “get things done”. Even staunch critics of the postpolitics literature such as Mitchell
et al. (2015: 2636) concede that the identification of these anti-democratic mechanisms is an
important and noteworthy conclusion from the work on postpolitics and helps explain why
“the near-universal acceptance of participatory planning” generally appears to make such little
difference to the substantial outcomes of planning processes.

Contesting Postpolitics
No matter their other differences, there exists a strong agreement among analysts of postpolitics
that this is a phenomenon that is devious and destructive and which therefore needs to be uncov-
ered, countered and opposed. The sense of urgency concerning this task is further strengthened
by a fear of the inevitable “return of the political” where it has been suppressed that has been
assumed by e.g. Mouffe, and the various destructive forms this can take when a social forma-
tion fails to offer sufficient room for turning the ever-present destructive political antagonisms
into fruitful agonistic contestation. Mouffe for instance highlights the rise of extreme populist
movements in society, such as religious extremism and the racist far-right as one such conse-
quence, while Allmendinger and Haughton (2010, 2012) point toward how the tight formatting
of consensus-oriented planning processes forces disagreeing parties into a reactive politics of
obstruction, as a consequence bogging the planning system down in over-litigation, and in the
process producing “a generation of NIMBYs”, as Andy Inch (2012) succinctly puts it.
Nevertheless, Inch also reasons that postpolitical action might nevertheless generate counter-
reactions that can be positively channeled and contribute to a revival of democratic engagement.
Along similar lines, Raco (2014a: 168) contends that the present obvious failure of postpolitical
governance arrangements sparks publics into being which might hopefully contribute toward rein-
vigorating democracy (cf. Legacy, 2015; Raco & Lin, 2012). This suggests that efforts to render
planning postpolitical might not necessarily lead toward “the end of politics” but maybe to the con-
trary trigger movements toward repoliticizing planning, but perhaps by other means and in other
spaces than those commonly and traditionally recognized as “properly” and legitimately political
in liberal-democratic parliamentary systems of representative democracy (Metzger, 2011: 191).

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Such a perspective, of course, demands that we ask where and among whom such repoliticiz-
ing reactions might be expected to be found. In his work, Erik Swyngedouw often center-stages
popular urban uprisings such as those associated with the Occupy-movement or the revolu-
tionary Greek, Egyptian and Turkish urban movements. More directly relating to planning
processes, Legacy (2015) also highlights the importance of citizen action beyond and against
the state as important vehicles for opposing postpolitical governance practices in ways that do
not only contest particular planning issues at hand, but also assert themselves as active political
subjects in matters that affect their lives.
In contrast to the above, the relational approach suggested by Van Puymbroeck and
Oosterlynck (2014) is more cautious in pointing out any specific movement or group as con-
stituting a political or politicizing subject in itself, but instead focuses on the fleeting situations
in which the given order of things is put into question, wherever these might arise – which
generate a “third space” wherein the exclusions, obfuscations and silencings that are performed
by the existing police order are exposed and made tangible (Allmendinger, 2016: 153). This
approach to some degree also resonates with MacLeod’s (2013) caution that it is important not
to automatically preclude and discount the “politics of the everyday”, and in a similar vein
Rosol (2014: 80) has asserted the need to pay attention to non-confrontational and individual,
unorganized and nonstrategic forms of resistance, perhaps akin to what Inch (2012: 533) has
labeled as the “micropolitics of displacement”.
Even if I agree on the importance of also staying attentive to the small everyday struggles
against the powers that be, it remains pertinent to ask how such interventions are carried for-
ward and connected to broader mobilizations and more general demands for change, so that
they do not only turn into fragmented, particularistic local protests (Haughton et al., 2016).
Nevertheless, the relational approach to politicization productively demands that we avoid any
strong preconceptions about where we might come to find a “properly political” movement
and moment. Or, to quote Johnstone (2014: 707), it suggests that “the presence of political
antagonism should always be assumed; the location of where such contestation takes place,
however, should not” (cf. Davidson & Iveson, 2014; Dikeç, 2005). Maybe the place of the
political could sometimes even be found in a planning office (see e.g. Krumholtz, 1990)? And
maybe even, it has been suggested, within the arrangements of spatial planning; albeit not in the
search for consensus, but in the strategic dimension of opening up and visioning alternative
futures (see Metzger et al., 2014; Albrechts, 2015).

Concluding Discussion
Discussing contemporary planning practice as currently being postpolitical poses the risk of
conjuring up a misleading, romanticized image of some Golden Age of thoroughly demo-
cratic planning which – alas – would now be in the past. Even the most cursory reading of
planning history will, however, show that such an era never was, and that the mainstream of
planning practice has always been “techno-managerial”. It could even be argued that for some
influential theories of planning the technification of politically contentious issues – aiming at
transcending politics or “cutting through the clutter” – is even seen to be the essence of plan-
ning. Nevertheless, this techno-managerial practice has from time to time been interrupted
and subverted by iterations of demands toward the democratization of planning. In the light of
such a longer history of planning, the theorization of postpolitics and the wider frame of post-
foundational political theory on which it rests, can perhaps be apprehended as but one of the
latest of these turns; aiming at upending the current “police order” of planning in the name of
democracy and equality.

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However, even if one agrees that it is of paramount importance, not least from a democracy
perspective, that planning scholarship remains attentive to wherever postpolitics rears its ugly
head, it is still nothing but honest to admit that there are lacunae and contradictions in the
theoretical underpinnings that the analysis of postpolitics currently rests upon. Nevertheless,
the solution to these shortcomings is not to throw the whole analysis over board – but rather
to develop it. Based on the preceding survey of the state of the art in the subject area, it is for
instance at this point becoming quite obvious that just blurting out that things are postpolitical
in general does not seem to generate much interesting friction any more. What is instead needed
at this point are studies that can respond in some empirical detail to more precise questions
regarding the concrete functions and mechanics of postpolitical devices and techniques –
but nevertheless without losing perspective of how unique, situated enactments of postpolitics
configure into broader patterns of development. This in turn requires a heightened sensibility
toward the spatio-temporal specificity of analysis, which implies asking questions about, on
the one hand, the concrete spaces and practices of postpolitics, but also about the institutional
arrangements and relations that uphold and reproduce them over time and space.
Once the specificities of postpolitics have been more clearly established, another important
development would be to break out of the lopsided focus on this single (albeit, admittedly,
highly devious) form of depoliticization, so as to also place it within a wider landscape of mul-
tifarious types of depoliticizing mechanisms and maneuvers. This would also place a greater
demand on a more rigorous theoretization of “the other” of depoliticization, that is: the var-
iegated techniques and forms of politicization, and that which they enact – i.e. “the political”.
There are already signs of such a nascent interest in some emerging work on postpolitics and
planning, and it is important that this momentum is preserved and channeled into a shift in focus
from asserting that postpolitics exists and is bad news for democracy, to instead spending greater
effort on figuring out how to contest it and produce opportunities for the political to break
through in planning contexts; thereby generating opportunities for the enactment of democracy
and the staging of equality within these processes.
The relational approach to politicization, which I personally find highly promising, does not
bet upon any form of clean break with the past, in which the world is completely born anew.
What it nevertheless requires is the courage to pose bold demands for fundamental change
that rip away the sense of givenness of the current order of things, and which in their present
context therefore might appear as ridiculous or almost irresponsible. However, when it comes
to seemingly outrageous demands for social justice and equality, Swyngedouw and Wilson
(2014b: 218) remind us that the demands of the last chapter of the Communist Manifesto –
such as free and universal health care, education and care for the elderly – appeared as com-
pletely scandalous in 1848, but were almost all implemented in one way or the other in most
of Western Europe during the twentieth century. Why shouldn’t this ambition for equality
and development for the benefit of “the many – not the few” (Healey, 2010) be possible to
revive again?

Notes
1 I wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to the editors, Stijn Oosterlynck, Anna Lundgren and the Higher
Seminar at the KTH Division of Urban and Regional Studies for their helpful comments on a previous
version of the chapter.
2 The sometimes almost interchangeable use of the terms “postpolitics” and “post-democracy” in the
literature on postpolitics is at times very confusing, particularly when taking into consideration that
influential authors such as Erik Swyngedouw draw both on Rancière and his use of this concept, as well
as Colin Crouch’s (2004) use of the term in a related but nevertheless quite distinct way.

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3 To Žižek the figure of postpolitics is also closely related to that of ultrapolitics, a hyper-antagonistic anti-
politics moralizing the adversary as “evil” and seeking its complete annihilation.
4 This tendency toward moralizing conflict is also identified by Tunström & Bradley (2014: 82) in the
contemporary Swedish debate on urban form.
5 The saliency of “localizing” postpolitical tendencies has been observed in contemporary rural communi-
ties as well, see e.g. Kenis & Mathijs (2014).

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 16
‘CULTURAL WORK’ AND THE
REMAKING OF PLANNING’S
‘APPARATUS OF TRUTH’
Andy Inch

Raiding Foucault’s Toolbox

The historical and philosophical works of Michel Foucault have become a central reference
point in the development of critical theory. Through a series of hugely influential book-length
studies, supplemented by various interviews and lectures, Foucault explored aspects of what he
called ‘the history of the present’, critically uncovering how socio-cultural ideas and practices
about, for example, madness, punishment or sex are produced within ‘regimes of truth’ –
systems of power that define what can and cannot be said, done and considered truthful in dif-
ferent societies at different times. Adapted and applied extraordinarily widely across the human
and social sciences, Foucault’s work has opened up productive lines of enquiry and often heated
debate about the pervasive ways in which power operates to produce particular forms of knowl-
edge, rationality and subjectivity.
Many Foucauldian ideas have now become part of the taken-for-granted ‘common-sense’
of critical scholarship. As with many major thinkers, however, Foucault’s philosophical writing
can be complex, elliptical, and even somewhat contradictory. I do not set out here in search of a
doctrinaire approach, however. Rather, I see Foucault’s philosophy as capable of being read and
understood in multiple productive ways. My purpose is to explore how it has been and might
continue to be of use to planning theory. I remain wary of some of the potential theoretical and
empirical difficulties involved in the appropriation of Foucauldian frameworks to the contem-
porary study of planning, not least Foucault’s reluctance to centre his own analysis of power on
the practices of the state, the traditional locus of much planning activity. However, I take heart
from his stated willingness to make his work available as a ‘toolbox’ for exposing and challeng-
ing systems of power (Foucault and Deleuze, 1973; Mills, 2003, 7).
In this chapter I therefore argue that planning theory’s productive engagement with
Foucault’s toolbox can be usefully extended by re-focusing analytical attention on the produc-
tion of the disciplinary1 ‘apparatus’ of planning – the various institutions, discourses and practices
through which the field called ‘planning’ and its truths are constructed at different times and
in different places. In doing so, I want to suggest that Foucauldian analytical tools can assist
with the pressing task of understanding how ideas and practices of planning are currently being
problematised and transformed by neoliberal and managerial rationalities. Considering the oft-
repeated criticism that Foucauldian approaches are incapable of providing a political response

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to the disciplinary and normalising effects of power, I will also explore how such an approach
might help us think about the political strategies that could be employed in response to seem-
ingly pervasive dissatisfaction with the idea of planning in many societies. In doing so I will
argue that Foucault’s largely historical thinking might be usefully supplemented by attentiveness
to the lived experiences of practice and particularly the forms of ‘cultural work’ through which
planning’s disciplinary apparatus is actively reshaped.
The chapter is set out as follows: In the next section I offer a summary of some of the
major uses of Foucauldian approaches within the field of planning theory and the debates these
have generated. Following this I argue for the value of thinking about the contemporary (re)
formation of planning’s apparatus, particularly in contexts where ideas of planning are increas-
ingly being targeted as a problem requiring governmental intervention. I then introduce a brief
empirical example of the ways in which the managerial discourse of efficiency has disciplined
planning practices in Scotland, before going on to introduce the idea of cultural work as a means
of drawing attention to the range of practices through which the field of planning comes to be
remade. In doing so I also consider some of the potential (and perhaps certain limitations) that I
feel Foucauldian analysis brings to studies of the contemporary politics of planning.

Planning’s Foucault and His Discontents

Work influenced by Foucault’s thinking has generated powerful contributions to planning the-
ory, notably in unsettling the claims of the planning project to be a progressive force for social
change. Along with scholarship in the cognate fields of urban studies and geography there has
been considerable interest in exploring the spatial effects of power, discipline and surveillance
in the production of urban space. This has included studies that critically re-examine the disci-
plinary histories of planning and their concern with the rational ordering of space as a means of
producing healthy, virtuous populations (e.g. Boyer, 1983; Fischler, 1998; Huxley, 2006, 2013;
Pløger, 2008; Harris, 2011; Certomà, 2015). Foucauldian work has also explored how the plan-
ning discipline constructs its objects of analysis (Kooij, 2015), rationalises its practices (Flyvbjerg,
1998), and authorises particular subjects to speak and act, exposing for example the gendered
domination that is inscribed into planning ideas and practices (Huxley, 2002). Elsewhere in this
volume, Margo Huxley also reviews some of the productive ways in which Foucault’s neolo-
gism governmentality, referring to the rationalities through which attempts are made to govern
the conduct of the self and others, has been taken up in planning and related fields.
To date, however, Foucauldian scholarship in the field of planning has been most closely
associated with a major challenge to the perceived dominance of consensus-seeking theories
of planning as a form of communicative practice. The latter have promoted the idea that
planning theory should be developed through the study of planners’ practices. Influenced
among others by North American pragmatism and the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, a range of
scholars have sought to (re)conceptualise planning as a form of ‘communicative action’ in
which those practices should be geared toward shaping progressive agreements ‘in the face of
power’ (e.g. Forester, 1989; Healey, 1997). In response, however, critics have questioned the
very possibility of standing ‘in the face of’ a power that, in Foucauldian terms, is constitutive of
knowledge, rationality, truth and subjectivity and which therefore reaches deep down into all
planning processes. The work of scholars drawing on Foucauldian ‘tools’ has therefore often
been presented as a critical or ‘dark side’ reading of the normative and political potentialities
of communicative planning theory (e.g. Flyvbjerg, 1998; Flyvbjerg and Richardson, 2002;
Huxley and Yiftachel, 2000).

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 Andy Inch

Fischler (2000) is among those who have responded by arguing that differences between ‘the
Foucauldians’ and ‘the Habermasians’ might have been overstated and that it is possible to see
Foucauldian insights as adding to understanding of the historical conditions of possibility for any
‘rational’ communicative action. Even if these two camps’ respective positions reflect funda-
mental differences in sensibility and approach, however, the debates they initiated have played a
significant part in the formation of the terrain of contemporary planning theory.
Moreover, many elements of those debates remain relevant and important. In this chapter,
I will consider two such issues: First, the challenge that a Foucauldian analysis raises to expand
the scope of planning theory’s ‘practice turn’ by developing ways of thinking and writing about
practices that better account for the wider forces that structure and shape planning episodes
(Watson, 2002). Second, what I will here call the ‘so what?’ question that has often been levelled
against Foucauldian approaches.
The ‘so what?’ question reflects a central problematic for a Foucauldian approach to the
analysis of planning and indeed for Foucauldian scholarship more generally. Foucault’s work has
often been read as suggesting a totalising conception of disciplinary power that leaves little space
for political struggle or the emergence of alternatives, leading critics to suggest that Foucauldian
analysis is unable to effectively address the possibility of resistance. Some interpreters see marked
shifts in Foucault’s account of power as domination at different stages in his work (Hall, 2001).
When Foucault himself sought to address this criticism of his work he consistently emphasised
that his understanding of power was not only negative but also positive, in the sense that power-
relations are always productive and not simply repressive. Thus, while there can be little doubt
that Foucault saw dispersed, localised power-relations as tending to be shaped by wider patterns
of domination, and in turn to have ‘hegemonic effects’ that reproduce ‘global strategies’, he also
argued power is always also limited and contingent in its reach and effects:

One should not assume a massive and primal condition of domination, a binary
structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather a
multiform production of relations of domination which are partially susceptible of
integration into overall strategies … there are no relations of power without resist-
ances; the latter are all the more real and effective because they are formed right at the
point where relations of power are exercised.
(Foucault, 1980, 142)

In doing so Foucault advocated (and seems to have himself practised) a committed politics of
struggle against power and domination (e.g. Foucault, 1980, 1991a). However, he also per-
sistently refused to be drawn on any normative principles that might guide such resistance,
insisting instead that ‘strategies’ could only emerge immanently, as responses appropriate to
the ‘point where relations of power are exercised’. This aspect of Foucault’s philosophy has
drawn widespread criticism (e.g. Walzer, 1986) and is arguably particularly problematic in the
field of planning where there is a well-established demand for scholarship that addresses itself to
alternatives and exploration of the possibilities of doing better (see e.g. Forester, 2000; Campbell
et al., 2014). Indeed, this is arguably what sets much planning theory apart from the concerns of
related fields such as critical urban studies; creating a tendency toward strongly normative theory
marked by a commitment to what ought to be, rather than simply a critical understanding of how
things are. At stake in any response to the ‘so what?’ question then is a concern to demonstrate
the productive potential of critique as a means of exposing power-relations, not for its own sake
but in order to unsettle established modes of thinking and acting, revealing their contingency as
a means of generating new political potentialities and strategies of struggle (Jenkins, 2011). I will

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 The Production of Truth in Planning

return to this crucial question below. First, however, I will explore how and why Foucauldian
critique retains importance as a response to the contemporary politics of planning.

From Discursive Formations to the Problematic Apparatus of Planning

Foucault described his methodological approach as either archaeological or genealogical and these
are often presented as more or less distinctive phases in the development of his thought (Mills,
2003). Put rather simplistically, his archaeological work was concerned to describe the unwrit-
ten rules that govern the discursive formation of fields of knowledge in any given historical
period; requiring attentiveness to the networks of relations that define how particular statements
come to be accepted as authoritative (Foucault, 1972). Genealogical analysis represented a move
toward a more dynamic study of power and knowledge, tracing transformations in the mean-
ing of discourses and practices and the roles they play within different historically constituted
‘regimes of truth’ – the formations through which particular practices come to be accepted as
truths while others come to be seen as deviant or problematic (Foucault, 1991b). Alongside his
‘genealogical’ studies Foucault also at times emphasised a rather less discursive conception of
how regimes of truth come to be formed in and through specific disciplinary fields, describing
a ‘dispositif’ or ‘apparatus’ that encompasses:

a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural

forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philo-
sophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as the unsaid.
(Foucault, 1980, 194)

The apparatus can be understood as a formation that produces its own particular truths, related
in complex ways to the wider regimes operative in a society at any given time. An apparatus is
therefore a complex but also contingent formation that is always ‘functionally overdetermined’ –
meaning the multiple practices it produces lead, both intentionally and unintentionally, to fur-
ther, ongoing adjustments in the relations between its various elements. This in turn means that
the apparatus and this recursive, ongoing process of change operate at a level beyond the imme-
diate or direct control of any human agency, though both are open to ‘strategic elaboration’ by
actors situated within the field (Foucault, 1980, 195).
Genealogical rather than archaeological analyses have tended to prevail when Foucauldian
tools have been used in planning (e.g. Fischler, 1998; Huxley, 2010, 2013). Such studies have
shown the potential of Foucauldian approaches for exploring the construction of planning as a
discursive formation or apparatus. This might be productively extended through further interroga-
tion of the historical ‘archive’ or the reshaping of planning’s apparatus to explore the changing
constitution of the disciplinary field. In the UK, for example, the historical development of
planning has been punctuated by major disjunctures, reorientations and contestations that have
transformed how the objects of planning activity are identified and understood, what counts as
valid knowledge and who is authorised to speak on planning issues. All of which suggests rich
potential for Foucauldian analysis as a means of unsettling established ideas.
Analysis of change over time is also indispensable for understanding the history of our pre-
sent and the potentialities of the contemporary conjuncture. There are clear affinities here with
attempts to explore the cultural formation of planning ideas and practices (e.g. Sanyal, 2005).
Indeed, Sandercock’s (2005, 310) definition of a planning culture as ‘an ensemble of people,
ideas, social values, institutions, politics and power’, hints toward a need for analysis of the
contemporary reformation of the apparatus of planning, tracing how ideas of planning are being

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 Andy Inch

constructed, challenged and changed. This is a potentially problematic move since Foucault’s
concern was with historical modes of analysis. However, I want to suggest that this task has par-
ticular urgency at present due to the widespread perception that the idea of planning has been
‘under attack’ in certain parts of the world. The ‘planning cultures’ project, for example, was
conceived in part as a response to concerns about the diminution of local planning ideas and
practices in the face of powerful processes of neoliberalisation and globalisation.
Elsewhere I have sought to understand aspects of this problematic by studying local manifes-
tations of what might be considered a wider, contemporary phenomenon – attempts to reform
planning systems and practices (see e.g. Inch, 2012a, 2012b). Given the status of planning as a
primarily state-based activity, these initiatives are clearly related to broader transformations in
the rationalities that shape governmental activity. Indeed, the proper limits and purposes of state
activity have been central concerns of neoliberal governmentalities (Dardot and Laval, 2014).
This has led to what Mitchell Dean (1999) describes as the ‘government of government’ – the
widespread problematisation and transformation of state activities through the introduction of
new disciplinary techniques, often drawn from private sector managerial practices. Such devel-
opments are intended not just to limit the role of the state vis-à-vis the economy, but also to
bring governmental practices in line with neoliberal rationalities, governing conduct through
the virtues of market competition.
If the construction of planning as a ‘problem’ requiring reform is closely related to these
broader transformations and their attendant ‘global strategies’, there is a need to understand
and explore the ways in which the apparatus of planning has come to be defined as an object of
governmental attention in recent years. This in turn implies a shift in focus for critical planning
studies which have tended to explore the ways in which planning (or particular aspects of plan-
ning) operate as an agent of disciplinary/governmental power, not the processes by which the
disciplinary formation of planning is itself strategically targeted as a problem requiring various
forms of intervention (cf. Finlayson, 2009).
Taking a Foucauldian approach requires resisting any global explanation of these processes of
change as somehow ‘determined’ by macro-structures such as neoliberalism, however. Instead,
it suggests a need to explore the situated specificities through which such reform initiatives are
constructed and enacted, paying close attention to the ‘strategies’ through which planning is
constructed as a problem, the solutions that are sought, and the technologies through which
these transformations are to be brought about. To illustrate this point, in the next section I will
introduce an empirical example taken from research into the modernisation of the land-use
planning system in Scotland between 2004–2012 and some of the ways in which a discourse of
‘efficiency’ has operated to discipline the apparatus of planning there.

Efficiency Effects? Understanding the Disciplinary

Micro-Politics of Planning Reform
As in many other jurisdictions around the world, the land-use planning system in Scotland has
been subject to a series of reforms since the mid-2000s that have been presented as a necessary
process of ‘modernisation’ for a system that was no longer ‘fit for purpose’.2
Perhaps understandably the problematisation of the performance of planning was at its
strongest as the case for new legislation was made in 2005:

The commitment to modernisation stemmed from a common perception … that the

planning system is not serving Scotland well. Many users of the system have com-
plained that it is over-bureaucratic, slow to respond to commercial and economic

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needs … Community and voluntary groups and the general public, often see the plan-
ning system as complex, intimidating, unresponsive … Local and central government
bodies are concerned that their key political objectives … are often frustrated by the
planning system.
(Scottish Government, 2005)

This quotation highlights three key justifications that were presented for modernisation:
(1) a pervasive concern with the perceived inefficiency of land-use planning that was viewed as
a source of negative economic impacts; (2) a view that planning processes were not sufficiently
inclusive of broader public concerns; and (3) concern that planning did not enable integration with
other public services.
Each of these – efficiency, inclusion and integration – corresponds to broader principles of
public service and planning reform that have been central to the definition of ‘modern’ plan-
ning; all three problematise different aspects of existing planning processes (reform deliberations
were notably less concerned with defining the substantive outcomes that planning might have in
terms, for example, of an improved built environment). In Foucauldian terms, each also entails
particular understandings of the objects that should be of concern to the planning system, the
knowledge, practices social relations and ‘subject positions’ required to plan effectively. As such,
each forms a distinctive rationale for reform measures, focusing attention on particular aspects
of planning practice in Scotland.
The relations between efficiency, integration and inclusion hint at the complexity of the
apparatus that these discourses are tools for reforming. There are, for example, likely to be ten-
sions in the relations between these three goals where, for example, the aim of increasing the
speed of decision-making in the interests of economic efficiency might work against ensuring
decisions are taken in an inclusive manner. In Scotland this has tended to be resolved by the
discourse of ‘efficiency’ assuming particular priority. Like administrations in many other places,
the Scottish Government has consistently sought to present itself as ‘open for business’ and
has therefore been particularly concerned to ensure that any perceived barriers to private sec-
tor wealth creation are addressed. This has led to planning processes being geared toward the
pursuit of ‘sustainable economic growth’, a focus that was evident when, despite strong public
backing, the Scottish Government chose not to introduce a third party right of appeal against
the grant of planning permission, a measure promoted as a means of strengthening the inclu-
sion of wider publics in planning decision-making. The main reason cited for this decision was
that granting third party rights would be inefficient, slowing development and deterring private
investment. Thus the ways in which ‘inclusion’ came to be defined were effectively disciplined,
its scope and meaning reshaped in relation to the overarching concern for efficiency.
Driven by strong criticism of the inefficiency of public sector bureaucracies, the discourse
of efficiency is readily identifiable as a powerful global strategy of problematisation of ideas and
practices of planning. Its logic suggests that making planning processes more efficient by reduc-
ing unnecessary ‘red-tape’ will free the market to deliver the development on which sustainable
economic growth relies. The evidence on which such claims rest has often been questionable
and it is unclear whether successive waves of reform that have drawn on this ‘efficiency’ logic
have had much appreciable impact on the quantity or quality of new development being ‘deliv-
ered’ by planning processes (Adams and Watkins, 2014; Gurran and Phibbs, 2014). This has led
to exploration of the ideological function that blaming planning systems for failure might be
performing within neoliberal regimes of spatial governance (e.g. Gunder, 2015; see also Inch,
2012a). A Foucauldian approach, however, does not set out to question the fit between the
discourse of efficiency and a reality external to it, or read its logic in ideological terms as a front

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masking underlying contradictions, but instead seeks to explore how it has actually worked to
reshape practices.
As a strategy of problematisation, the discourse of efficiency attained disciplinary force by
establishing links between powerful macro-economic concerns about the competitiveness of the
Scottish economy and the particular ways in which planning ideas and practices have been insti-
tutionalised in Scotland – notably the micro-practices through which local authority planning
offices process applications for planning permission. The long-standing equation of public sec-
tor practices with inefficiency and waste meant that there was a range of familiar governmental
technologies available through which the problem of inefficiency could be addressed (arguably
contrasting with a lack of immediately available or ‘off the shelf’ tools for effectively addressing
the more complex challenges of inclusion and integration). For example, planners and local
authority managers were already familiar with the idea that planning was a ‘service’ that needed
to be responsive to the needs of its ‘customers’ and whose ‘performance’ could (and even
should) be measured and rendered subject to disciplinary pressures for ‘continuous improve-
ment’ in various ways, including, for example, through attentiveness to performance targets,
most notably those that measured the speed of decision-making.
The problem of inefficiency was forcefully argued by right-wing think tanks and political
lobbies operating on behalf of the development industry. However, while certain groups of
actors were particularly closely associated with promulgating this strategy, it should not be
unambiguously equated with the pursuit and imposition of particular political or economic
interests hostile to the idea of planning. Nor should the discourse of efficiency be seen as a purely
repressive or disciplinary force, imposing neoliberal or managerial rationalities antithetical to
an established (and, by inference, more progressive) planning culture. Rather, the need for
greater efficiency in planning had become a widely accepted truth; a requirement to improve
performance ‘figures’ broadly accepted by public and private sector professionals as part of what
constitutes good planning practices. As a spokesperson for a planning professional body told me
in 2012:

What it does do is, it puts pressure on us to perform. Again, personally I don’t have a
big problem with that. I think as with any kind of profession, we need to continue to
improve our performance – as simple as that. Some of the figures we’ve got are pretty
bad … And behind it all … I personally think we’ve got a five year window to try and
show that we actually can make that progress.

It is therefore possible to identify a series of strategic interventions intended to realign the dis-
ciplinary apparatus of planning around a particular focus on efficiency – directing attention and
resources in particular ways, validating certain practices and subject positions while simultane-
ously rendering others problematic. Interviews suggested the extent to which this had been
effective. For example, one public sector manager suggested to me that most of his staff were
signed up to new approaches though: ‘We’ve got a few dinosaurs . . . you know people who
find it difficult to change and leave their old working practices behind.’
In this regard, the regime of performance management had become a normal part of how
professionals thought about and understood planning as an activity; arguably contrasting with
accounts of the ‘culture wars’ that have sometimes waged between professionalism and mana-
gerialism in other areas of the local state (Cochrane, 2004). However, managerial language
and practices were not adopted entirely uncritically. Rather, they were often subject to more
or less strategic processes of reworking. For the most part, in Scotland these could not be
described as resistances to either neoliberalism or managerialism; rather, they were, more typi-
cally, subtle reshapings of the meaning and emphasis of efficiency in the name of a different
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understanding of what constituted ‘good planning’. For example, ideas of being ‘open for busi-
ness’ were incorporated into day-to-day practices in particular ways by public sector planners
who committed themselves to new and enhanced forms of dialogue with the development
industry and applicants for planning permission. Ironically this was often less cost efficient for
public planning authorities. However, it was seen as a way of responding to concerns about
efficient customer service while opening up more positive subject positions for public sector
planners as ‘facilitators’ of better and not just quicker development. The profession’s representa-
tive bodies, meanwhile worked with civil servants to try to devise more holistic means of
measuring the quality of such planning services alongside (though not instead of) more standard
calculations of the speed with which applications were processed.
While a Foucauldian approach requires a more patient and detailed examination of all of
these practices than there is space for here, this section has briefly highlighted the potential value
of using Foucauldian tools to critically analyse how the apparatus of planning and its truths are
being reworked. Efficiency has become a key discourse driving reformation of that apparatus in
Scotland. This has had a variety of direct and indirect disciplinary effects on planning ideas and
practices, including the marginalisation of other possibilities such as calls for more inclusive or
integrative planning (on the former see Inch, 2015).
Foucauldian analysis enables critical exploration of the disciplinary or normalising effects
of reform discourses, however, it also moves beyond a purely repressive or totalising equation
of planning’s shifting apparatus with global strategies of neoliberalisation or managerialisation;
focusing attention on the micro-practices through which change is negotiated and in the process
rendering visible some of the subtle reworkings and transformations that this can prompt. In
other work I have described such practices as forms of ‘cultural work’ (Inch, 2012b). In the next
section below I go on to further consider the potential value of this concept in developing and
potentially expanding a Foucauldian response to the contemporary politics of planning.

Exploring the Contribution of ‘Cultural Work’

‘Cultural work’ is a term that I have appropriated from the sociology of the professions, where it
has been used to consider how professions organise to protect or expand their spheres of influ-
ence; adjusting their practices and knowledge claims in response to new opportunities or threats
to their status or societal position (Abbott, 1998; Fournier, 2000). I see this term as having a
broader potential usage and value, however, in focusing attention on the range of collective
and individual practices through which various actors, including but not limited to profession-
als, adjust themselves to life within a given regime or apparatus. In this sense it is intended to
encompass a wide range of possible practices, from processes of cooptation and accommodation
through to strategic action to resist, challenge or reshape particular discourses or practices.
The idea of cultural work is therefore broadly compatible with a Foucauldian concern for the
micro-practices that emerge at the sites where forms of normalising or disciplinary power meet
the lives of those they target and are either incorporated or reworked. It is also useful, however,
to the extent that it draws attention to other significant aspects of contemporary realities, per-
haps even pushing beyond some limitations of the tools Foucault bequeathed for analysing the
‘lived experience’ of any disciplinary apparatus. As Ian Hacking has argued:

There is something missing in those [Foucault’s archaeological] approaches – an

understanding of how the forms of discourse become part of the lives of ordinary
people, or even how they become institutionalized and made part of the structure of
institutions at work.
(Hacking, 2004, 278)
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Hacking suggests that Foucault’s focus on the discursive ‘making up’ of subjects can be use-
fully supplemented by concern for the forms of interaction through which people engage with
the subject positions that are made up for them – for this he turns to Erving Goffman’s (1959)
symbolic interactionism as a means of exploring how people come to perform particular social
roles and identities.
Through the notion of cultural work I want to draw attention to something similar. This
seems valuable because it reintroduces the socio-cultural weight and depth of experience that
any given apparatus shapes and how this affects different actors in their ability to speak and act,
whether as a form of resistance or just a means of coping with the various demands that are made
of them (cf. Abram, 2004; Inch, 2015). The lived texture of this experience matters because it
offers a rich understanding of a range of actions, interactions and possibilities that arguably can-
not be grasped by purely historical methods.
Others, including Judith Butler’s (2005) concern with the performative and how we ‘give an
account of ourselves’, might offer alternative routes toward similar insights. However, Hacking’s
juxtaposition of Foucault and Goffman, and the roots of symbolic interactionism in North
American pragmatist philosophy, usefully invite further reflection on the potential synergies
between Foucauldian critique and communicative planning theory (Fischler, 2000). Indeed,
notwithstanding some significant differences, others have also suggested intersections between
Foucault’s work and pragmatist concerns, for example in a shared orientation to understanding
the formation of social problems (e.g. Rabinow, 2011).
Turning toward the pragmatist in Foucault also brings us back to the second section, above,
where I noted calls to consider how Foucauldian approaches might productively supplement
planning theory’s established modes of ‘practice writing’. These have tended to focus on how
planners or other actors shape action, rather than on how they themselves are shaped and
involved in reshaping themselves and their practices as part of the (re)formation of a wider disci-
plinary apparatus. This is an omission that is arguably increasingly problematic in an era marked
by the ‘government of government’, where various forms of cultural work might be seen to
have become increasingly ubiquitous.
Practice-focused planning theory arguably also has a tendency to make rather heroic, nor-
mative demands of individual planners as subjects who stand ‘in the face of power’; capable of
working within a set of institutional structures while acting toward nobler ends. Such theory also
therefore risks overlooking some of the more mundane but vitally important work involved in
negotiating a ‘fit’ with prevailing cultures and attitudes (Abram, 2004). The concept of cultural
work might also, therefore, draw attention to increasingly pervasive forms of practice that have
perhaps not been sufficiently considered in planning theory to date and whose incorporation
into the stories that theorists tell could help to develop accounts of planning practice attuned to
the very ordinary ways in which power reaches down into the practices and self-understandings
of actors in planning episodes (for example, why some planners become ‘dinosaurs’ and how
that affects what they do!).
Attention to the range of cultural work through which people come to make sense of
themselves might therefore be a useful way of understanding the very different relations that
collective and individual subjects forge with the discourses and institutions within which they
act, and the ethical and political potentialities (and limitations) to which those relations give rise.
As a result a focus on practices of cultural work also returns attention to the issues of agency
raised above, and the challenge posed by those who argue that critical modes of analysis drawing
on Foucauldian tools leave the all-important ‘so what?’ question unaddressed.
As discussed above, critics have often expressed concern that Foucault’s radically decentred
and disciplined conception of the human subject leaves little space to consider the agency

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available to resist power (Hall, 2001; Mills, 2003). Recent scholarship has focused attention
on what seems to have been a distinct attempt by Foucault himself to address this criticism in
some of his later work on ethics, the subject and power. As Colin Gordon (1991) has argued,
by uncovering the contingency of governmental projects and particularly their reliance on the
willingness of the governed to accept their rationalities, Foucault came to emphasise the scope
for ‘counter-conducts’. In exploring the link between governmental power and the conduct of
the governed, this work also created an explicit connection between ethical practices and a par-
ticular form of agonistic politics; highlighting the potential responsibility and agency of subjects
who resist, rework, challenge or refuse to be governed in particular ways (ibid.). The idea of
cultural work highlights the presence of numerous sites where actors, individually and collec-
tively, more or less actively, negotiate a sense of self and fit with prevailing regimes, sometimes
in ways that work to reshape that regime itself. Part of the challenge of understanding the scope
for better planning in a world being disciplined by neoliberal and managerial rationalities might,
therefore, be to examine under what circumstances cultural work might coincide with what
Foucault called the ‘work of freedom’ and the exercise of agency to assert alternative possibili-
ties. This perhaps also requires planning theory to engage with a different Foucault, attuned to
the possibilities of freedom as well as the forces of discipline (see Mendieta, 2011), and to forms
of critical analysis that consciously seek out the limits of power.
So how might this translate into real political practices in response to the ‘so what?’ ques-
tion? Under what circumstances can cultural work take on strategic political forms rather than
being solely concerned with accommodation to change? In strict Foucauldian terms, ethical and
political potentialities cannot meaningfully exist as a set of normative orientations outside of the
knowledges, practices, relations and subjectivities that constitute a given disciplinary apparatus.
Instead they emerge as a range of immanent possibilities; challenging theorists and practitioners
alike to critically and pragmatically assess the specific alternative practices that could be culti-
vated within a given historical conjuncture (Jenkins, 2011).
In the Scottish case outlined above, the ways in which the discourse of efficiency became
incorporated into planning practices were reworked to some extent by public sector planners
and their representatives – evidence of cultural work – that enabled them to incorporate ideas
of efficiency into their practices without threatening other valued goals. However, in doing so
other opportunities might have been missed to develop alternative forms of planning based on
discourses and practices of inclusion or integration. In the period since I studied those changes,
planning practices have continued to be problematised as a source of constraint, delay and
inefficiency. Exacerbated by severe budget cuts in local government, the negotiated model
of ‘efficiency’ is itself under increasing strain and further reforms are being considered at the
time of writing. While we might remain sceptical about the capacity of professional planners
to actively resist, these developments are likely to give rise to new strategic responses, perhaps
leading more planners (and other affected parties) toward more politically engaged forms of
cultural work: speaking out or questioning how they might challenge some of the effects of the
discourse of efficiency.
Above all at this time, it might be that strategies are required that problematise the problema-
tisation of planning as little more than a source of delay and inefficiency. Such strategies could
take many forms, including: challenging the longer-term economic inefficiency and costs of poor
planning control and unsustainable development; promoting the positive contribution different
planning ideas and practices could make to creating better places and achieving more sustainable,
inclusive forms of economic growth (e.g. Campbell et al., 2014); or making links between plan-
ning and other governmental projects, for example land reform or community empowerment,
that have not tended to be part of the contemporary discourse of land-use planning in Scotland.

203
 Andy Inch

These suggestions are not premised on radical refutations of neoliberalism or normative

recasting of contemporary ideas of planning (though their ultimate intention might be sympa-
thetic to such perspectives). Nor do they assume that the governmental apparatus of planning
is necessarily a good thing. Instead, based on a critical analysis of the disciplinary power of
the discourse of efficiency and of wider neoliberal and managerial rationalities, they highlight
some strategies that might be elaborated in and against planning’s prevailing regime of truth in
Scotland, with a view to generating other possibilities and perhaps greater freedom to plan in
different, better ways.

Conclusion
In this chapter I have explored the continued relevance of part of Michel Foucault’s ‘toolbox’
for planning theory. In particular I have considered the usefulness of thinking about contempo-
rary transformations in the disciplinary apparatus of planning – the framework through which
planning ideas and practices and their truths are shaped and reshaped. I have argued that such an
analysis is particularly necessary in the face of the seemingly ubiquitous problematisation of plan-
ning in many places. Finally, I have suggested that focusing attention on the forms of cultural
work through which actors respond, adjust and make sense of themselves in relation to shifts
in the disciplinary apparatus of planning might have the potential to productively deepen plan-
ning theory’s engagement with practice and to demonstrate the political uses of a distinctively
Foucauldian mode of critical analysis.

Notes
1 As will hopefully become clear, the dual meaning of ‘discipline’ as both a form of repressive power and
a field of knowledge or practice is central to Foucault’s work, suggesting deep interconnections between
power and knowledge. In this chapter the term is therefore used with both senses.
2 This section of the chapter draws on research supported by a grant from the Royal Institute of Chartered
Surveyors (RICS) Research Trust (Project No. 433). The project explored how a reform agenda set out
to change the culture of planning in Scotland, using documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews
and some participant observation to explore how planning ideas, practices and professional identities had
been ‘modernised’. For further details see Inch (2013, 2017).

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 17
COUNTERING ‘THE DARK
SIDE’ OF PLANNING
Power, Governmentality,
Counter-Conduct

Margo Huxley

Introduction
This chapter continues an exploration of Foucauldian approaches to planning theory and, like
Chapter 16, notes that Foucauldian concepts and perspectives have been productive of signifi-
cant critical studies of urban/regional/environmental/spatial planning and land-use regulation.
The discussion here argues that these sometimes quite disparate approaches to the analysis of
planning policy or practice often draw on particular facets of Foucault’s thought in isolation
from an interconnected range of concepts across his works: in particular, the notion of ‘counter-
conduct’ has not been taken up in any detail. I suggest that an examination of counter-conducts
opens up more nuanced possibilities than the sometimes rather one-sided use made of Foucault’s
work on power, discipline and governmentality. An analysis of counter-conducts, in effect,
counters the ‘dark side’ of planning.
This is not to suggest that there is a single cohesive theory to be derived from Foucault’s
thought that can be neatly incorporated into the field of planning theory; nor is it to attempt
to smooth out the contradictory and often ambiguous nature of his work. Rather, it is to point
to some of the connections between strands of Foucault’s thought that have tended to be left
under-explored in planning studies, particularly by those relying on the early translations into
English of influential works such as Discipline and Punish (Foucault 1979a) and The History of
Sexuality (Foucault 1979b).
In order to begin a consideration of counter-conduct as expanding the range of Foucauldian
approaches to the study of planning, the chapter first briefly outlines (only) a few of the ways
Foucauldian concepts have been taken up in the planning literature, focusing on three in par-
ticular: power and rationality; control, regulation and surveillance; and governmentality and
subjectification. I argue that these (and other approaches) have produced extremely useful critical
insights into the effects and the limits of planning in terms of constraints and repressions exercised
through policy discourses and technologies of land-use categorisation, zoning or surveillance
(for example, Allen 1994; Harris 2011; Huxley 1994; McLaughlin and Muncie 1999).
But less attention has been paid to productive projects of subjectification (the ‘conduct of con-
duct’ of the self and others) and ideas of ‘counter-conduct’. In order to explicate this argument,

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I briefly examine Foucault’s (2002a) discussion of ‘the subject and power’, since this is one of
the most explicit of Foucault’s statements outlining the connections between power, govern-
mentality, the subject and counter-conducts. These interconnections are suggested as a fruitful
way of approaching oppositional practices related to spatial policies and planning regulations. I
then suggest some ways in which such perspectives could be developed as creative critiques, and
indicate the potential for further analysis of governmental conceptions of space and place in the
dynamic relationship between rationalities of planning and counter-conducts.

Planning and Foucault

Inch (Chapter 16 in this volume) has provided a thorough overview of aspects of Foucault’s work
that have been taken up in planning studies and I will not cover the same ground here. However,
it is worth touching briefly on some further critical insights provided by Foucauldian-inspired
approaches. Studies of the historical emergence of planning unsettle the often taken-for-granted
narrative of the progressive necessity for spatial regulation (Boyer 1983; Fischler 1998; Huxley
2010, 2013; Long 1981, 1982; Sandercock 1998). Post-colonial and development studies point
to the need to re-evaluate traditional planning histories of Empire or technical diffusion and
rethink the colonialist underpinnings that persist in contemporary governmental projects and
planning practices (e.g. Legg 2007; Porter 2006, 2010; Schindler 2015; Watson 2002, 2003;
Yeoh 1996).
Foucauldian discourse analysis has also proved a fertile source of policy critique (for instance,
Tett and Wolfe (1991) on Canadian city plans), while other approaches have highlighted pow-
ers of discourse that have been less explored in the communicative planning paradigm (e.g.
Richardson 1996; Sharp and Richardson 2001; see also Jacobs 2006).
One of the most prominent forms of Foucauldian analysis in planning has focused on critical
debates about the relations between power and rationality (e.g. Flyvbjerg 1996, 1998; Watson
2003), in response to communicative planning’s aspirations to create possibilities for minimally
distorted communication and agreement on common purposes. The development of aspects of
Foucauldian thought in relation to these questions often employs the trope of the ‘dark side of
planning’, which is examined in the next section.

Foucault and the ‘Dark Side of Planning’

Here I focus on three strands of analysis that exemplify approaches to Foucault’s work in plan-
ning studies: power and rationality; discipline and social control; and governmentality, which
in this field tend to have a common emphasis on the way power subverts the overt progressive
aims of planning.
Flyvbjerg’s (1998) groundbreaking Rationality and Power is an impressively detailed longitudi-
nal study of the realrationalität of political decisions around the location of the Aalborg bus station.
In terms of planning theory, the radical insights provided by this study lie in their challenge to
the assumptions of normative communicative and collaborative planning approaches, and in
their attention to the mundane minutiae of political manoeuvrings. Communicative approaches
have tended to assume that planning is, and planners are, capable of minimising the distortions
and corruptions attributed to power. Flyvbjerg’s study shows that power cannot be wished
away, that rational discourse about technically optimal solutions or socially desirable democratic
outcomes are trumped by the realrationalität of power (political, economic and social). He argues
that if planning projects are to achieve the kinds of social, environmental or equitable economic
aims that communicative planning theorists have espoused, then planning has to engage with

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the tactics of power, and understand that they are integral to the arenas in which planning oper-
ates (Certomà 2015; Flyvbjerg 1996, 1998; Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002).
This understanding of planning’s ‘dark side’ informs many studies that explore how plan-
ning and planners are inevitably caught up in the capillaries of power (see e.g. Certomà 2015;
Flyvbjerg 1996; Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002; Yiftachel 1994, 1998).
A second group of approaches to ‘the dark side of planning’ – often influenced by particular
readings of Foucault’s works such as Discipline and Punish (1979a) – examine the discipline and
surveillance embedded in planning regulations, especially land-use controls and urban design for
safety or ‘ethnocratic’ exclusions, and exercised in practices of enforcement of zoning and other
forms of spatial regulation (e.g. Boyer 1983; Harris 2011; Huxley 1994; Lewi and Wickham
1996; Yiftachel 2009).
These approaches invite planners to examine the disciplinary and normalising effects at work
in seemingly neutral technical regulations or well-meaning projects of urban design. They
employ Foucault’s notions of spatial order, division, exclusion, visibility and ‘the gaze’. Planning
is seen to parallel the principles and aims of Bentham’s Panopticon – invisible monitoring that
seeks to produce individuals who come to ‘discipline’ themselves (Foucault 1979a, Part 3.3: see
for example, Allen 1994; Harris 2011; Huxley 1994; McLaughlin and Muncie 1999). These
aspects of planning regulation can also be seen as overt enactments of state violence against
‘Other’ groups or populations (e.g. Watson 2009; Yiftachel 2009).
A third form of analysis prompted by Foucauldian perspectives relates to the concept of
governmentality – ‘the conduct of conducts’ of the self and of others, a form of power that seeks
‘to shape possible fields of action’ toward certain ends (Foucault 2002a: 340–342). A prominent
approach in the uptake of the idea of governmentality has been the critique of neo-liberal efforts
to reframe planning’s redistributive aspirations in the context of ‘the market’. Critical studies
of neo-liberal planning and housing policies and programmes have scrutinised the aims and
rationalities of projects reconfiguring state-economy-society-individual relations and the aims
to produce – sometimes simultaneously – appropriately disciplined, normatively gendered, suit-
ably entrepreneurial, consumerist, tech-savvy neo-liberal subjects (e.g. Cowan and McDermont
2006; Davoudi and Mandanipour 2013; Flint 2003; Huxley 2002; Raco 2003; Raco and Imrie
2003; Vanolo 2014).
Approaches employing Foucauldian concepts such as these (often drawing on influential
developments by Dean (1999) and Rose (1999)), have been extremely salutary in highlighting
the inescapable circulation of power and the implication of planning in it, and contrasting this
‘dark side of planning’ with the somewhat anodyne tendencies of technical-rational or com-
municative analyses and prescriptions. Very broadly speaking then, in those studies seeking to
draw attention to negative implications of planning, the main uses made of critical Foucauldian
concepts have been to highlight aspects of the exercise of state and/or professional techni-
cal power, whether as political realrationalität, as disciplinary regulation and surveillance or as
governmental redirection of the rationales for planning and the neo-liberal subjectification of
those involved.
However, the trope of the ‘dark side’ tends to replicate the idea that there is a ‘light side’ and
that planning can be more like its ideal, just as communicative theory suggests. Flyvbjerg (1998:
234, paraphrasing Pascal), proposes that ‘power has a rationality that rationality does not know.
Rationality, on the other hand, does not have a power that power does not know’. This is, in
Smart’s (1983: 133) terms, to argue that ‘there remains, in principle, the possibility of a liberat-
ing rationality or reason’. But as Foucault (2002a: 328) says: ‘It is senseless to refer to reason as
the contrary entity to nonreason’ because ‘there is no absolute form for rationality against which
specific forms might be compared or evaluated’ (Smart 1983: 126).

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Similarly, planning studies of ‘the dark side’ imply that there is a dichotomy between repressive
power of the state (and/or capital, often in the form of property investment or ownership) as the
main source of negatively exercised power that needs to be redressed or resisted.

[T]he double-edged nature of the state … is shaped and reshaped by an ongoing

tension between oppression and reform. This dialectical process is often ignored by
planning theorists, who tend to overlook planning’s oppressive dimension and thereby
literally keep planning’s dark side ‘in the dark’.
(Yiftachel 1998: 400)

While this is a significant insight, it carries the risk of imagining a self-identical, single-
interest source of resistance – an oppressed people, a homogenous constituency – and
re-instating a hierarchical unilateral flow of power as control and suppression. Or, in terms of
analyses that seek to counter the ‘dark side of planning’, that planning ‘in the face of power’
should, and can be an expression of universally accepted reason through which to attain
progressive ends.
From a variety of approaches, other planning theorists have pointed out the limitations of
thinking in terms of ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides of planning (Allmendinger and Gunder 2005; Hillier
2002a; Holgersen 2015). Like these critiques, a Foucauldian perspective sees that things are
more complicated than ‘light/dark’, ‘progressive/regressive’ dichotomies. Rather, it is a matter
of examining the different rationalities at work in different regimes of discourses, rules and
procedures and the ‘truths’ that are invoked as reasons and principles for these.
Different regimes of rationality are implicated in different regimes of power: and power does
not emanate only from a singular ‘state’ or capitalist elite (although, of course, these are very real
points of concentration of different powers). Power is productive, capillary, relational, strategic
and exercised throughout the social body.

Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organisation. Not only do indi-
viduals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously
undergoing and exercising power. They are not only its inert or consenting target;
they are always also the elements of its articulation. In other words, individuals are the
vehicles of power, not its points of application.
(Foucault 1980: 98)

Given this, opposition can take many forms in a multiplicity of instances, and is not only effec-
tive or ‘valid’ as social movements or revolutions in the name of fundamental social change. Key
to this understanding is the relationship between discipline and subjectification (Foucault 1979a;
see also Elden 2001: 133–150), and between subjectification and governmentality: that is, rather
than obfuscating the truth or repressing free sovereign individuals, power is productive – it
produces, fosters, incites particular forms of subjectivities and behaviours (Foucault 2002a: 341).
Governmentality as a form of subjectifying power is not only exercised by the state, but by, in
and through social institutions and individuals: and contradictory, overlapping regimes power/
rationality/truth can produce counter-conducts in which the work of self-subjectification can
become a form of resistance to particular instances of power.
Foucault’s (2002a: 326–348) discussion of ‘the subject and power’ is pivotal to an under-
standing of these relationships. I examine this discussion next before going on to suggest its
significance for Foucauldian studies of planning (theory and practice).

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The Subject and Power

At the beginning of his discussion, Foucault (2002a: 326) states that the goal of his work has ‘not
been to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis’:
rather, his aim ‘has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human
beings are made subjects’. He restates his central project in terms of subjectification, in which the
study of power is directed to examining the multiple ways in which sciences/disciplines, dividing
practices/regulations and exercises of self-formation, have produced forms of subjectivity.
The main themes of the discussion of relevance to my argument can be summarised as
follows:

1 Power takes the form of ‘governmentality’ circulating throughout society, including but
not confined to the state. That is, the focus on the emergence of the ‘governmental state’ in
the much cited ‘governmentality’ lecture (Foucault 2007a: 87–114) is only one instance of
governmental power. Power is not a substance to be possessed and imposed in a unilateral
‘downwards’ direction, but appears as it is exercised; it is relational, multifaceted and capil-
lary. And importantly, it is distinct from relations of exploitation [Marx] and relations of
communication [Habermas] (Foucault 2002a: 337–339).
2 Governmentality is the ‘conduct of conducts’ – training bodies, attending to the welfare of
individuals and populations, and fostering appropriate behaviours and inner states. Various
institutions of society crystallise the tricky combination of individualising and totalising
‘pastoral power’ (Foucault 2002a: 332), exercising the conduct of conducts through knowl-
edge of the attributes of physical bodies, the characteristics of populations (‘bio-power’) and
of individuals’ minds and ‘souls’.
3 Governmentality is the productive power of subjectification: it does not suppress or con-
strain pre-existing sovereign individuals – it produces subjects. This productive power is
multifaceted, such that different regimes of (non-state and state) power and rationality,
practices of discipline and regulation produce different subjectivities with specific histories
in specific times and places.
4 The conduct of conducts acts on acting subjects: it ‘always act[s] upon one or more act-
ing subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action. A set of actions upon
other actions’ (Foucault 2002a: 341). A power relationship is articulated on the basis that
‘“the other” (the one over whom power is exercised) is recognised and maintained . . . as
a subject who acts; and that faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses,
reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up’ (Foucault 2002a: 340). This
conception of the strategic and open-ended nature of power as the conduct of conducts,
and the possibilities of opposition to specific instances of subjectification, is central to the
notion of ‘counter-conducts’ that Foucault examines in his 1977–78 lectures (Foucault
2007a: 191–226).
5 Nevertheless, ‘there are also ‘blocks’ – outcomes of previous struggles, in which the
adjustment of abilities, the resources of communication, and power relations constitute
regulated, concerted systems’ (Foucault 2002a: 338). These stabilised relations are what
Foucault calls ‘domination’ and are linked to ‘disciplines’. The prison, the asylum or the
Panopticon exemplify in ‘their artificially clear and decanted systems’ (Foucault 2002a:
339) relations of power, the operations of the conduct of conduct, and the processes of
subjectification that are present throughout society. But they are not origins of ideas or
practices that then somehow ‘escape’ into society: they are crystallisations of aims and

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objectives already present in emerging regimes of governmentality. ‘Blocks’ of domination

can be destabilised through critical questioning of their taken-for-granted statuses and by
practices of opposition to the relations of power they represent and the kinds of subjectivi-
ties they seek to foster (Foucault 2002a: 328–332).

The inter-relations of governmentality and subjectification are elaborated and developed

throughout Foucault’s writing, and there is not space here to follow up the rich details of his
provocative (sometimes puzzling) re-workings of them. But it is important to note that the
term draws on ‘government’ in its original wider sense: the government of, for instance, a
family, a ship, a workshop, a religious order. Governmental subjectification solicits and fosters
particular interior states as well as exterior actions, so that individuals come to act upon them-
selves in conformity with prevailing (cross-cutting, often contradictory) regimes of government.
Organisations and groups throughout society attempt to shape and influence the comportments,
behaviours, abilities and goals of different types of individuals toward particular ends, aiming to
foster individuals who act as if they are free (Dean 1994: 156).
Roughly from the 16th century in the West, the state becomes increasingly ‘governmental-
ised’; that is, the state begins to take on concerns for the appropriate behaviour and physical/
mental well-being of individuals and populations that were previously the provenance of the
Church’s ‘pastoral power’ (Foucault 2002a). Paralleling this, a form of ‘political subjectification’
emerges that sees individuals as political subjects, particularly as ‘sovereign subjects or citizens
within a self-governing political community under the conditions of liberal democracy’ (Dean
1994: 155). Analyses of neo-liberal governmentality have focused on this aspect.
Foucault’s attention later turned to what he called ‘ethical self-formation’ (e.g. Foucault 2000a),
which concerns the government of the self by the self ‘by means of which individuals seek to
know, decipher, and act on themselves’ (Dean 1994: 156). Many studies invoking governmental-
ity have tended to neglect ‘that Foucault’s equivocal usage of the term “conduct” means that it
incorporates both conducting others (via governmental technologies) and conducting the self (via
the ethical relation of the governed subject to its own conduction)’ (Cadman 2010: 548).
However, the subject’s practices of self-constitution are ‘not something invented by the
individual himself [sic]. They are models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, sug-
gested, imposed on him by his culture, his society, and his social group’ (Foucault 2000a: 291).
Ethical self-subjectification involves the subject’s reflection on the relations of the self to regimes
of knowledge and power. Examining the government of the self attends to active practices
involved in the constitution of various types of shifting, contradictory, forms of (self) subjectifi-
cation (ibid.; see also Hofmeyr 2006).
Since governmentality is diffuse and diverse and subjectivities are formed at the intersec-
tions of different regimes of power, rationalities and practices, there is no implication that a
singular subjectivity is seamlessly achieved, reproduced or stabilised, even through individual
self-subjectification. It is these mismatches and slippages that enable possibilities for ‘counter-
conducts’ (Cadman 2010: 549).

Counter-Conducts
After considering and rejecting various terms for the processes he wants to illuminate – revolt,
insubordination, disobedience, dissidence, misconduct – Foucault (2007a: 200–202) proposes
the term ‘counter-conduct’: ‘counter-conduct in the sense of struggle against the processes
implemented for conducting others’ (p. 201) (Foucault 2007b; see also Cadman 2010; Davidson
2011; Death 2010, 2011; Hofmeyr 2006; and Owen 1995 on critique).

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Counter-conducts are refusals of specific forms of governmental power – governmentality

that aims to shape comportments, behaviours, states of mind, instantiated in diverse social loci:
schools, prisons, private companies, government bureaucracies, local amenity groups, medicine
and hospitals, NGOs, families, factories. Implicitly or explicitly, through stubborn refusal to
change or through active opposition, counter-conducts pose implicit or specific questions about
‘how not to be governed like that, by that, in the name of those principles, with such and such
an objective in mind and by means of such procedures, not like that, not for that, not by them’
(Foucault 2007b: 44, original emphasis). In this, Foucault develops a Kantian notion of critique,
a critical attitude – a right to question (Cadman 2010: 545) power and knowledge, in which
‘to bring forth and question a field of subjection means that the subject cannot be quite what it
was before’ (p. 547).
Foucault (2007b: 47) argues that counter-conducts arise historically in interplay with
governmentality. They are co-extensive with, and are both effects of, and productive of gov-
ernmentality, each provoking and constitutive of the other. In so far as governmental power
acts on the actions of others: ‘[R]esistance, commonly seen as an assertion of freedom, is itself
bound up within networks of governmentality; and liberal democracy’s toleration of dissent and
protest within certain limits works, paradoxically, to reinforce as well as challenge dominant
power relations’ (Death 2011: 238–239; see Foucault 2002a: 340–342).
The notion of ‘counter-conducts’ necessarily requires an understanding of Foucault’s ‘thin’
notion of the subject (Patton 1998). As previously outlined, it does not rely on humanist con-
ceptions of immanent resistance by rights-bearing individuals, but sees the subject as formed
through, and in opposition to cross-cutting, overlapping regimes of governmental (non-state
and state) subjectification and self-subjectification. Hence, an approach that works with the idea
of ‘counter-conducts’ looks within government (in the Foucauldian sense) – rather than assum-
ing there is an ‘outside’ from where opposition can be mounted – in order ‘to see how forms
of resistance rely upon, and are even implicated within, the strategies, techniques and power
relationships they oppose’ (Death 2011: 240).
But also, as Cadman (2010: 549) argues, ‘governors and governed’ alike are implicated in
governmental subjectification: ‘[D]uring governmental contestations or counter-conducts’,
governors and governed ‘act on their respective positioning as governors or governed. Indeed,
it may well be that in some instances both ‘governors’ and ‘governed’ become subjected to the
same mode of objectification and subjectification of their conduct [see for example, Inch this
volume; Flint 2003].
Just as there is no ultimate ‘reason’ against which forms of rationality and formulations of
truth can be assessed, so there is no mono-centric, ultimate locus of power against which a ‘great
Refusal’ can be staged (Foucault 1979b: 95–96). And hence also, there are no universal abstract
criteria for judging the ‘rightness’ or ‘progressiveness’ of protest or refusal (Davidson 2011;
Death 2010, 2011) (a point I take up below in relation to planning).
Rather, counter-conducts that provoke and respond to governmental subjectifications are
an active form of critique (Foucault 2007b) that asserts the right to ask how not to be gov-
erned in ‘such and such a way’; that asserts the freedom to think and act otherwise; and
that, in action and practice, refuses particular subjectivities – whether normalised or excluded
(e.g. on the grounds of sexuality, disability, illness, gender, race, religion, politics). However,
claims to the right to be included in categories and rationalities of political government – for
instance, gay marriage – while demanding that liberal rationalities be consistent and raising
questions about the conduct of government – do not necessarily become ‘counter-conducts’
for the very reason that they accept and seek acceptance in terms of the categories of their
exclusion (Cadman 2010: 550).

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This might seem pessimistic from the point of view of traditional conceptions of the freely
acting individual who has inhabited much political theory and social science – whether as sov-
ereign democratic citizens or autonomous individuals pursing progressive revolutionary change.
But examining acts of protest, conflict and refusal of governmental rationalities and aims for the
conduct of conducts can unsettle many of the assumed dichotomies between domination and
freedom, the state and resistance, public and private, progressive and regressive. And this has the
potential to open the way for different approaches that might draw attention to the complexi-
ties, contradictions – even the ironies – of acts of counter-conduct (Death 2010, 2011).

Conflict, Counter-Conducts, Subjectification

An ‘analytics of counter-conducts’ focuses on the inevitability of contestation, refusal and con-
flict in any exercise of power as the conduct of conducts. There are, of course, numerous studies
of the central and unavoidable role of conflict in planning (for example, Gualini 2015; Hillier
2002b; Huxley 2014; Inch 2015; McClymont 2011; Pløger 2004; Purcell 2009; Roskamm
2015). Many of these draw on the notion of ‘agonism’ (often following Mouffe, e.g. 1999).
Agonism emphasises the potentially positive aspects of (certain kinds of) political struggle and
links these to radical re-formations of democracy, which rely on conceptions of autonomous
human agency and political notions of the rights-bearing individual.
A focus on counter-conducts, in contrast, does not imply that any specific instance of refusal
to be governed ‘like that’ necessarily leads to greater, more widely spread democracy, and does
not seek to make judgements about progressive or regressive protests as such. Studying counter-
conducts involves ‘the flat and empirical little question: “What happens?”’ (Foucault 2002a: 337).
It attends not only to rationalities of power, but to specific acts of governing (Rosol 2014: 72) and
acts of refusal of the conduct of conduct in particular situations. An ‘analytics of counter-conduct’
‘aims to diagnose and critique rationalities and practices of protest, and . . . is not primarily nor-
mative or prescriptive, in terms of advocating specific forms of dissent’ (Death 2010: 247).
There is a growing body of work in planning studies that examines forms of counter-
conduct, even when not named as such. For instance, J. Allen’s (1996) study describes the self/
subjectification of a London housing action group; Tooke (2003) examines the possibilities for
‘strategic reversals’ that allow community involvement to influence government; McKee (2011)
analyses what amount to refusals to be ‘governed like that’ among tenants affected by housing
stock transfers in Glasgow; and Rosol (2014) examines the self/subjectification of a residents’
opposition group in Vancouver.
Death’s (2010, 2011) political studies of global protest movements directed at major world
summit meetings highlight the fields of visibility, regimes of knowledge, techniques and tech-
nologies and the political identities and subjectivities at work in these campaigns (Death 2010:
242–247). He explores the inextricable co-constitution of government as the conduct of what is
considered legitimate protest with counter-conducts as opposition, refusal and inventive resistance.
What, then, can an ‘analytics of counter-conduct’ bring to critical analyses of the rationalities
and practices of planning and oppositions to them?

Planning’s Counter-Conducts: Developments and Openings

In suggesting the potential for studying counter-conducts in relation to planning, I outline four
of many possible avenues of enquiry: a focus on the subjectifying aspects of the power of plan-
ning as a form of the conduct of conducts; attention to the mundane details of ‘what happens’,

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examining the specificities of particular instances of governmentality and counter-conducts;

exploration of the spatial rationalities and presuppositions integral to planning practices and the
counter-conducts they invoke; and unsettling the binaries implied in studies of ‘the dark side’.
First, and as outlined earlier, planning can be seen to conduct conducts in various ways.
Policies and the problems they construct are variable and changing: but currently most neo-liberal
governmentalities rest on assumptions about the kinds of subjects required for the operations of a
market economy and a property-owning population. Within these frameworks, formal planning
consultations set the boundaries of what can and cannot be said, and require particular sets of
behaviours in order for participants to be heard (Abram 2000), in keeping with norms of the lib-
eral political subject. Planning and land-use regulations operate with and through presuppositions
about, for example, ‘compatible/mixed uses’, family housing, neighbourly relations, aesthetic and
healthy environments.
Planning as the conduct of conducts can be seen to be situated at the intersection of domi-
nant stabilised power ‘blocks’, but its (fragile) taken-for-granted status is the result of ongoing
work to maintain it against challenges from all sorts of contradictory political, economic and
social pressures and shifting rationalities (on the historically contingent ‘cobbling-together’ of
an entity known as ‘planning’, see Long (1981, 1982) and Huxley (2010)). Planning is thus ‘a
lightning rod for conflict’ (Huxley 2014) and there are always the possibilities for challenge and
refusal – whether ‘progressive’ or ‘regressive’. Planning both encounters and calls forth resist-
ances to its particular exercises of governmentality, inciting and enacting counter-conducts that
are refusals to be governed ‘like that’.
Second, examining ‘what happens’ in instances when counter-conducts illuminate the exer-
cise of power entails an approach to the specificities of time and place, and an alertness to actions,
including those that might not necessarily seem intentionally oppositional or particularly pro-
gressive. An analytics of counter-conduct asks of any particular set of relations and interactions:
What forms of the conduct of conducts, or subjectification, are being refused? And what forms
are being defended or transformed? For instance, refusals of colonial regulation of traditional
practices (e.g. Yeoh 1996) can be understood as forms of counter-conduct; or subversions of
policy by state employees can be seen as refusals to govern ‘like that’. But equally, assessments
of the possible effects and contingent outcomes of such encounters must similarly take account
of the situated, reversible nature of conducts and counter-conducts.
Third, although only relatively recently featuring in the development of governmentality
approaches to planning, space was an important element of Foucault’s early interests in the
asylum, the hospital, and of course, the prison, taken up more broadly in the Security, Territory,
Population lectures (Foucault 2007a; see Foucault 2002b; Crampton and Elden 2007; Elden
2001). Urban, regional, environmental planning policies, programmes, regulations and practices
are concerned with questions of space and territory and with the relationships between spaces,
places, peoples and individuals – the distributions of activities and populations, the form and
functions of cities, the aesthetics and ecologies of environments, the actions and behaviours of
residents in communities and neighbourhoods (e.g. Dikeç 2007; Huxley 2006; Nissen 2014;
Pløger 2008). Presuppositions about the causal effects of space – the spatial rationalities inform-
ing planning practices (Huxley 2006) – are enmeshed in planning’s ways of governing ‘like that’
and need to become an integral focus for any analytics of counter-conducts.
Such an analytics would add the dimension of opposition to the idea that spaces are socially
constructed and therefore may be re-constructed (Flyvbjerg and Richardson 2002: 56). Such an
approach could explore some of the complexities of the practices and actions, the overt struggles
and stubborn refusals attending particular projects of spatial governmentality. Refusals are not

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only legal challenges, political conflicts or mass demonstrations, but inventive, creative assertions
of different uses of, different ways of being in, different relations between places and subjectivi-
ties (Gribat and Huxley 2015).
Finally, in Discipline and Punish, Foucault (1979a: 222) speaks of the ‘dark side’ of the
Enlightenment – the disciplinary mechanisms and techniques of calculation that accompa-
nied the establishment of juridical frameworks and parliamentary representation. But later
developments of governmentality, subjectification and counter-conduct introduced equally
important and complex perspectives. The mutual strategies and struggles, provocations and
refusals integral to the exercise of the conduct of conducts are not reducible to dark or light,
repression or revolution, progress or regression. Governmentality and counter-conduct are
not mutually exclusive, heads or tails sides of a coin, but enmeshed, entangled relations, each
implying the other.
This opens the way to examining ‘flat, empirical questions’ about ‘what happens’ in refus-
als of planning – whether by NIMBY residents’ groups, displaced Council tenants, neo-liberal
politicians, radical environmentalists or property developers. It opens up to scrutiny particular
forms of ‘conduction’ and counter-conducts in specific situations: dominant conducts which
may ‘become rehearsed and re-embedded . . . [or may] shift in a myriad of directions’ (Hobson
2009: 185). This is unsettling and indeed, risky: it means analysing not just ‘what happens’ in
protests over environmental or social justice issues that we might wish to position on ‘the light
side’, but paying equal attention to ‘what happens’ when counter-conducts are made visible as
economistic or masculinist or racial or homophobic or class-based oppositions to planning pro-
cesses. Such an attitude invites critical self-reflection on planning by planners, a self-reflection
that is itself a form of counter-conduct. It can productively destabilise assumptions about the
aims, practices and predictability of the outcomes and effects of actions undertaken in the
name of planning and contribute to local, strategic experiments with different actions, different
subjectivities, different conducts.

Conclusion
Foucault explicitly links this domain [of counter-conduct] to his definition of the
‘critical attitude,’ a political and moral attitude, a manner of thinking, that is a critique
of the way in which our conduct is governed … . This critical attitude is part of a
philosophical ethos, and no such ethos is effective without a permanent exercise of
counter-conduct.
(Davidson 2011: 37)

I have argued that Foucault’s concept of counter-conduct opens up possibilities for re-
examinations of planning that move beyond debates over the ‘communicative turn vs. the
dark side’. Foucault sees counter-conducts as strategies of freedom which, because they involve
questioning governmental conduction, also involve a form of self-reflection which opens up
possibilities for minimising relations of domination or power present in self-formation and in
political action. Giving equal weight to the counter-conducts provoked by planning and to
practices of planning as themselves possible forms of counter-conducts fosters a critical attitude
that challenges taken-for-granted regimes of governmentality. Asking ‘how not to be governed
like that’ can become transformative self-reflection on one’s conduction of the conduct of oth-
ers and of oneself. In the performance of this critical attitude, however, there needs to be an
acute awareness of, and attention to those whose governmental subjectification deprives them
of the right to action (Cadman 2010: 552).

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 Countering ‘The Dark Side’ of Planning

Engaging with the implications of counter-conducts is a difficult position for those who
defend planning as a besieged guardian of the ‘public good’ to accept. Although the defence of
planning as an unquestionably Good Thing can raise questions about neo-liberal rationalities of
government and the primacy of the market (Rose 1999) – planners need to see that, at the same
time, planning seeks to conduct the conducts of others and thereby incites counter-conducts
of refusal.
The point is not that exercises of power are bad and resistance is good nor that in every case
we able to make a priori judgements about which is which, but rather ‘that everything is dan-
gerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have
something to do. So [this] position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism’
(Foucault 2000b: 256).
It is to understand that in each instance of counter-conduct incited and responded to by
planning rationalities and practices – and with no guarantee we have got it right – ‘the ethico-
political choice we have to make . . . is to determine which is the main danger’ (Foucault
2000b: 256).

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 18
CO-EVOLUTIONARY
PLANNING THEORY
Evolutionary Governance
Theory and Its Relatives

Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen

and Martijn Duineveld

Introduction
In this chapter we analyze the presence, the origins and the potential of co-evolutionary per-
spectives in planning theory. We pay special attention to Evolutionary Governance Theory, as a
comprehensive perspective on co-evolution in governance and in spatial planning (Van Assche
et al., 2014b).
Co-evolution is conceptualized in different manners in the landscape of planning theory and
the wider setting of social theories (von Tunzelmann, 2003; Kemp et al., 2007; Volberda and
Lewin, 2003; Healey, 2004, 2006). Evolution is an ongoing process of change, in which existing
elements and structures are shaping and changing each other in an ongoing interplay, with each
step, each change in structures and elements building on the previous ones. Co-evolution is the
entwined evolution of two or more systems or entities, whereby changes in one affect changes
in the other. What can co-evolve will be different depending on discipline and theory: systems,
species, networks, organizations, societies, perspectives.
This basic understanding is compatible with most co-evolutionary theories. A few features of
co-evolution recur in most versions:

•• Co-evolution requires a concept of a system in which several things co-evolve, more than
a sum of loosely coupled elements, structures, processes;
•• it requires an idea of an iterative, recursive process, where one operation is input for the
next one; and
•• it relies on an idea of selectively triggered responses in the system: not all things co-evolve
in the same way, not all changes in an entity cause changes in all other entities.

The concept of contingency plays a central role: whatever exists is considered to be the product
of evolution, hence could have been different. It is possible, yet not necessary, and certainly not
necessarily like this. Co-evolution reinforces the idea of contingency, as a next evolutionary step
can be triggered by other entities in the system.

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In spatial planning, one can for example consider the co-evolution of discourses, actors,
institutions, or the co-evolution of the overall planning systems with the particular governance
context or the wider community in which it is embedded. A planning system evolves out of an
older one, it co-evolves with other domains of governance, and within it, different organiza-
tions and forms of knowledge co-evolve. ‘Gaps’ in knowledge or in actor participation will be
observed, change will be advocated for, in a web of co-evolving entities, with planning critics
and supporters responding to each other, actors within the planning system reacting to each
other, and when change itself is enacted, this will be modified in its form and effects through
the same system of co-evolving entities. In one community, planning will respond directly to
changes in social policy, in others, it is co-evolving more with environmental policy, is more
sensitive to shifts in the development community, or to innovations in the academic reflection
on planning.
The various versions of co-evolutionary theory differ in the elements they focus on, in what
is seen as the overall structure, and in the way in which interrelations between systems, and
between structures and elements are understood. Different theories focus on people, actions, or
communications as, sometimes fixed or essentialized, elements, and on institutions, discourses,
or social systems as the main structures. The co-evolutionary approach to planning we develop
in this chapter presents a middle ground between (social) engineering approaches toward plan-
ning on the one hand and theories disqualifying planning and steering on the other (cf. Easterly,
2006), a middle ground between overestimating the steering possibilities of governments and
overestimating the organizing capacities of markets.
The critique of modernist and technocratic versions of planning theory, and the concomitant
push for concepts of contingency and co-evolution were particularly poignant in the post-
structuralist theories and reflections that entered the field of planning in the 1990s (Hillier, 2002;
Gunder and Hillier, 2009; Healey, 1997; Flyvbjerg, 1998; for an overview, see Van Assche
et al., 2014a). In parallel, other perspectives, sometimes older than post-structuralism, under-
stand planning as muddling through (Forester, 1984; Fischer and Forester, 1993; Lindblom,
1959) or self-organizing and emergent processes (Dam et al., 2014; Hillier, 2008). In geography,
anthropology and sociology, critical studies often relegate spatial planning to the domain of con-
tested hierarchies in economic, political and bureaucratic elites, to control space as a profitable
resource (Ferguson, 1994). The planning enterprise as such is then understood as incapable of
grasping its own co-evolutionary nature.
Detailed analyses of different forms of planning can help us to discern more sharply how cer-
tain planning approaches work out better in one place than another and why some attempts at
planning reform are more successful than others. Within such analyses both theory and practice
have to be considered. Planning theories are often inspired by strong familiarity with particular
planning practices, while planning practice itself is often shaped by academic expertise, includ-
ing planning theories. The ways in which planning is understood, and the theories that are
considered relevant and useful within a particular planning system, can strongly influence and
co-constitute planning practices (cf. Voß and Freeman, 2016; MacKenzie et al., 2007). Theories
are part and parcel of the pattern of co-evolution in planning systems; which role they play
hinges on their contingent evolutions. A planning system that does not understand itself as a
cohesive system of spatial organization, with little interest in comprehensive planning aiming at
multiple policy goals, is not likely to be driven by planning theories existing somewhere else,
while a system where planning practice and theory have been tightly coupled for a long time, is
more likely to transform itself using new theoretical ideas.
We make a case here for theories of co-evolution and contingency as theories best capable
of mapping out the terrain between steering for utopia and laissez-faire. We argue that planning

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systems can be flexible and rigid; they converge and diverge, and they are unpredictable but
path-dependent. Unraveling patterns of co-evolution is revealing the unique balance between
flexibility and rigidity, the specific sorts and weight of path dependencies, while the exercise can
increase reflexivity, which in turn makes it easier for a planning system to see itself as a unity,
rather than a set of elements and practices.
In the following paragraphs, we first reflect on the notion of co-evolution in social the-
ory and planning theory. Then we devote more attention to what is called Evolutionary
Governance Theory (EGT), a theory that borrows elements from post-structuralism, insti-
tutional economics and social systems theory, and incorporates them, together with new
elements, in a novel conceptual architecture. EGT develops a co-evolutionary understand-
ing of society into a co-evolutionary theory of governance, administration and planning. It
is a theory of organization, steering, and planned change. EGT is partly rooted in planning
research and aims to delineate planning and its possibilities in different governance paths.
Planning within this perspective is understood as a political activity that can and does take
many forms that change over time, in evolutions that alter both the structures and elements
of planning systems.

Co-Evolution in Social Theory

Many theories of society share the idea that elements are co-evolving. Elements can be under-
stood as groups, as functions of government, as parts of government, as areas, as structures in
narrative, and so on. In this sense, structuralism and post-structuralism, as well as functionalism,
complexity theory, and systems theories incorporate notions of co-evolution.
Sociological functionalism, exemplified by Talcott Parsons, understood evolution as pro-
gress (Parsons, 1966). In this approach social complexity was assessed as positive, if specialized
functions are developing and balancing out. Similarly, in evolutionary anthropology (e.g.
Lieberman, 2007), evolution toward complexity is appreciated, if complexity equals progress.
Anthropological functionalism in the line of Malinowski (1944) saw such evolution as neces-
sarily co-evolution, since different features of social life are part of one evolving social fabric
in which their meaning and function change together with other features. In classic sociology,
Weber and other theorists of nation states and bureaucracy highlight co-evolution as speciali-
zation, organization, division of labor, and professionalization (Weber, 2009). Freud and later
psycho-analysts such as Lacan subscribed to their own version of co-evolution, with social
and psychological features co-evolving, and the contingent evolution of symbolic media,
language and other sign systems, linking the social and the individual (Gunder and Hillier,
2009; Lacan, 2006).
Niklas Luhmann and his version of social systems theory represent, in our view, the most for-
midable achievement in co-evolutionary social theory (Luhmann, 1995, 2012). Luhmann, more
explicitly than the aforementioned social theorists, harks back to theories of biological evolution
and leans on the work by the Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela (1987), who explored the
biological roots of human understanding by looking at the interplay between biological, cogni-
tive and social processes. They explain human understanding as the contingent outcome of the
co-evolution of self-reproducing systems. Maturana and Varela coined the concept of autopoie-
sis, self-reproduction, as the main feature of the evolution of life. Biological structures, elements
and processes are all the result of previous structures, elements and processes. They argued that
the adaptation of a system relies on its existing features, on repertoires of interpretation, and on
possible responses. The features of any system are the result of a history of previous adaptation,
which took place in autopoietic fashion.

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For Luhmann, this was the key to a new co-evolutionary theory of society. The evolving
elements in his systems theory of society, however, were not people or groups, but communi-
cations (Luhmann, 1992; Moeller, 2006). Social systems are modes of communication. In his
theory society is an encompassing social system, including co-evolving systems, most impor-
tantly function systems (such as law, religion, politics, and art) and organizations (Luhmann,
1995). All social systems have their own logic of reproduction, and unique understanding and
observation of the world. The selective understanding and observation of the world is key to
social systems theory. Societies can be understood as collections of evolving and dividing modes
of interpretation.
Although the label co-evolution is not always explicitly mentioned in post-structuralist theo-
ries, one can observe many notions of co-evolution. For Lacan, for example, the sub-conscious
was structured like a language, and our understanding and construction of self and society
is a co-evolution necessarily enabled by contingent and evolving sign systems (Lacan, 2006).
(This radically constructivist and dynamic view also makes him a post-structuralist, even if he
belongs to an earlier generation than Foucault, Barthes and Derrida) Deleuze gave matter more
agency, but argues that it is the meeting of mind and matter that produces meaning and the
world (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Social life in a Deleuzian perspective is co-evolutionary
because all structures producing or supporting the production of meaning – which he calls
territories, plateaus, or machines – rest on each other and respond to each other. Foucault
(1979), arguably the most influential post-structuralist, explains in his histories of the present,
his genealogies, how power and knowledge are entangled and mutually constitutive and are
together constituting discourses that build and change our world. In other words: power and
knowledge co-evolve and they are continuously evolving in an ongoing interplay with other
power/knowledge configurations. Discourses generate meaning and other effects in a world
with other discourses.

Co-Evolution in Planning Theory

Within the planning discipline, theory itself has had a precarious existence, and theories that
stepped back from immediate normativity, to deepen analysis first, had an even tougher time.
Nevertheless, Foucault, Lacan, and to a lesser extent Deleuze and Luhmann entered the fray of
the debate, greatly helped by the mainstream publication of the journal Planning Theory in 2001.
Sociological and anthropological versions of co-evolution did not play an immediate role, but
exerted influence via their embedding in institutional approaches to planning which proliferated
in the 1990s, building on political theory, sociology and several versions of institutional eco-
nomics (e.g. Ostrom, 2005; North, 1990a). Institutions, as rules, are generally understood there
as co-emerging with actors, in economic transactions and in other types of social interaction
(Milgrom and North, 1990). Institutions emerge out of older patterns of coordination and of
identities and interaction rules. Meanwhile, in geography and anthropology, a contextualizing
critique of planning could be found (Scott, 1998; Verdery, 2003; Soja, 1996; Harvey, 1973).
Within these disciplines, planning was placed in a frame of evolving social, political, economic
structures, of changing cultures, and of co-evolving groups, but these insights found little reso-
nance in planning theory itself.
Other theories in neighboring disciplines or in inter-disciplinary fields such as environmen-
tal studies did leave a mark on planning theory, which created new openings for concepts of
co-evolution (Dietz et al., 2003). We refer to theories of adaptive governance coming out of
general resilience and sustainability thinking and to complexity theory, revolving around con-
cepts of non-linearity, feedback loops, catalysts and tipping points (see other chapters in this

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book for more detailed discussion). The adaptive governance literature seizes on nature/culture
as the basic distinction and is generally less aware of internal co-evolutions within society, while
being more ambitious in terms of steering toward perfect adaptation. Complexity theory tends
to be more sensitive to the internal complexity of society, its creation of interdependent ele-
ments, which can enter into altered relations because of unforeseen feedback loops, because
of general opacity (as correlate of complexity). Complexity theory has therewith given rise to
planning theories wary of bold practical ambition and cautious about steering and prediction (de
Roo, 2012; Silva and de Roo, 2012; Batty and Marshall, 2012; Healey et al., 2015).
For the understanding of the absence/presence, and the potential of certain versions of co-
evolutionary theory in planning, we needed to provide the reader with more context, the
context of broader social theories, neighboring disciplines, and their ideas of co-evolution.

Co-Evolution in Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT)

A few years ago, we proposed to give co-evolution its due weight in planning and developed
a theory of evolutionary governance (Van Assche et al., 2014b). Planning, we argued, needs
contextualizing and a broadening of perspective to figure out its actual and possible place in
society and its potential and limits in a particular context. The most important context for EGT
is politics, more specifically governance. Governance here is understood as the overall processes
of collectively binding decision-making. These processes include public and private actors and
decisions can be made in many different ways. This a-moral, non-normative definition of gov-
ernance is broader and more conceptual than in the popular notion as a recent shift away from
government (Rhodes, 1996). Collectively binding decisions have always been taken in configu-
rations of actors inside and outside the formal system of politics (Mansfield, 1998). Governance
always existed, although this was not always acknowledged in modernist theories of state and
steering. Conversely, the role and importance of state actors and state institutions in governance
is regularly delimited too much or even completely overlooked in more recent publications on
self-organization (Bell and Hindmoor, 2009). Not everything in governance is a collectively
binding decision, but we cannot speak of governance without such decisions being taken. Not
all actors in governance understand themselves as actors; ‘actor’ is a theoretical ascription of an
individual or group/organization with a practical role in governance.
Spatial planning, as the coordination of policies and practices regarding the organization
of space, as spatial governance, is firmly embedded in governance as such. It concerns collec-
tive binding decisions about the use and development of space, in which numerous actors are
involved (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008; Van Assche et al., 2014a). For EGT planning
systems are configurations of actors and institutions involved in the organization of space. They
include evolving discourses about what and how to plan. They emerge out of previous planning
systems and out of evolving governance contexts. What planning is and can do will be unique
for each community and for each governance context (Van Assche et al., 2011a). This imme-
diately becomes clear if one compares the planning systems that evolved in different countries.
Whereas some planning systems are very extensive and strongly embedded in state organiza-
tions, others are much more limited, mainly revolving around the upholding of property rights
or avoiding harm.
Each country or smaller community has its unique planning system, but each country also
has its own governance context in which this planning system emerged. Some communities
do not have a clear concept and an organizational unity for spatial governance, nor a single
specialized role called ‘planner’, but this does not mean planning does not take place, cannot be
analyzed as co-evolution. The fact that planning depends on the governance context in which

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it is embedded, implies that the issues planning can deal with and the means by which it can do
so will largely diverge. It also implies that the possibilities to use planning for particular issues
will differ between places and change over time.
EGT is a theory that helps to analyze and explain the embedding of planning practices within
a particular governance context and to explore and implement planning approaches that better
fit that particular context. It is theoretical and practical at the same time. In line with complexity
theory, EGT acknowledges that planning is ambiguous, opaque and non-linear, but EGT also
provides a particular version and explanation of that complexity and the effects this produces
(Beunen et al., 2013; Van Assche et al., 2012).
Another distinctive and important feature of EGT is that it is first and foremost a theoretical
framework and not a normative or prescriptive one. It is a theory, and although practice based
on theory is possible and sometimes theories can improve practice, it does not aim to prescribe
a particular form of planning. EGT is a lens through which one can observe and explain how
practice works. Qualifications such as good or bad, efficient or non-efficient, democratic or
nondemocratic planning, are all ascriptions within a planning system that could be the object of
study for EGT, but not the immediate result of applying the theoretical framework. EGT delib-
erately distances itself from literatures that jump too quickly to prescriptions based on normative
assumptions, since we believe that, in general, mixing description and prescription undermines
the quality of analysis and, hence, also the quality of the proposed solutions that follow from
such analysis.
Planning, for EGT, is always part of several contexts that make it possible to do something
we can call planning and for plans to have effects. Those contexts, which could be cultural,
material, economic, or political, should not be ignored or forgotten. EGT avoids an understand-
ing of planning as a technocratic, scientific, procedural, or sometimes an artistic island, since
this is omitting the political nature of planning itself. Planning is always about power, about
collectively binding decisions, about winners and losers, and about participation and representa-
tion as lines of power. For that reason planning is understood as embedded in governance, with
governance referring to the multitude of systems, processes and practices of collective binding
decision-making by governmental and other actors.
To provide a more comprehensive understanding of EGT we now introduce its main themes
and concepts of special importance for the analysis and explanation of planning practices and
ambitions.

Governance Configurations: Formal and Informal Institutions

For EGT, governance, as the key context for spatial planning, is best described in terms of co-
evolving structures that we will call configurations. Each configuration can, itself, be analyzed
as a composite of co-evolving elements. First of all, there is the actor/institution configura-
tion. This is not merely a sum of actors and institutions involved in spatial organization, but an
interplay between actors, and between actors and the institutions they use to coordinate their
interactions.
A typology of actors would create an infinite list, yet two types of institutions can be dis-
tinguished: formal and informal institutions. The distinction between formal and informal
cannot be made a priori. It is a labeling that takes place in each decision-making situation.
In modern states, formality is regularly associated with the state, with rules written down on
paper, and with state organizations, but this is not necessarily always the case. Informal institu-
tions are alternative coordination mechanisms to formal institutions. They can sustain, modify,
undermine, reinforce and complement formal institutions. Formal and informal institutions

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co-evolve, in a dialectics where each shapes the effects of the other. Over time, the distinction
between formal and informal, as well as their interrelation, can change. Informal can become
formal and vice versa.
Plans, policies and laws are institutions that are often used as tools in planning. These insti-
tutions co-evolve and they co-evolve with the actors using them. Actors create, maintain,
change and discard institutions. Part of this institutional work is intended and planned, but a
large part is an emergent outcome of the everyday actions and interactions of people within
a community (Lawrence et al., 2009). Conversely, the behavior of actors is structured by the
institutional framework in place. In most situations there are multiple options for coordination
and decision-making and actors need to make decisions about which rules to follow (French,
1995). Parallel and underlying forms of coordination, present inside and outside the particular
governance contexts, determine what happens to plans, planning laws and planning policies.
The working of particular institutions, such as plans, policies or legislation, should therefore
always be understood in relation to the wider configuration of institutions and in interaction
with the strategizing of actors.
Informality in planning is not just corruption, therefore, nor the recognition of weak plan-
ning power. Informality can both undermine and reinforce the formal plans or spatial policies.
Informal negotiations between governmental and other actors before the formal process started
can be the basis of implementation. A slight tracing of a most basic design on a napkin at a table
by people who were not supposed to be at that table might have more influence than anything
else in the planning process, might give it teeth and might make it possible that design plays a
prominent role further on. Likewise, a sensitivity by planners and designers for local percep-
tions, values and traditions, for informal institutions coordinating land use, can lead to new
formal institutions with a greater power of coordination and more real impact. This in turn can
lead to a stronger perception that planning can work, and this can enhance performativity, the
reality-creating character of planning.

Governance Configurations: Power/Knowledge

Second, there is the power/knowledge configuration. Power and knowledge in planning
systems co-evolve. Knowledge cannot be understood without reference to power. Within the
domain of ‘knowledge’, one has to include narratives, discourses and ideologies. All these drive
each other’s development and are influencing each other’s use and interpretation. Which form
of expertise and other knowledge is used in a planning process, how it is interpreted, opposed,
combined, or ignored, depends on a web of power relations. Furthermore the perspective in
and on planning, the objects and subjects of planning, and the position of planning within the
wider governance setting are all constituted in power relations. These power relations are them-
selves the result of previous power/knowledge interactions.
Actor/institution and power/knowledge configurations co-evolve in many non-trivial
senses. Actors and institutions are discursive constructs whose meaning and role is constructed
in power/knowledge configurations. Conversely power/knowledge is influenced by the actions
and interactions of actors, while institutions can embed and codify particular configurations of
power/knowledge. A simple example can illustrate this co-evolution between the two configu-
rations. Consider attempts to improve planning systems: it can be seen that this usually includes
inserting new expert knowledge, new actors, and new plans, policies or laws. These attempts for
improvement always take place in a context characterized by existing institutions and the pres-
ence of actors with their own perspectives, interests and knowledge. Understanding planning
as part of governance configurations, including linked actor/institution and power/knowledge

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configurations, and discerning the role of informal institutions in the process, makes it easier to
grasp the reasons for starting with certain assumptions, problem definitions, analytic tools, or
coordination tools (institutions) and to understand the process of negotiation about the plans
and other formal institutions and the intricate pathways of interpretation and implementation.
Because of the coupling of several co-evolving configurations, causes and effects can originate
and reverberate far from an original agency or intention: shifting relations between formal and
informal institutions can undermine the implementation of a plan, leading to power shifts in
administration, to inclusion of new actors, or to the production of a new plan with high hopes
for implementation because of presumed superior quality, a presumption underpinned by a new
narrative recently spread through the governance configuration.

Object and Subject Formation

Objects and/or subjects, in an EGT perspective, do not exist as fixed entities in planning.
Objects and subjects are not given in reality. They are actively constructed in discourses that
are present inside and outside the evolving planning process. The main difference between the
emergence of objects and objects is an ontological one: it is unlikely objects produce and repro-
duce discourse and define themselves, while subjects can. Subjects, contrary to objects, have the
ability to internalize and embody different subjectivities (Foucault, 1994), this is named subjec-
tification. Subjects thus can become actors within planning. For EGT the ways in which objects
and subjects come into existence can be explained by a largely similar conceptual framework. It
adds to Foucault (1972) in the depiction of this mechanics within governance, and its linkage
with the functioning of the other configurations.
Objects and subjects are constituted in power/knowledge configurations, at different sites
of decision-making, as the result of different pathways that map their emergence and as a result
of different techniques. Sites, like planning organizations, as the context for the formation of
objects and subjects, can influence their formation in a unique way, since each site can have
unique power/knowledge configurations. Some sites can have more authority than others to
define objects and subjects, e.g. universities or governmental organizations (Foucault, 1972).
Informal relations between governmental and other actors affect what happens to objects and
subjects and they influence their construction and stabilization, their distribution or destruction
(Kooij, 2015). Paths of object formation are the series of events, decisions and sites in which
objects and subjects are formed. By techniques we refer to the power/knowledge relations that
can be used to deepen the analysis of objects and subject formation in governance. Elsewhere
the following techniques were distinguished: reification, solidification, codification, objectifica-
tion, naturalization, and institutionalization (Duineveld and Van Assche, 2011; Duineveld et al.,
2013). Planning is bound to be an arena under pressure, a network of sites and paths of decision-
making, of tightly coupled configurations, where power/knowledge and actor/institution are
continuously close, triggering mutual transformation. Actors perform roles as they function in
a governance system. Sometimes these roles pre-exist that particular configuration, sometimes
they are created in that configuration. Strong professional identities might exist in some cases,
but not always, and strong role identities might exist, yet not necessarily. Even if these iden-
tities exist, they need not be deeply subjectified, leading to a transformation of politics into
identity politics. The existence of roles, of professional and participatory subjects, of degrees of
subjectification, renders the fabric of spatial governance more intricate. People never coincide
with a role and a role is never the same as an identity. This complicates the patterns in which
knowledge and power entwine, which conceptual objects are allowed to emerge in planning,
and what impact they can have in evolving spatial governance.

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In some cases planners and designers can be considered the most important subjects in a gov-
ernance context. Although some persons have both labels they can internalize one of the roles
and define themselves as planners or designers, sometimes even expressing very distinct features:
designers wearing sleek designer glasses, planners looking like bureaucrats. In governance many
other subjects come into existence, like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens, politicians, sorts of experts,
developers, lay people and so on. Governance creates subjects and is transformed by these sub-
jects, and the same is true for objects. Objects and subjects are formed, sometimes temporally,
sometimes very locally, and sometimes more enduring and more difficult to undo.

Path, Inter and Goal Dependencies

Dependencies refer to different aspects of rigidity in governance paths. Each governance path
involves rigidity and flexibility which, in combination, leave an openness for path creation.
EGT distinguishes between three sets of dependencies: path dependencies, interdependencies
and goal dependencies. Path dependencies refer to the influence of the past on the current
reproduction of governance. This influence can stem from old narratives, forms of knowledge,
power relations, institutional frameworks, actor configurations, or the absence or presence of
particular planning tools. Interdependence is the restricting and guiding effect of current rela-
tions between actors and between actors and institutions on decision-making. The third set
are goal dependencies. These are especially interesting for planning as they concern the effects
of ideas about the future and visions for the future on the current functioning of governance.
Planners are always looking toward the future, intending to codify preferable versions of the
future in new institutions. Therewith they create goal dependencies. Once a certain vision of
the future is institutionalized, it will become a point of reference for new decisions. It can create
a blind spot for alternative futures, but it can also inspire the development of alternative visions
if certain actors do not agree with the institutionalized version. One only has to think about
local groups protesting against planned developments to see how certain future-oriented ideas
can have a very strong influence on the evolution of governance. Planners ought to look keenly
at the diversity of goal dependencies introduced by previous plans and other planning tools.
Here we touch on the topics of conformity and implementation. Plans with the most abhorrent
implementation can still have many effects, including positive ones. Abominable implementa-
tion of a former plan can be hailed now as the saving of a community – think for example about
many of the modernist monster-projects or the work of Jane Jacobs. Annoying opponents of
a plan can later become heroes, after shifts in planning narratives and underlying ideologies.
Descendants of these opponents can now be prominent actors in planning.
Goal dependencies, like the other dependencies, come in different weights and colors. They
can take the form of ideas, visions, or scenarios, both as positive images of a future or as a
specter. They can be more or less realistic, more or less concrete, and about a near or faraway
future. The ways in which these goal dependencies influence decision-making in the present
can be manifold.
Planning could thus also be conceptualized as the management of goal dependencies, based
on an understanding of the influence of the two other sets of dependencies. Planners try to use
appropriate coordination tools to give shape to an appropriate narrative about the future, with
appropriate measures of ambition and certainty. All these instances of appropriateness can and
will shift over time. Planning thus has to be a highly reflexive and evolving activity itself, sensi-
tive to the balance between flexibility and rigidity in the system. Rigidity is neither good nor
bad per se. One old and acknowledged benefit of planning is exactly that it increases rigidity in
spatial governance, by stabilizing expectations of actors, clarifying ground rules of interaction

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(property rights, zoning, infrastructure development, property tax), basic orientations toward
the future (in zoning etc.), and rules to change the rules (planning processes and democratic
political processes). The same is true for flexibility, which is also neither good nor bad. Good
governance is adaptive governance, but limits to adaptive capacity are not always bad things.
Rash decisions inspired by a new narrative taking over governance, one new actor rising to
power, or a broken web of interdependence, can be sorely regretted later.
The effects of a vision for the future, say a plan, will hinge on a variety of things. Some have
been mentioned before. In the sphere of power/knowledge they will hinge on the discursive
configurations in the governance system and outside it, in turn coupled with the informalities
existing in and outside the governance system and the power relations between actors inside
governance and between others outside the sphere of governance. Discursive configurations
refer to the patterns of embedding and competing discursivity in and outside governance: con-
cepts compete, are linked to other concepts in discourses and in narratives; narratives make
sense in ideologies; ideologies produce metaphors appearing in narratives giving new meanings
to space and new substance to ideas for the future. Certain actors are clearly linked to certain
concepts, narratives, ideologies, metaphors, or forms of expertise. If powerful actors identify
with one form of expertise, then politics becomes identity politics. Planning will then become
more rigid and the version of the future that stems from the application of that expertise will
dominate in planning. If a powerful actor identifies directly with one version of the past, which
inspires a version of the future, a similarly rigid identity politics will guide planning directly in
the direction of such a desirable future, without interference of other expertise and other narra-
tives, unless they can function as support or give content or detail.
In general, plans produced in the governance system which are compatible with expecta-
tions or informal coordination mechanisms in the wider community, will more likely have
strong reality effects. These will tend to produce a new reality resembling the planned one, or,
shift the interpretation of later reality so it resembles the intention of the plan. We again speak
of performativity here, referring to the reality effects of plans. Plans do create realities, and the
performative effects are those effects that alter the later perception of reality. Plans can have
more effects because more people become convinced of the underlying reasoning, charmed
by the esthetics of the design, or by a changing discursive configuration in the community at
large. What can enhance or modify performativity is the performance of the plan and the per-
formance, we add, of actors in the making of the plan. Performance in the process contributes
to the quality of support or consensus. Performance in execution can have the same effect, by
showing or creating qualities not perceived before in the plan, or by endowing the performer
with more prestige, trust or power.
Performance, performativity and goal dependencies are useful concepts to refine the analysis
of plan effects and plan implementation. The concept of goal dependence links future, past and
present in a novel way, by placing the dependencies in a triad with two other forms of depend-
encies. Together these different dependencies help in analyzing the influences of past, present
and future on what happens now. The basic insight that both past and future influence the
present in concrete manners, and that, concomitantly, the effects of present decisions extend far
beyond people doing what they are told, we consider a useful addition to the planning literature
and a key insight coming out of the specification of EGT into planning theory.

Final Thoughts
The emergence of planning theories that focus on governance, complexity, non-linearity and
ambiguity might for some create the impression that planning is becoming an anachronism or

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that planning is dissolving in a sea of practical and theoretical objections, and in larger con-
texts planning cannot grasp itself. In response increasing attention is given to non-hierarchical,
organic, insurgent, or self-organizing forms of planning; forms of planning that are presumably
emerging by themselves. We argue that a focus on self-organization, presented as natural and
moral, cannot avoid the problems observed with other theories. The tendency to translate ideas
of failing theories and practices quickly into a new normative framework is still there. The new
normativity also fails to explain how planning actually works.
Just as free markets and social engineering approaches miscast planning power, and just as
the theoretical analyses of complications and ambiguities tend to overlook its positive pow-
ers, we believe resorting to self-organization and localism is not a solution. All these theories
deserve full recognition of course, and appreciation in their critical and constructive moment.
What we propose here, is that reframing their diagnosis and solutions, presenting them as real
options which are not the only ones, however, but more or less real and useful, contingent on
governance paths, is what can help us to map the middle ground between social engineering
and laissez-faire. Sometimes local self-organization is what is missing. In some situations aspects
of social engineering are desired and possible, while in others lack of incentives for private
actors, in line with classical economics, are the problem, and sometimes planning politics is rigid
identity politics (Van Assche et al., 2011b, 2014b). Diagnosis and remedy have to follow out of
path mapping, out of governance analysis, and this is primarily a mapping of co-evolving con-
figurations. EGT is a theoretical frame that can assist in this process but, as we indicated in the
introductory paragraphs, it is not the only manifestation of co-evolutionary and contingency-
oriented theory in planning, and not the first one. Most versions of post-structuralism and
institutionalism espouse concepts of co-evolution and contingency and already include the core
idea that both reality and the tools to intervene in it are the product of co-evolution and thus
supported and constrained by this.
As argued before, the possibilities for planning and their potential impacts on the social-
spatial organization depend on context. Most important among those, we argued here, is the
governance context, which includes discourses, narratives, dependencies, and the different
power/knowledge and actor/institution configurations. Understanding this context is key to an
understanding of the limits and possibilities of change in a community and thus to planning or
the impossibility of planning.
Planning theory embedded in governance theory can help to analyze and understand a par-
ticular governance context, to delineate the possibilities and limits of planning in that context,
and to determine which planning efforts are most likely to have a positive impact. In a co-
evolutionary perspective, context as such, and governance context in particular, are never fixed
and never stable: all elements and structures are continuously influencing each other. A co-
evolutionary perspective that acknowledges this radical contingency is a very useful lens for
both analysis and change, for the development of new planning perspectives, or the deliberate
circumvention of a current planning system. The co-evolutionary perspective as developed
in EGT opens up planning theory to a series of relevant concepts from different disciplines,
relevant for the analysis of current and potential forms of planning in a community, while
conversely giving theories and practices of planning a firm place within governance. Planning
theory, after some of the more novel recent reconceptualizations has become less naive and
more relevant than ever before to tackle the contemporary societal challenges of today such as
climate change adaptation, urbanization, food security, water management, cultural and identity
politics, or biodiversity conservation. All these societal challenges have a clear and important
spatial dimension and all could benefit from perspectives that seek to unravel their complex
dynamics and the points of leverage for planned change.

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 PART III

Networks, Flows, Relationships

and Institutions
 19
THE GOVERNANCE
OF PLANNING
Flexibly Networked,
Yet Institutionally Grounded

Raine Mäntysalo and Pia Bäcklund

Introduction: Governance as an
Analytical Concept in Planning Theories
Since the rise of neoliberal political ideology in the late 1970s, the redistributive welfarism of
public planning has been under attack as bureaucratic, inefficient and reactive. The oil crisis in
the mid-1970s marked the end of the post-war growth era, during which planning institutions
had been established to regulate this growth, in view of the public interest and avoidance of
negative externalities. Since economic growth was no longer self-evident, but still the main
target, public planning was expected to shift from ‘passive’ regulation to active facilitation of
the economy and the functionality of the globalizing markets. In urban planning, local govern-
ments were expected to engage in private land development initiatives as a potential public
partner and/or provider of different sorts of incentives (see a comprehensive account by Sager
(2011)). This development has continued ever since. Hence, urban planning has been changing
from sectored and regulative land-use planning into an integrative and proactive agent in spatial
planning (Davoudi et al., 2009).
This change of planning is part of a broader transition that in the fields of administrative
and management studies has been termed as a change from government to governance (e.g. Pollitt
& Bouckaert, 2011). In this chapter, we review the theoretical argumentation explaining this
change and the reasons behind it, and make related connections to the planning realm. The
review discusses how the concept of governance is far less clear-cut than often assumed, when
different institutional contexts, their path dependencies and legitimacy challenges are consid-
ered. The change from government to governance rather means that public sector activities
become layered and mixed in fuzzy ways. As part of this development, planning practices have
become blurred, too. We see that planning theories have had difficulties in gaining a proper
analytical insight into this fuzziness.
It is also important to note that local planning cultures and contexts present unique responses
to the globally spreading innovations concerning the operating principles of the public sector,
as they bring their own legislative steering and national and regional policy guidance into the
mix (e.g. Davoudi et al., 2009; Skelcher et al., 2011; Stead, 2012; Bäcklund et al., forthcoming).

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 Raine Mäntysalo and Pia Bäcklund

Although governance can be seen as a central factor in planning practice, empirical accounts of
how and in which issues it impacts in different planning systems are much needed, especially if
‘best practices’ are to be transferred between local contexts.
First, we take a broad look at how the change from government to governance has taken
and is taking place, utilizing especially discussions within administrative studies. We will then
continue with focused contemplation of the uses of governance as an analytical concept, and
conclude with what we see would be its fruitful uses in the planning theoretical discourse. We
also provide clues for seeing the conceptual discussion through local contexts.

From Government to Governance

Rosenau (1992) was among the first to make the distinction between government and gov-
ernance, by referring with ‘government’ to activities that are backed by formal authority, and
with ‘governance’ to a more encompassing phenomenon that embraces not only governmental
organizations but also non-governmental actors and informal mechanisms in a pursuit for shared
goals. The idea of governance was introduced in the Anglo-American research circles as a para-
digm shift for public administrations. In their influential book Reinventing Government (1992),
Osborne and Gaebler deemed ‘government’ as a dysfunctional remnant of past times:

The kind of governments that developed during the industrial era, with their slug-
gish centralized bureaucracies, their preoccupation with rules and regulations, and
their hierarchical structures, no longer work well … They became bloated, wasteful,
and ineffective. And when the world began to change, they failed to change with it.
Hierarchical, centralized bureaucracies designed in the 1930s or 1940s simply do not
function well in the rapidly changing, information-rich, knowledge-intensive society
and economy of the 1990s.
(Osborne & Gaebler 1992, 11–12)

Drawing largely from business management literature, Osborne and Gaebler introduced a num-
ber of operating principles for public governance, including the ideas of the government:

•• encouraging community empowerment and private competition;

•• adopting the role as a supervisor and purchaser of public service provision, instead of a producer;
•• being mission, customer and output oriented instead of focusing on rules, bureaucracy and
input;
•• concentrating more on income generation than its redistribution, e.g. by influencing market
forces rather than creating public programs.
(Osborne & Gaebler, 1992)

In broad terms, this concept of governance echoes the principles of the so-called New Public
Management (NPM) that took shape in the 1980s as a model for public governance in Thatcher’s
UK. NPM promotes a shift from bureaucratic administration to business-like professional man-
agement, with the assumption that market rationality would provide the cure for the perceived
lack of efficiency of the bureaucracies. Hence, the public sector’s cooperation with market
actors was enhanced by outsourcing public functions, introducing purchaser-provider models
for public service provision, and even by introducing market-like structures within the gov-
ernment itself. From business management, strategic leadership ideas were adopted, including
strategic goal setting, performance control and management by results.

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Although Osborne and Gaebler, with their principles of reinvented government presented
above, promoted market-oriented or ‘entrepreneurial’ government, they saw that markets are
only half the answer. They pointed out that markets are impersonal, unforgiving, and, even
under the most structured circumstances, inequitable. “To complement the efficiency and effec-
tiveness of market mechanisms, we need the warmth and caring of families and neighborhoods
and communities. As entrepreneurial governments move away from the administrative bureau-
cracies, they need to embrace both markets and community” (Osborne & Gaebler 1992, 309,
emphasis in the original).
Similarly to Osborne and Gaebler, many later governance researchers have perceived the
governance paradigm to represent a ‘Third Way’ that, on the one hand, enables us to overcome
the rigidities of bureaucracies, and, on the other hand, the inequities of markets, through the
incorporation of a wide range of groups into policy making (Leadbeater, 2004; Horelli, 2013).
For more critical researchers, it represents neoliberal governance that has led to the domination
of institutional and economic elites through their cooperation arrangements that bear serious
democratic deficits (Swyngedouw, 2005; Allmendinger & Haughton, 2013, 2015; Inch, 2010;
Grange, 2013). Both arguments may be true, depending on the empirical case at hand. For exam-
ple, Blanco (2013) has identified signs of both in his recent case studies in Barcelona, regarding
whether the forms of urban governance adopted foster strong political-economic interests or
bottom-up community development. While many would portray the ‘Barcelona model’ as
a showcase of urban governance, with its positive impacts on urban development and local
democracy, others, according to Blanco (2013), criticize it for the lack of opportunities for citi-
zens to participate in main urban development projects, the dominance of architects and urban
planners over other professionals, the resulting gentrification of the historic centre and the sea
front, and the high social costs of the model. As it turned out in Blanco’s empirical studies, both
arguments are valid, depending on whether the area studied is centrally or more peripherally
located, from the perspective of economic buoyancy. Comparing the cases of Raval (in the his-
toric centre of the city) and Trinitat Nova (at the urban periphery), Blanco argues that a variety
of urban governance practices can be adopted, even within a single city:

I have discovered that governance networks are not necessarily linked to the neoliberal
project – nor do they necessarily represent an alternative to it – as some theorists seem
to assume. I have found different types of governance networks grounded on alternative
political values and principles.
(Blanco, 2013, 288)

The Path Dependence of Governance Practices

The empirical perspective brings us to the question of analytical sharpness of the governance
concept, as a tool in describing and understanding urban policy and planning processes. The
concept of governance has been used in varying ways and approached from various disciplines,
but there seems to be broad agreement that governance refers to the development in governing
where boundaries between public and private sectors and between different public organizations
have become blurred (Stoker, 1998). It is a process of blending and coordinating public and
private interests where the local government, in concert with private interests, seeks to attain
collective goals (Pierre, 1999, 374; Hajer, 2009). As actors organize around a particular problem,
and the political drive to act and find novel cooperative forms is issue based, governance mod-
els are also expected to be more efficient and innovative in the pursuit of complex, multilevel
public goals than government endeavours (Aarsæther et al., 2011; Klijn & Koppenjan, 2012).

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But if governance were to be used to refer to any kind of public–private interaction, soon
everything would become governance, and the concept would lose its analytical edge (Pierre,
1999, 376). Pierre suggests that urban governance processes should be studied in connection to
the different institutional contexts in which they are embedded. These contexts provide the eco-
nomic, political and ideological frameworks that determine the participation and influence of
different actors, the policy instruments used, the goals to be pursued and the resulting outcomes.
Here, ‘institution’ refers to “overarching systems of values, traditions, norms, and practices that
shape or constrain political behavior” (Pierre, 1999, 373). From this perspective, Pierre arrives
at four different models of urban governance: the managerial, the corporatist, the progrowth,
and the welfare model.
Managerial and progrowth governance models are market-conforming forms of urban gov-
ernance, whereas corporatist and welfare governance models seek to control and contain market
forces, although in different ways. Managerial and progrowth governance models are also out-
come-focused, drawing on entrepreneurial zeal and skills that tend to bypass the due process.
In turn, corporatist and welfare governance models emphasize entitlements and representation
and are hence process driven. In broad terms, managerial and progrowth governance models
are more typical of the Anglo-American context, while the corporatist and welfare governance
models are more familiar in continental Europe. However, a clear-cut association of governance
models with different country contexts cannot be made, as the different governance models may
coexist in different countries, with different emphases (Pierre, 1999).
What is more, they may coexist even in individual local governments, according to Pierre –
despite their different organizational logics and goals. Different government sectors may favour
different governance models:

For instance, one should not expect social workers to support progrowth governance,
nor is it very likely that the local economic development office is a key player in wel-
fare governance. To assume otherwise would be to exaggerate the logic and coherence
of the local state.
(Pierre, 1999, 398)

While governance researchers have focused on the issue of managing the relations between the
public and the private sector, they have often overlooked the changes in steering modes within
the public sector itself. For example, as Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011) have noted, administra-
tive reforms have been systematic and comprehensive in the OECD countries since the 1990s.
However, these reforms have rarely if ever fully replaced the former structures but are, rather,
interlaced with them (Hajer, 2009; Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010). Hence, public administra-
tion does not form a homogenous collective with a unified mind to be discovered (e.g. Olsson
& Hysing, 2012; Bäcklund et al., 2014). This evolving development within the public sector
might also have notable indirect effects. For example, it has been argued that administrative
reforms might have a much larger impact on the future of democracy than specific projects aim-
ing at improving participation and democratic practices (e.g. Hirst, 2000; Mäntysalo & Saglie,
2010; Skelcher & Torfing, 2010).
However, there are further complications, as the paradigm shift from government to gov-
ernance is usually, in practice, incomplete. For Rhodes, governance signifies “a change in the
meaning of government, referring to a new process of governing; or a changed condition of
ordered rule; or the new method by which society is governed” (Rhodes, 1996, 652–653,
emphasis in the original). What really changes and what is new in local practices, is an empiri-
cal question. For example, economic preconditions affect the possibilities of organizations to

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develop their operations in relation to both the institutional structures of the government and
the supra-local networks of governance. While Rhodes, among others, promotes the view of
governance as autopoietic, self-organizing networks of public and private actors, relatively free
to establish themselves around shared goals (Rhodes, 1996, 660), the institutional approach pro-
moted by Pierre (1999) emphasizes the frictions in transforming governance.
We see that it is important not to overlook the institutional rootedness of ‘government’
in the legislative system and political-administrative culture. As first shown by North (1990),
institutions are characterized by path dependence. When institutions are established, they
often require high fixed set-up costs and, once established, they are powerful in reinforcing
development that guarantees their own existence. Mahoney (2000) adds that, besides North’s
utilitarianist view, there are other viewpoints that are relevant in explaining the path-dependent
self-reinforcement of institutions. These viewpoints include the functional role the institution
gains in the larger systemic framework; the institution’s distribution of power among actors, as
the dominant groups support the institutional settings maintaining and fostering their power;
and the institution’s legitimation, when it is increasingly perceived as the only legitimate authority
in its domain (Mahoney, 2000, 519–526; see also Pierson, 2000).
When ‘government’ as a political-administrative institution indicates strong path-dependent
resistance to change, the governance reform might only lead to shallow changes and can thus
become a source of various sorts of ambiguities in politico-administrative processes. A complex
reality of governing might result where different understandings of the determinants of legiti-
mate conduct, due policy process, and the professional identities and roles of different actors in
producing and managing valid knowledge coexist and compete with one another. Embedded
in the institutionalized structures and normative prescriptions of ‘good governance’, the deep-
seated regulative model of planning and the associated model of representative democracy are
still holding fast, framing what is possible or even conceivable. Government actors are still cen-
tral agents in public governance networks and they have their own ‘institutional baggage’ with
them when operating in governance networks. The given roles, legal duties and formal author-
ity relations, between the political decision-makers, public administrators and non-government
actors, are carved deep into these institutional structures, and these inscriptions can be very
difficult to overwrite with the new governance ideas.

The Legitimacy of Governance Networks?

Indeed, the many dilemmas that Stoker (1998) identified in the governance paradigm, can be
associated with the institutional friction of transforming government to governance. According
to Stoker:

•• There is a divorce between the complex reality of decision-making associated

with governance and the normative codes used to explain and justify government.
•• The blurring of responsibilities can lead to blame avoidance or scapegoating.
•• Power dependence exacerbates the problem of unintended consequences for
government.
•• The emergence of self-governing networks raises difficulties over accountability.
•• Even where governments operate in a flexible way to steer collective action
governance failure may occur.
(Stoker, 1998, 19)

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A central problem, according to Stoker (1998, 20), is that a legitimation framework, in which to
place the new practice of governance, is missing. Similarly, many scholars see that the juxtaposing
of government and governance models implicitly enables practices that have ambiguous rela-
tions to democracy and publicity ideals. For example, Allmendinger and Haughton (2010, 813)
have argued, concerning the planning context, that the new practices are “short circuiting some
of the formal democratic processes of statutory planning”. However, the rootedness of actions
in issue-related performative and technical aspects of problem-solving means that legitimacy is
claimed by reference to established institutions. Responsibilities become blurred and diluted into
the ambiguity of networks.
As a concept, legitimacy, too, has traditionally been perceived as institutionally bounded. It
concerns the level of political-administrative system itself. Legitimacy is the moral justification of
an entity in wielding political power (Buchanan, 2002, 689–690). As noted by Sager (2013, 8),
it is mainly addressed to sources of political authority: the governments, institutions and regimes
making political decisions. The change from government to governance is, of course, problem-
atic, if legitimacy and political accountability continue to be addressed to government. Rhodes
acknowledges that there is “an obvious conflict between the tenets of accountability in a repre-
sentative democracy and participation in networks which can be open without being formally
accountable” (Rhodes, 1996, 667). But he argues that political accountability can no longer be
specific merely to the institutional hierarchies of government, “but must fit the substantive policy
and the several institutions contributing to it” (Rhodes, 1996, 667, our emphasis).
Indeed, the scope of legitimacy has been shifting from procedural considerations (who is the
legitimate authority and what is the due process for preparing and making decisions) to substan-
tive issues (what policy goals are justifiable and who are needed as resourceful actors in pursuing
them). Following Scharpf’s terminology, this transition can be termed as the shift away from
input legitimacy to output legitimacy (Scharpf, 1999; see also Mäntysalo & Saglie, 2010). While
input legitimacy focuses on the general acceptability of political processes, output legitimacy
focuses on the acceptability of the outcomes of political decisions and policies. Whereas the
former is concerned with the democratic quality of decision-making processes, the latter is con-
cerned with the efficient achievement of common good in implementing the decisions made.
Bang and Esmark (2009) go as far as to argue that the new conditions of globalized and net-
worked society require a reorientation from politics-centred (input) to policy-centred (output)
public governance. They emphasize the forward mapping of policy risks and challenges, rather
than backward mapping of how conflicting interests and identities acquire free and equal access
to, and recognition in, democratic politics (Bang & Esmark 2009, 16–17).
Despite the persuasive argumentation of Bang and Esmark, among others, such aspirations have
recently been heavily criticized. It is argued to transform from declared pursuits of inclusive pro-
cedures toward a variety of ‘depoliticizing’ practices, with managerial shadow-practices effectively
reducing the realm of participation and ‘the political’ (see e.g. Metzger et al., 2015). The argument,
again, is that neoliberal motives (e.g. growth, competitiveness) are pushed forward by presenting
them as societal necessities, instead of goals to be subjected to political deliberation. Be that as it
may, the question of legitimacy remains an unresolved issue in the transition toward governance.
In the next sections we examine what implications this ambiguity of change from government
to governance has for planning theory and practice.

Neoliberal Governance in Planning Theory

In the field of urban planning, two approaches to understand the shift toward governance
can be identified. The first approach celebrates the governance model for expanding planning

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from regulative and expert-dominated land-use planning to proactive and networked community
development and co-governance (e.g. Horelli, 2013). The latter approach rather perceives com-
munity engagement as a mere guise for ensuring the dominance of neoliberal interests. For example
in the UK, some researchers (e.g. Davoudi & Madanipour, 2013; Allmendinger & Haughton,
2015; Grange, 2013) argue that with its Neighbourhood Planning initiative Cameron’s coalition
government is framed crucially community involvement by encouraging it to find ‘local solu-
tions’ to planning problems that, however, are determined centrally around neoliberal growth.
Bottom-up local participation was welcomed regarding how new development should take place,
not on whether there should be new development or not in the first place.
Whether the governance paradigm promotes community engagement or domination of
neoliberal interests in planning, is, of course, not just a theoretical issue, but crucially an empiri-
cal one, too. For example, Sager (2009) argues that the Nordic planners are torn between the
deliberative ideals of communicative planning and the realpolitik of neoliberal planning (see also
Grange, 2014, 2016). Mäntysalo, Saglie and Cars (2011) further argue that, in order to cope
with this tension, the Nordic planners have to develop defensive routines, unreflectively mis-
representing exclusive public–private partnership and developer-oriented planning in terms of
communicative procedures, as prescribed by the Nordic planning laws. Inch (2010) has found
similar tensions in England.
The neoliberalization discourse has ambiguous relations to planning theory. What the gov-
ernance paradigm and communicative planning theory share in common, is their aversion to
planning as bureaucratic control. While the former perceives it as inefficient, the latter perceives
it as undemocratic. But if the governance paradigm, with its involvement of private and third
sector ‘stakeholders’ (cf. Swyngedouw, 2005) in the planning and decision-making processes,
ultimately leads to the domination of the strong political and economic stakeholders, would
the communicative planning theory’s criticism of ‘government’ then be counterproductive?
Does the intention of communicative planning theory to enable bottom-up civil society par-
ticipation, and relax bureaucratic control of planning processes, inadvertently serve neoliberal
aims (Bengs, 2005; Allmendinger & Haughton, 2013; Purcell, 2009; Sager, 2013; Fainstein &
Fainstein, 2013; Gunder, 2010; Puustinen et al., 2017)? A shift from one form of domination
to the other? This questioning largely stems from the (neo-)Marxist critique of seeing structural
power imbalances as inherent in the planning system itself. If planning is seen to be structurally
inclined to facilitate growth and the accumulation of capital, this condition might be maintained
and further legitimized by communicative planning ideals – if they were to minimize predefined
restrictions and guidelines, relax checks and controls, and increase flexibility of legally binding
land-use plans. Thereby they would open further possibilities for the powerful stakeholders to
strike bargains on privately initiated development projects.
The pressure of neoliberal domination tends to be much stronger when areas with a high
property development potential are concerned, in comparison to more peripheral areas, not to
mention socio-economically deprived areas. Brindley, Rydin and Stoker (1989) noticed this
in their review of the different ‘planning styles’ that were adopted in the UK in the 1980s, in
the aftermath of Thatcher’s reforms. Besides the regulative and communicative planning styles,
they noticed the emergence of three market-oriented planning styles: trend planning, leverage
planning and private management planning. The adopted planning styles varied in relation to
the economic buoyancy of the area in question. In the most buoyant areas, usually the central
districts of growing cities, the style of trend planning was adopted. In such areas, the planners
narrowed their scope of planning to concern urban architecture and landscape, thereby leaving
room for the investors and developers to (re-)determine the core areas of investment, with their
impacts on the broader urban infrastructure. In the marginal areas, such as abandoned industry

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and harbour areas that were located close to the urban centres, the public sector used the leverage
planning style to facilitate private investment in different ways, e.g. by establishing public–private
Urban Development Corporations, and Enterprise Zones with significantly reduced planning
regulations. The planning style of private management planning, in turn, was practised in the socio-
economically depressed neighbourhoods or areas. Here, management-type entrepreneurial means
were used in the attainment of social purposes in such areas, in collaboration with the local resi-
dents. Much of its funding and administrative back-up rested on the shoulders of the government.
But as involvement in such projects was often not profitable for the investors, they sooner or later
tended to leave them (Brindley et al., 1989).
Local planning cultures and structures play a paramount role: the more government processes
define and steer planning practices, the less can governance networks redefine and guide the
planning agendas in a legally legitimate way. On the one hand, planning is expected to grasp and
dynamically engage in development initiatives and potentialities for strategic mobilization; on the
other hand, the statutory practices confine the scope of planning substantially and procedurally.
In the next section, we look at these questions more closely.

Governance in Practice: Soft and Hard Planning

As Healey (2004, 2007) observes, the shift from government to governance has been par-
alleled by a shift from statutory planning toward governance-based strategic spatial planning
(cf. Albrechts et al., 2003; Allmendinger & Haughton, 2010; Balducci, 2011). The emergent
strategic spatial planning attempts to free the imaginative potentials of urban regions and trans-
form these into development that mixes regulative and visionary approaches (cf. Healey, 2004;
Mäntysalo et al., 2015).
In the realm of spatial planning, the change toward network governance has been met with
the formation of ‘soft spaces’, in distinction to the existing ‘hard spaces’ of government. With
‘soft spaces’, Haughton, Allmendinger and Oosterlynck refer to the “‘in-between’ spaces of
governance that exist outside, alongside or in-between the formal statutory scales of govern-
ment, from area masterplans to multi-regional growth strategies” (Haughton et al., 2013, 219;
see also Salet, 2006; Majoor & Salet, 2008). The planning of soft spaces, or ‘soft planning’, chal-
lenges ‘hard planning’ in many regards, as argued by Purkarthofer (2016, 8; cf. Faludi, 2013;
Stead, 2014):

It creates new spatial entities, introduces new scales and mechanisms of policy- and
decision-making and brings new actors to the table – but at the same time the ‘rules’
how these processes are established are neither universal nor transparent. Lacking a
legal basis, it is not clear who has the right to participate, make proposals and decide
when it comes to soft planning, let alone how plans are implemented and who has to
abide them.

New ‘soft’ planning instruments have also emerged, alongside the ‘hard’ instruments of statutory
land-use planning. They are aimed at facilitating the networking of planning by surmounting
the traditional boundaries, either between different administrations or between the public and
private sectors. Thus they may be devised, for example, to bridge boundaries between planning
sectors and/or scales, reach broader regional coverage beyond municipal boundaries in urban and
metropolitan regions, or to focus selectively on certain development themes or non-jurisdictional
places or ‘neighbourhoods’.

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Further, the soft planning instruments are conceived to enhance the strategic character of plan-
ning. In this perspective, the hard planning tools of the statutory planning systems are perceived
as non-strategic, with their extensive comprehensiveness, ‘blueprint’ determinism, functionalistic
zoning, and rigid and hierarchical preparation processes. In turn, the soft planning instruments are
aimed to enable strategic selectivity, dynamic orientation to visions with caution to alternative
scenarios, relational configuration of spatial realities, timeliness of preparation, and engagement of
stakeholders in the co-production of spatial strategies (Albrechts & Balducci, 2013).
However, the statutory land-use planning tools cannot simply be bypassed. Their hardness
is still very much required in managing spatial relationships, as there are several uses and users
of plans that need to be taken into account: the courts require legal clarity and certainty when
ruling on appeals to plans, the real estate investors and land-owners expect predictability in land
and real estate value development, and the planners themselves prefer legal weight to their plans,
in order to commit other actors to obey them (Van den Broeck, 2013). Further, despite their
often burdensome and rigid character, the statutory planning procedures, in their reliance on
the law, guarantee that the use of public authority in these procedures has a legitimate basis (Van
den Broeck, 2013; Mäntysalo et al., 2015).
In such conditions, aspirations to transform the ‘hard’ planning systems to ‘soft’, to comply
with the governance paradigm, tend to fall short. According to Davoudi et al. (2009, 78), this is
often due to the lack of due attention to the wider institutional context of which the planning
system is a part: “What is important in any initiative to redesign a planning system . . . is to pay
careful attention to the institutional context within which it is situated and to how planning
system initiatives will interact with the evolution of that context” (Davoudi et al., 2009, 78; see
also Bäcklund et al., forthcoming). Moroni (2010; see also Salet, 2002) further argues that while
planning organizations might be redesigned, their institutional linkages cannot be a subject of
‘institutional design’, as institutions can be transformed only through gradual evolution. Perhaps
the most central institution in this context is the institution of land property, as an object of
commodity in the land and real estate market, mortgage in financing, legal right of occupancy
and use, cultural value, object of land management and planning, etc.
Therefore, soft planning should not be seen as an alternative to hard planning, in the same
way that governance cannot do without government. Instead, measures should be developed for
their ‘hybrid’ coexistence. Rather than associating strategic spatial planning with soft planning
tools (Albrechts & Balducci, 2013), strategic spatial planning should aspire to manage the uneasy
coexistence of soft and hard planning tools (Mäntysalo et al., 2015; Mäntysalo, 2013). This brings
our attention to problem settings requiring strategic capacity the most, such as: how to achieve
both procedural legitimacy and sufficient informal flexibility; how to both fix legal certainties and
work with uncertainty; how to both use essentialist zoning tools and maintain a relational view of
planning. Hence, strategic spatial planning ought to focus on managing the relationships of e.g.
certainty-uncertainty and essentialism-relationality in spatial development, acknowledging their
paradoxical nature of being both mutually dichotomous and interdependent (Mäntysalo, 2013).
According to Mäntysalo (2013, 52), “[s]trategic spatial planning is about transcending certainty
and essentialism, while acknowledging them as necessary attributes of the realm of planning and
dealing with them from a broader horizon of uncertainty and relationality”.
Finally, the categories ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ are neither clear-cut nor fixed. When set against local
juxtaposing of legal frameworks, governance models and planning system characteristics, they
dissolve into a variety of degrees of softness and hardness for spaces and instruments of planning –
as Metzger and Schmitt (2012, 277) state, these spaces of planning are “relative, gradient positions
on a shared continuum of spatial closure and territorial definition”. Furthermore, as Metzger and

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Schmitt (ibid.) argue, soft spaces may solidify through, for example, practices of spatial planning
that provide identity and agency. Similarly, according to Paasi and Zimmerbauer (2015), hard
spaces are subject to softening when ‘new’ soft planning ideals and spaces are superimposed on
and across ‘old’ institutionalized territories. The discussion about soft and hard planning must
also account for the varying nature of planning instruments. In the systems with rigid land-use
plan hierarchies, such as Finland, there might indeed be high degrees of ‘hardness’ in statutory
plans. In turn, in systems with policy orientation and positioning of statutory spatial planning
alongside other spatial strategy-making instruments, for example the UK and the Netherlands,
the statutory plans may be relatively ‘soft’ when considering their direct steering powers.

Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, we have reviewed the theoretical discussion around (urban) governance and
its implications to planning. The researchers have been debating the repercussions to planning
of the paradigm shift from government to governance, some focusing on its emancipatory
potential over bureaucratic planning control, others perceiving it as the increase of neoliberal
domination of selected interests in planning.
However, less attention has been paid to the empirical conditions of the transformation of
governance. Since administrative reforms rarely affect all of the adjoining practices and institu-
tional conditions, conflicting systems and rationalities appear. The public sector organizations
are differentiated and do not represent a single and unified will. Besides defining the gov-
ernance paradigm and its implications to planning at the theoretical level, there is a pressing
need to identify and develop conceptual tools for the empirical analysis of governance in its
different institutional contexts – otherwise governance would become a mere buzzword in
planning theories. This view should also include a more profound understanding of the nature
of institutions, conditioning our governmental bodies and partnerships and being inclined to
path-dependent development. What follows is that proper attention should also be paid to the
institutional rootedness of ‘government’ and its ‘resilience’ in the governance reforms. Instead
of a neat paradigm shift from government to governance we are dealing with institutional
ambiguity of blurred responsibilities, mixed roles and unclear accountabilities of different actors
that have become involved in different networks, partnerships and agreements, while still being
expected to obey the rules and legitimacy-ensuring procedures of the government (e.g. Hajer,
2009; Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010).
Moreover, the institutional level is not to be considered as a mere hindrance to governance
reforms, but as a necessary provider of continuity in such reforms. In the form of legally based
normative rules or norms it enables action in conditions of uncertainty. The normative rules
establish the codes of behaviour that enable people to orientate to each other with expectations
of mutual reliability (Van Rijswick & Salet, 2012). On such orientations the governance net-
works ultimately rest, too.
Regarding planning, this all means that ‘soft’ spatial planning should not be perceived, nor
aspired, as decoupled from ‘hard’ land-use planning, however emancipatory or neoliberal it
could be. How do – and how should – soft and hard planning mix in different institutional
contexts, to enable co-productive capacity without jeopardizing legitimacy, is a highly relevant,
but a largely unresearched question. As remarked by Faludi (2015, 15), “the issue . . . is whether
there is soft democratic legitimacy”. Indeed, when concentrating only on soft forms of planning,
the developers of strategic spatial planning have not been broadminded enough to address the
strategic mindset needed in bridging soft and hard planning.

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 The Governance of Planning

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 20
NEW INSTITUTIONALISM
AND PLANNING THEORY
André Sorensen

New Institutionalism (NI) has been an influential project in social science theory for over 40
years, with major impacts on disciplines as diverse as political science, sociology, economics, and
geography. A number of these ideas have been taken up in planning theory, but this work is still
at a relatively early stage with much still to be done. This chapter reviews the main currents in
new institutionalist thought, outlines several ways in which these ideas have been developed in
planning theory, and points to some paths forward.
It seems obvious that a robust theorization of institutions is important to planning theory,
as institutions and institutional design are central to the planning project of creating better,
more just, more liveable, and more sustainable cities. Cities are densely institutionalized spaces,
with multifaceted institutions shaping everything from the regulation of sidewalks to concep-
tions of good neighborhoods to the legal structure of property. Planners have been the authors
of many institutions designed to manage processes of urban change, from land-use zoning to
infrastructure building and management systems. The challenge facing efforts to develop an
institutionalist approach in planning theory is that the various branches of institutional theory
contradict each other, combined with an extraordinary lack of attention by mainstream NI
theorists to issues specific to cities, space, and urban planning.
Significantly, NI is not a single coherent body of thought, and in recent years new branches
have proliferated. Hall and Taylor (1996) identified three main branches, Peters (1999) identified
seven, and Lowndes and Roberts (2013) distinguish nine. Still, since Hall and Taylor’s seminal
paper of 1996, a division into three main branches of NI has been widely followed: sociological
(or normative) institutionalism (SI) arising in part from organizational analysis in sociology; and
historical institutionalism (HI) and rational choice institutionalism (RI) emerging within political
science. These draw on new institutional economics (NIE), from which many concepts are bor-
rowed. More recently feminist institutionalism and discursive (or constructivist) institutionalism
(DI) which is treated here as a variant of HI, have rapidly growing literatures of their own. Each
branch includes multiple competing and sometimes contradictory ideas, with significant overlaps
and ambiguous borders, and some planning theories draw on multiple branches.
This proliferation of institutionalisms has generated vigorous debates over key issues. In
addition to defining ‘institutions’ differently, each has its own interpretation of the relation-
ships between institutions and behavior, conceptions of structure/agency issues and of power,
and theories of institutional change. This diversity makes a review of the impacts of these ideas

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on planning theory challenging, as varied institutionalisms have been taken up by planning

theorists, and the several branches of the family have seldom been on good speaking terms.
Competing institutionalisms are rooted in different social ontologies, generate alternative con-
ceptions of the roles institutions play in social processes, and suggest different research questions.
While RI draws on neoclassical economic models of rational actor behavior, SI and HI focus
on the social construction of knowledge, power, and rules. Although attempts have been made
to bring the various approaches together under a single umbrella (Hall and Taylor 1996; Thelen
1999; Lowndes and Roberts 2013), others reject those attempts as pointless, or worse, arguing
that the neoclassical economics ontology and methodological individualism of RI approaches
are incompatible with those of HI and SI (Hay and Wincott 1998; Healey 2006a). While I agree
that it makes little sense to attempt to fuse the various NI approaches into a single theory, I argue
that we cannot simply ignore RI, as this approach has had a major impact on planning theory.
The first part of this chapter introduces core concepts and outlines major areas of agree-
ment and disagreement between the main new institutionalisms. The second section provides
a concise introduction to each of the three major branches of new institutionalist thinking, and
outlines the major ways that these have been incorporated into planning theory. The third part
suggests an institutionalist approach to planning theory that draws primarily on HI, as this is the
most notable gap in the existing literature.

Core Concepts in NI
The ‘new’ institutionalism has been around for almost half a century, so it is new only relative
to the ‘old’ institutionalism in political science that focused primarily on the formal institutions
of public administration, and their arrangements, structure, and functioning in comparative
perspective. The old institutionalism was criticized as being largely descriptive, without any
compelling theoretical framing (March and Olson 1984; Hall and Taylor 1996). NI has grown,
since the 1970s, out of attempts, particularly in political science and organizational sociology, to
understand the roles that institutions play in social and political life. The fundamental premise
of NI is that ‘institutions matter’ in social and political processes, and require careful theoriza-
tion to understand how they matter, and how they develop and change over time (March and
Olsen 1984).
All NIs include a much wider range of phenomena – including formal rules, shared norms
and understandings, and standard operating practices – in their definition of institutions than did
the old institutionalism. All reject the equation of ‘institution’ with organizations, or particular
government agencies such as hospitals and prisons, and define institutions instead as sets of rules
and shared understandings that shape action. All share the premise that “political behavior and
political outcomes are best understood by studying the rules and practices that characterize
institutions” (Lowndes and Roberts 2013: 7), but each branch defines institutions differently.
Definitions of ‘institutions’ vary greatly, but all share a number of elements: First, institu-
tions are sets of formal and informal rules that shape behavior, that have developed in different
societies through specific historical processes. North’s definition of institutions as the formal and
informal “rules of the game . . . the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction”
(North 1990: 3) is widely agreed, but is particularly associated with RI. Sociological institu-
tionalists define institutions broadly, including “not just formal rules, procedures or norms, but
the symbol systems, cognitive scripts, and moral templates that provide the ‘frames of meaning’
guiding human action” (Hall and Taylor 1996: 947). Most historical institutionalists define insti-
tutions more narrowly as “the formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions
embedded in the organizational structure of the polity or political economy” (Hall and Taylor

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 André Sorensen

1996: 938). This approach excludes ‘culture’ and links institutions more closely with specific
organizational settings and enforceable rules (see Sorensen 2015a).
All institutionalisms attempt to explain the ways in which institutions shape behavior, the
ways in which institutional genesis and change occur, and the relationship between structure
and agency, but they approach these questions differently. RI sees individuals as rational actors
who act to maximize their self-interest. In this view, groups create institutions to overcome col-
lective action problems, to ensure greater certainty, and to reduce risks. Such institutions shape
behavior directly, by creating enforceable rules and imposing costs or sanctions on those who
do not conform. SI frames institutions as deeply embedded norms and shared understandings
that affect the way individuals understand and interpret different situations, and shape the range
of actions that seem appropriate or even conceivable in each case. HI conceives institutions
to evolve historically through political conflicts and compromises, and to shape action both
by imposing enforceable rules and by shaping the political economy of power relations, social
preferences and interpretations, and the rewards and opportunities experienced by actors in a
given setting.
A second major difference between institutionalisms is in conceptions of institutional origins
and change processes. For RI, institutions are deliberate creations of groups of rational actors,
which over time are subject to processes of creative destruction through which (in successful
societies) effective institutions persist, while less efficient solutions are weeded out by market
processes. In contrast, the ‘symbol systems, cognitive scripts, and moral templates’ of SI are not
deliberate creations, but are shared understandings that evolve slowly over time (Roland 2004),
sometimes as a result of deliberate governance innovations, as discussed below. Initially, the
focus of HI on path dependence led to conceptions of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in which insti-
tutions originate primarily during critical junctures of major institutional change, in response
to exogenous pressures. In between critical junctures, institutions were understood to change
less, and to follow developmental pathways of incremental change. More recently, HI theorists
see processes of endogenous and evolutionary change as being equally important in explaining
institutional change, and focus on the factors that structure such change (Mahoney and Thelen
2010)(also see Chapter 18 on Co-evolutionary Planning Theory in this volume).
A third major distinction between institutionalisms is in approaches to the role of power in
institution creation and change, and the role of institutions in reinforcing or subverting exist-
ing power imbalances. For HI, institutions are seen to have significant roles in the distribution
of scarce resources. As Mahoney puts it, institutions are “distributional instruments that allo-
cate resources unevenly and thereby help constitute asymmetrical collective actors” (2010: 15).
Institutions that benefit or disadvantage groups of individuals in particular ways will tend to
shape the perceived self-interest of those groups, and might encourage them to identify as a
group for purposes of collective action. Political power is thus reinforced by the fundamentally
distributive character of institutions. Concepts of power are not as central for sociological insti-
tutionalists. While recognizing systemic power and the pervasive impacts of powerful actors,
institutions such as norms and shared understandings are usually conceived as operating beyond
the scale of individual actors or groups, although in some situations relatively powerless groups
can also generate and articulate new ideas and visions for shared spaces through local collabora-
tive action (Healey 2006b). For RI the significance of political power is diminished by the fact
that institutions are seen as coordinating devices that generate mutual benefits by facilitating
cooperation and overcoming collective action problems. The basic assumption is voluntary
exchange among rational individuals, so if a particular institution does not benefit an actor,
they can opt out or develop an alternative, competing institution. Moe (2006) argues that even
though a number of RI theorists have investigated power, it remains peripheral to the theory.

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Table 20.1 Key approaches of the three main branches

Rational Choice Sociological Institutionalism Historical Institutionalism

Institutionalism

Origins Institutional economics, Organization theory in Political science and

rational choice sociology comparative historical
political science social science
Definition of The formal and “not just formal rules, “the formal or informal
institutions informal “rules of the procedures or norms, procedures, routines,
game . . . the humanly but the symbol systems, norms and conventions
devised constraints cognitive scripts, and embedded in the
that shape human moral templates that organizational structure
interaction” provide the ‘frames of the polity or political
(North 1990: 3) of meaning’ guiding economy” (Hall and
human action.” (Hall Taylor 1996: 938)
and Taylor 1996: 947)
Main Coordinating effects, Shared understandings Distributional instruments
characteristic providing certainty, that shape action, and that regulate social and
of institutions information, and imagination political processes
credible commitment
Models of Institutions change Institutions change Punctuated equilibrium
institutional primarily in response slowly, as larger models of critical
change to market forces, as cultural and cognitive junctures and
rational actors adjust systems evolve developmental
behavior, groups incrementally pathways, and recent
create institutions to concepts of structured
overcome collective processes of endogenous
action problems change
Conceptions of Individual actors are Social and cultural Institutions generated
structure and self-interested agents, contexts and shared historically through
agency who sometimes devise understandings provide political conflicts
collective rules to settings for and shape provide settings for and
ensure cooperation agency shape agency
Analysis of Power is not a major As institutions are so Power is central to the
power focus of RI, which broadly defined, and analysis of institution
tends to see institutions change slowly, SI is formation and change.
as generating mutual less focused on overt Institutions have major
benefits by facilitating political power than distributional impacts,
cooperation and HI, and pays more so actors have incentives
overcoming collective attention to systemic to mobilize to shape
action problems and hegemonic power institutions

All institutionalisms provide valuable insights into the relationship between structure and
agency in shaping processes of social and political change. Institutions shape agents’ capacity to
make a difference in the short term, and to transform institutions and eventually structures in the
longer term, where structures are social properties that cannot be changed by individual agents
within particular periods (Moulaert and Jessop 2006). Institutions mediate between structure
and agency by providing sets of rules and norms that both constrain and enable agency (Giddens
1984). Constraints function both through formal and informal norms, and through the exercise
of power and coercion. Institutions enable agency by establishing legitimate processes and ideas

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 André Sorensen

with which to engage in social and political action. Actions to challenge institutions are impor-
tant political moments that are highly likely to be contested, as discussed below.

The Three Major Branches

RI is one of two major strands of new institutionalist thinking originating in political science
(for major reviews see Shepsle 1989; Hall and Taylor 1996; Immergut 1998; Weingast 2002;
Lowndes and Roberts 2013). RI has its origins in the rational choice school of political science
that has been prominent particularly in the U.S. since the 1960s as part of attempts to develop a
quantitative basis for political science. RI draws on the toolkit of neoclassical economics, game
theory, and equilibrium theory assumptions about agent preferences and profit maximizing
behaviors, but also challenges neoclassical economics by focusing on the institutional settings
within which such processes take place (Riker 1980; Shepsle and Weingast 1987).
Most accept North’s (1990: 3) definition of institutions as “the rules of the game in a society
or, more formally, . . . the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction.” Some
institutions are deliberately created, such as constitutions, and some evolve as the norms and
“standard operating practices” of particular settings. North distinguished between three major
types of institutions: formal rules, informal constraints, and enforcement mechanisms, and showed
convincingly that such institutions are major determinants of long-run economic performance.
A major focus of RI is to develop models of individual political motivation and action that
can be aggregated to understand the actions of political actors at larger scales (Riker 1980; Shepsle
and Weingast 1987). As Weingast put it, the major questions posed by RI concern “the effects of
institutions; why institutions are necessary at all; and the endogenous choice of particular institu-
tions” (Weingast 2002: 660). RI draws on NIE, and economic theories of the firm initiated by
Coase in the 1930s, particularly his seminal insight that even though the price system of markets
provides valuable information and coordination functions, using it entails significant costs of nego-
tiation, making contracts, and enforcing compliance, known as transaction costs (Coase 1937).
Coase suggested that firms exist largely because they are able to reduce transaction costs by using
non-market coordinating mechanisms within firms, and that this should produce an optimum
of planning, as in competitive markets firms will survive only if they perform these coordinating
functions at lower costs than would exist in competitive markets (Coase 2008: 34). In its focus on
transaction costs, NIE critiques neoclassical economics, which ignores these issues almost entirely.
Transaction-cost economics therefore assumes that where the costs of carrying out and
enforcing transactions are high, institutions can lower those costs, either by providing more
certainty, reduced risks, and better information, or by internalizing transactions costs within a
firm (Williamson 1985). The work of Coase and Williamson is foundational for NIE, as was
North’s work on the role of institutions in economic development, and Ostrom’s (1990) work
on institutions developed to manage small and medium sized common pool resources, such as
common grazing lands, fisheries, or irrigation systems. Ostrom showed that institutions allow
groups to avoid tragedies of overexploitation of commons, that there is enormous variety of
such institutions, and that many have been enduring.
RI theories have been influential in planning theory, particularly in the application of
transaction-cost theories to land-use planning. Early efforts challenged the standard welfare
economics arguments for public planning based on market failures, suggesting that transac-
tions costs theory offers greater precision and insight (Alexander 1992, 2001; Lai 1994, 1997;
Webster 1998). This work largely supported public planning interventions based on the benefits
of increased certainty and reduced transactions costs, while also pointing to the possibility that

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these benefits might be more efficiently achieved through private planning. Later work pushed
these ideas further, arguing that the rapid global spread of private communities was clear evi-
dence that private planning could and did substitute for public planning, and that part of the
advantage of such communities is reduced transactions costs, and greater variety of institutional
structure and public goods than provided by local governments (Webster 2002; Webster and
Lai 2003). Alexander (2005) argued that it depends on the specific case whether regulatory plan-
ning can best be supplied either by public regulations, or by private contracts, while Buitelaar
(2004) builds on Alexander (2001) and proposes and tests a method of measuring and compar-
ing transaction costs in different cases. Lai (2005) suggests that the study of NIE in relation to
planning is valuable primarily because it provides research tools that allow empirical testing of
such propositions, particularly in evaluations of the impacts of development control in urban
economics and real estate finance analysis.
A second major debate has been on evolutionary theories of institutional change versus
ideas of institutional design. Moroni has argued that institutions develop in an evolutionary
manner and that existing institutions are the end product of long-term selection processes, and
given complexity and unintended consequences, deliberate institutional design – including most
planning interventions – is likely to fail (Moroni 2010a, 2010b). Others have challenged this
conclusion (see the debate between Alexander (2011) and Moroni (2011)).
RI is often criticized for its reliance on neoclassical microeconomics assumptions that individ-
uals are rational actors who seek to maximize their own benefits, that efficiency is promoted by
competition between options as in market processes, and that political preferences can be under-
stood as aggregations of large numbers of individual decisions, and is accused of methodological
individualism in its focus on modeling individual behavior. As Pierson argues, “micromodel-
ling exercises that are centered on strategic interaction among individuals encourage a highly
restricted field of vision, both in space and time” (2004: 9). He suggests that RI tends to miss
the macro social structure and the role of sequencing of events, as well as most longer-term pro-
cesses that are not captured by the ‘snapshot’ approach of rational choice models. Further, RI
approaches reduce institutions to the aggregation of individual choices and preferences, yet many
institutions, such as nation states, simply cannot be adequately explained in this way (Immergut
1998). Similarly, RI tends to assume that institutions are the result of rational choices, even
though many enduring institutions are actually the unintended by-products of other choices
(Shepsle 1989; Pierson 2004). Pierson suggests that RI is of value, but that its tools should be kept
in proper perspective, whereas Hay and Wincott (1998) argue that RI be rejected altogether.
HI is the second major branch originating in political science. HI has been primarily con-
cerned with large-scale and long-term processes of institutional development and evolution
at the national and international scales (Hall and Taylor 1996; Thelen 1999; Pierson 2004).
Major works include Skocpol’s (1979) comparative analysis of revolution in France, Russia,
and China; processes of institutional change in the US federal government (Skowronek 1982);
studies on international relations (Keohane 1989); Hall’s (1989) comparison of the impact of
changing economic ideas in different countries; Thelen’s (2004) analysis of processes of insti-
tutional change in skills training regimes in Germany; and Mahoney’s (2010) analysis of the
long-term impacts of colonial institutions on post-colonial development.
HI commonly defines institutions as

the formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions embedded in the
organizational structure of the polity or political economy. They can range from the
rules of a constitutional order or the standard operating procedures of a bureaucracy to

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the conventions governing trade union behaviour or bank-firm relations. In general,

historical institutionalists associate institutions with organizations and the rules or con-
ventions promulgated by formal organization.
(Hall and Taylor 1996: 938)

Similarly, Streeck and Thelen (2005: 9) define institutions as “collectively enforced expecta-
tions with respect to the behavior of specific categories of actors or to the performance of
certain activities.” Institutions are sets of rules or shared expectations within particular settings,
a much narrower conception than the symbol systems, cognitive scripts and moral templates
of SI.
A fundamental premise is that institutions emerge from and are embedded in concrete histor-
ical processes (Thelen 1999: 371), and that these are best understood through careful attention
to the timing and sequencing of major institutional change and to the positive feedback effects
that tend to reinforce continuity (Pierson 2004; Mahoney 2000), and ‘process tracing’ is a
prominent research method (Collier 2011).
A major contribution of HI is the concept of path dependence. This has been popularized as
meaning simply that ‘history matters’ or that early events influence later ones. Mahoney (2000)
and Pierson (2000) argued that the concept be more narrowly defined as referring to positive
feedback effects that support institutional continuity. Where self-reinforcing positive feedback
exists, evolutionary change processes will not necessarily lead to efficient outcomes because the
early dominance of a particular approach can mean that it becomes hard to displace. The most
famous example is the QWERTY typewriter keyboard, which was deliberately designed to
slow down the fastest typists so that mechanical typewriters did not jam. Later attempts to intro-
duce more efficient keyboard layouts failed because so many individuals and firms had invested
in the QWERTY design (David 1985).
Where self-reinforcing processes exist, contingent choices early on in a process can have
large and long-lasting consequences, and the timing and sequencing of institutional develop-
ment will be crucial for outcomes (Pierson 2004: 44). Positive feedback generates branching
processes of institutional development, with initial steps along a particular pathway of institu-
tional development leading to further steps along that pathway. Rather than converging on a
single most efficient approach, different organizations, firms or states might continue to follow
different trajectories over extended periods, and inefficient approaches might persist (North
1990; Pierson 2004). The suggestion is not that institutions become frozen and unchanging,
but that contingent choices made early in a process can preclude whole ranges of possibilities,
while enabling others.
North also argued that the sets of complementary institutions, which he referred to as
“interdependent webs of an institutional matrix,” can be mutually reinforcing, and can have
profound impacts on patterns of institutional development. Interlocking sets of institutions can
produce particularly path dependent and enduring institutional regimes, as they have evolved
together, and their effectiveness is interdependent. This insight contributed to the “Varieties
of Capitalism” hypothesis, that such institutional complementarities have encouraged the per-
sistence of different approaches to capitalism in different countries (Hollingsworth and Boyer
1997; Hall and Soskice 2001). As it is not assumed that social processes automatically select for
efficiency, the functionality or dysfunctionality of particular institutional regimes is an empirical
question (North 1990; Hay and Wincott 1998).
This focus on path dependence and enduring institutions initially led to a relatively limited
interest in processes of institutional change, which were explained as resulting primarily from
exogenous shocks, or ‘critical junctures’ that separated longer periods of relative stasis (see Collier

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and Collier 1991; Capoccia and Kelemen 2007). Katznelson (2003: 277) described critical junc-
tures as moments when existing institutional structures fail to provide adequate solutions to
pressing problems, and thus lose legitimacy and their ability to determine action, creating oppor-
tunities for actors to develop new institutions.
While this ‘punctuated equilibrium’ model of change might apply to many social processes,
however, over the last decade a major focus of HI scholarship has been the analysis of endoge-
nous and incremental processes of institutional change (Thelen 2003; Streeck and Thelen 2005;
Mahoney and Thelen 2010). Thelen (2004) argued that most institutional change occurs outside
of critical junctures, in incremental but potentially transformative processes. One focus has been
on the ways existing institutions structure patterns and processes of incremental change. For
example, Hacker (2004) argues that patterns of institutional change are likely to be structured
both by the degree to which institutions allow discretion in policy application, and whether
there are significant barriers to decisive policy revision, for example significant veto points or
veto players (Tsebelis 2000). These two axes combine to generate a typology of four major types
of policy change that are most likely under different circumstances (see Mahoney and Thelen
2010; Sorensen 2011, 2015a).
A core feature of HI is its explicitly power-political approach to understanding institution
formation, continuity, and change, in which actors compete to deploy and revise institutions in
their own interests. Mahoney suggests that while RI sees institutions primarily as “coordinating
devices that solve collective action problems,” HI sees institutions primarily as “distributional
instruments that allocate resources unevenly and thereby help constitute asymmetrical collec-
tive actors” (2010: 15; emphasis in original). Mahoney argues that all institutions privilege some
actors over others, even when they are intended to be neutral. It is because of their uneven
distributional consequences that those who benefit from a particular institution are often willing
to fight to defend it, and the politically powerful are better able to ensure the creation or main-
tenance of institutional arrangements that favor themselves. As he argues: “it is essential to treat
institutions as the objects of contestation among actors . . . Only this perspective can capture the
prominent role that power and conflict play in actual processes of institutional formation and
change” (Mahoney 2010: 16).
This approach suggests that institutions are the outcomes of earlier rounds of political con-
flict, and that institutions do not simply aggregate interests, but constrain certain forms of action
while facilitating others. As Moe (2006) put it “institutions are not only structures of coordina-
tion but may also be structures of coercion, power and domination.” The victors of institutional
conflicts have a powerful incentive to defend their gains, and the resources provided can help
prevent unwanted changes (Lowndes 2009). Hacker and Pierson (2010) provide a persuasive
example in their analysis of the success of the minority of wealthy Americans in shifting the fed-
eral tax burden disproportionately toward the majority of less well off Americans, even though
in theory this should be difficult in a democratic polity.
This engagement of HI scholars with incremental and endogenous institutional change, and
with dynamic and contested processes of institution formation and revision undercuts claims by
discursive/constructivist institutionalists that DI was necessary because HI had failed to explain
institutional change and was stuck in a punctuated equilibrium world-view (see Hay 2006;
Schmidt 2008). Yet as a leading proponent, Hay (2006: 62) argues, if HI is predicated on the
“dynamic interplay of structure and agent . . . then the difference between historical and con-
structivist institutionalisms is at most one of emphasis.” But even if seen as a branch of HI, DI’s
engagement with ideas and discourse in politics, with policy coordination and legitimation,
and with norms as dynamic constructs that evolve in part through legitimating discourses, is a
valuable contribution that has clear applications in planning theory. For example, Taylor (2013)

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frames an institutionalist strategy to move forward from comparative planning cultures debates
through study of the role of institutions in the production and reproduction of planning ideas
and professional norms.
Historical institutionalists have focused primarily on national level political systems, and the
ways in which states shape political processes and possibilities. Although some HI scholars have
analyzed local governance issues (Rast 2007; Dilworth 2009; Lowndes 2009), little attention has
been paid to HI by planning theorists (but see Sorensen 2015a, 2015b, 2016).
Sociological Institutionalism emerged from organizational sociology in the 1970s. Powell
and DiMaggio’s edited collection (1991) was a foundational work that shaped SI by bringing
together reprints of seminal papers with key contemporary work and a number of original chap-
ters that pointed to major new research directions. A defining characteristic of SI is its expansive
definition of institutions as “not just formal rules, procedures or norms, but the symbol systems,
cognitive scripts, and moral templates that provide the ‘frames of meaning’ guiding human
action” (Hall and Taylor 1996: 947). Institutions provide the templates with which individuals
are able to understand and interpret particular situations, and learn to act in socially appropriate
ways. As DiMaggio and Powell put it, “Institutions do not just constrain options: they establish
the very criteria by which people discover their preferences.” (1991: 11). This is a much more
encompassing understanding of the role of institutions than either HI or RI.
For SI, institutions affect behavior not just by creating enforceable rules, but by shaping indi-
viduals’ understanding of the situations they find themselves in. SI downplays the premise of
instrumental, rational action at the core of RI, and develops a conception of meaning and action
based on social norms, conventions, and legitimating myths. Received cognitive systems form the
scaffolding with which people make sense of the world and imbue it with value, meaning, and
emotion (Scott 2014). And as individuals have inherent cognitive limits, institutions aid decision-
making by turning many decisions into streamlined, habitual processes based on received codes.
A major insight was that many of the institutional forms and procedures adopted by mod-
ern organizations are not particularly efficient, and are best explained as attempts to conform
to established norms, and create legitimate ways of working (Meyer and Rowan 1991). This
is described as ‘institutional isomorphism,’ the reproduction of institutional arrangements that
are seen as legitimate because they fit with established templates (DiMaggio and Powell 1983;
Mahoney and Thelen 2010: 5). Similarly, Meyer and Rowan argue that for many complex
organizations, organizational structures and institutional myths are legitimated primarily exter-
nally by congruence with larger social structures, rather than through enhanced efficiency.
Such ‘ceremonial’ structuration promotes the success and survival of organizations by enhancing
confidence and stability within the organization, and by reducing turbulence and conflict with
external organizations (Meyer and Rowan 1991). Conceptions shifted from equating culture
with belief systems and values in collective life toward conceptions of “culture as complex rule-
like structures that constitute resources that can be put to strategic use” (DiMaggio 1997: 265).
For all these reasons, SI usually sees institutions as changing slowly as wider cultural and
normative settings change. Zucker (1991) argued that in highly institutionalized settings cul-
tural persistence is greater, even without direct social controls, because subjects internalize the
myths and expectations of the institution, and change is incremental, occurring primarily as
larger cultural frameworks change. Similarly, Roland (2004) distinguishes between fast and
slow moving institutions, with specific rules being more amenable to fast changes, and broader
cognitive scripts changing more slowly. A more recent contribution is that many institutions
co-evolve in interdependent and complementary ways, with two or more entwined systems
evolving together in mutually shaping and reinforcing ways, as explored in Chapter 18 on
Co-evolutionary Planning Theory in this volume.

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Patsy Healey has undoubtedly been the main interpreter of SI in planning theory, and has
also made significant contributions to SI itself. Healey’s major contribution is a productive
interpretation of Giddens’ (1984) reframing of the structure/agency dualism, integrating it with
communicative planning theory and institutionalism, suggesting that individuals are not simply
constrained by institutions, but also continuously reproduce them, and can therefore act to
change them. As Healey puts it:

We make structural forces, as we are shaped by them. So we ‘have power’ and, …

can work to make changes by changing the rules, changing the flow of resources, and,
most significantly, by changing the way we think about things.
(Healey 1997: 49)

Healey showed brilliantly that the municipal scale is key for collaborative planning processes that
allow the institutionalization of new norms and ideas, because they link to people’s understand-
ing of place. As she argued,

managing our co-existence in shared spaces … becomes an exercise not merely in

consensus-building but in local culture-building, and in creating a public realm. It is an
interactive and discursive effort, through which new understandings and institutional
capacities are built.
(1997: 48)

This work can transform institutions at multiple scales from the smallest to the largest. Healey
developed a social constructivism that sees individuals as actors embedded in particular social
and cultural settings, who are continually learning about how to reproduce and creatively rein-
vent institutional structures. Gualini (2001) similarly focuses on institutionalization processes
through place-based collective action and the development of relationships, ways of working,
and operational rules that generate shared knowledge and practices. Healey extended this core
insight to work on processes of building social capital and institutional capacity through collabo-
rative planning approaches (Healey 1998, 1999), to social innovation in governance (Gonzalez
and Healey 2005; Healey 2006b), and the role of spatial planning and communicative practices
in a revitalization of democratic practice (Healey 2006a, 2013).
Healey frames institutions as particularly relevant to re-imagining planning and place.
Institutions “structure the interactional processes through which preferences and interests are
articulated and decisions made. They are a kind of ‘soft infrastructure’ of the governance of
social life” (Healey 2006a: 64). Institutional innovation is therefore essential to be able to create
governance processes that can contribute positively to transformative change of places.

HI and Planning Theory

Significant contributions to planning theory have been made in both RI and SI, so here the
focus is on the potential of HI, which has had surprisingly little influence. Five HI concepts are
particularly relevant to planning theory: (1) contingent critical junctures of institution forma-
tion; (2) positive feedback to institutional power that in some cases generates path dependence
and branching patterns of institutional development; (3) the unavoidably unequal distributional
effects of institutions that structure political opportunity and mobilization; (4) structured pro-
cesses of incremental institutional change that privilege certain actors and pathways over others;
and (5) the institutional complementarities and co-evolution processes that constitute and help

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 André Sorensen

maintain great variation among urban planning systems (see Sorensen 2015a). HI provides a
coherent framework for analyzing processes of institutional development and change.
In HI perspective, urban planning systems can be understood as multifaceted sets of institu-
tions that regulate the production, use, and change of urban space. These sets of institutions
developed over extended periods, both during major ‘critical junctures’ of institutional innova-
tion such as the development of modern planning in response to the 19th-century urban crisis,
and through longer periods of incremental and evolutionary change. Because institutions are
unequal in their distributive impacts, providing greater benefits to some actors than others, insti-
tutional change is contested, and those who benefit from particular institutions can be expected
to try to prevent changes that weaken their position, while those who benefit less are more
likely to press for change. HI studies the political dynamics of processes of institution formation
and incremental change, without assuming that such dynamics can be ‘read off’ the institutions
themselves, as unintended consequences are common.
Planning institutions have specific origins, genealogies, characteristics, and change processes
that are key to understanding how planning systems work in practice, and how they change over
time. Because the timing and sequencing of contingent moments of institutional change matter,
and self-reinforcing path dependent processes are common, there are often large and enduring
differences in planning institutions between jurisdictions. These include varied ways in which
institutions structure urban space, actors can participate in urban change processes, and divergent
qualities of the places produced. Urban planning institutions are the product and legacy of recurring
political conflict. The exercise of power at contingent points of institutional change is important,
but so are ongoing contests over the implementation and enforcement of rules on the ground. HI
approaches provide valuable tools for comparison and analysis of different developmental pathways
that help to explain the evolutionary trajectories and diversity of planning systems.
HI, therefore, provides valuable tools for comparative planning studies, which must be a
central element of planning theory investigations that ask questions like: What can planning
achieve? How do political dynamics affect the differentiation of planning approaches in different
places? How have the circumstances and timing of the development of planning institutions in
different jurisdictions affected approaches? How have governance institutions enabled particular
institutional development trajectories in different jurisdictions? How can we explain profoundly
varied and enduring planning institutions, and why is there such great variation in the distribu-
tional impacts of planning in different jurisdictions? How do positive feedback effects reinforce
some institutional change trajectories more than others? What aspects of planning systems are
open to reform, and why is institutional design so hard?
A more robust comparative theorization of the origins and developmental pathways of mod-
ern planning systems from an HI perspective promises insights into the origins and dynamics of
fundamental differences in urban governance between jurisdictions, and the different capacities
and approaches in different countries. Comparative analysis of particular urban institutions in
different jurisdictions will be one approach to a reconceptualization and reframing of planning
theory toward a focus on the institutional dynamics of planning evolution, and the role of
power in institutional change.

Acknowledgments
The author is grateful for valuable comments on an earlier draft by the editors, and by John
Friedmann, Patsy Healey, and Zack Taylor. Support for the research in this chapter was pro-
vided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada fund number 491073.

260
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 21
CONFLICT AND AGONISM
John Pløger

Introduction
Planning is permanent conflict. Conflict is partly a matter of how planning institutions are
1

supposed to act according to regulations, but also planning institutions’ own ideas about power,
consensus and democracy (Forester 1989, Hillier 2007, Sandercock 2003).
Agonism is a critical mode of thinking about conflict and conflictual consensus. Chantal
Mouffe has been a key figure in planning theory in this endeavour (e.g. 2005, 2013), and her
political philosophy has transfused into studies on how to take better care of disagreements and
differences in planning (e.g. Barnett & Bridge 2013, Bond 2011, Bäcklund & Mäntysalo 2010,
Innes & Booher 2014, van Leeuwen 2014).
This chapter explores how planning praxis can work with conflict as agonistic conflict; what
challenges does this give planning; positioned, as it is, within and relying on political legitimacy,
consensus processes, and political decisions? A key question is: how can planning work with
conflict as dissensus?
The ‘how’ of transforming the philosophy of agonism into a mode of planning involves planning’s
governmentality. The governmentality of late modern planning can be described as a politicised
endeavour to improve the efficiency and governing capacity of politics. Its public raison d’être is
democratic communication on the basis of knowledge, analysis and deliberation with interests.2
The chapter first outlines three threads on agonism within planning theory and, second, gives
a brief introduction to the philosophy of agonism. Third, the challenges to planning theory
given by the political philosophy on agonism from Chantal Mouffe are discussed, introducing
her key concepts hegemony and ‘war of position’. Using Jacques Rancière, the next section
introduces dissensus as a challenge to Mouffe’s agonism and to planning. The chapter will end
by discussing possible ways to work productively with agonism as ‘a permanent provocation’
(Michel Foucault) and often representing dissensus to institutionalism and planning politics. The
target is how can planning praxis acknowledge contestation and inadmissible difference as key
forces of a multiverse democracy; a democracy of many interpretations.

Critical Planning Theory – Now

It is possible to identify three threads on agonism within planning theory. The reformist approach
focuses on improving public planning democratically by participation: how public interests can

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get more influence, where on the timeline and on what issues. The goal is a strong consensus
among participants in an attempt to tame time-consuming conflict. Here, studies, for instance,
focus on planners as mediators, facilitators and catalysts within the planning process (e.g. Laws
& Forester 2007, Innes & Booher 2010).
The procedural approach is a departure from the legal ground and political legitimacy framing
planning. This approach follows ideas of legitimate compromises, negotiation and deliberation
as the main tools of planners. The public planning process is seen as a collaborative and commu-
nicative process of ‘trading’ between interests, and one main goal is to improve communication
with weak voices within the legal planning process (e.g. Mäntysalo, Balducci & Kangasoja 2011).
The third thread could be called neo-radical planning with its roots in Healey’s (2006) reflexive
communication and relational planning, but owing its agonistic perspective to Hillier’s (2002,
2007) writings on agonism, post-representational theory and strategic navigation (2011). Seeing
planning as contingency, affect, and becoming has provided a different path for considering
conflict as productive. Agonistic strife not only contests endeavours to make planning more
efficient and rational, and contests communicative and pragmatic planning theory on how to
achieve consensus, but also challenges the ‘how’ of making decisions.
The tension between the positions is far from gone. It is claimed it is time to ‘advance the
dialogue’ between consensus and conflict thinking (Innes & Booher 2014), and to find better
ways of practising for instance by using facilitators (Laws & Forester 2007). Innes, Booher and
Forester want to create a dialogue that builds on shared meanings of the problems and a shared
understanding of the problems. They look for a communicative form and a rationality of argu-
ing that builds on openness, sincerity, trust, and honesty (‘everything is on the table’), and a
process that can reflect on sources of ‘differences’ among the interests involved (Innes & Booher
2014: 205). To respect that ‘we can never agree’ – to ‘understand they [planners and the public]
live in two worlds, each with different rules’ (p. 205) – is vital. It is vital to keep in mind that
every interest and suggestion can be questioned (‘genuinely addresses’) (p. 205), which means
‘solutions are never permanent’ and need to be seen as a ‘work in progress’ and ‘a solution is for
now’ (p. 206). It is the facilitators’ or mediators’ task to find meeting points.
Innes and Booher are admitted consensualists who want to build ‘discourse coalitions’ (p. 207)
through consensus or compromises, while Mouffe steadily adds that ‘consensus is always accom-
panied by dissent’ (2005: 31).
Others have looked at how to turn conflict into consensus and agonism into collaborative
consensus-making processes. One of the most inventive is what we might call a ‘procedural
agonism’, which is a matter of how to institutionalise agonism within consensus politics
(e.g. Mäntysalo, Saglie & Cars 2011). Planning has to treat conflicts in an agonistic manner,
but in a way that makes it possible to domesticate critics through the work of adversaries. An
adversarial process ‘entails agonistic tolerance of tensions and disagreements’ (p. 2121) as a way
to cope with ‘tensions between different logics’ (p. 2120), and thus paradoxes of every kind
should be ‘continuously discussed and coped with without being resolved for good’ (p. 2121).
Bäcklund and Mäntysalo (2010) in a Finnish study show how there is ambiguity within cities
on how to allow citizens’ participation a stronger position within planning. They conclude that
we need to look at the institutional governing of planning.3 Agonism is understood as a mode of
planning that has an ‘openness to new ideas and complementary views’ (p. 347), and public plan-
ning should be about negotiation (‘a trading zone’) based on ‘tolerance and respect between the
adversaries’ (Mäntysalo et al. 2011a: 268). Bond (2011), too, claims if communicative planning
wants ‘reciprocity’ between participants, it requires ‘an engagement with disagreement and con-
flict’, and a particular focus on revealing and exploring the use or misuse of the ‘undecidability’
that underpins an agonistic space (p. 179).

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The post-structuralists have pointed to ‘planning as becoming’ as a way to respect difference

and disagreement within a horizon of the ineradicability of antagonistic conflicts. Agonistic
planning might be planning as becoming if engaging with a process that ‘promotes on-going
trust and buy-in for contested site-specific decisions and strategic directions’ (Mouat, Legacy &
March 2013: 150). The challenge is to have actors see conflict as ongoing and to give space to
the challenge from critique, contestation and the incoming of new ideas.
Many cities around the world prefer a management approach to conflict rather than engag-
ing with critique, and they see consensus-based decisions as one aspect of this management. A
case study from St Kilda in Melbourne shows how an agonistic approach toward ‘problems’ –
including what is usually left out: the question of identities, adversaries’ treatment of time,
space and place, and the treatment of conflict – gives potential for solving ‘wicked problems’
within the idea of collaborative planning. However, the potential productive strife in this case
lost ‘against councilors ultimately decided to the outcome’ (Moat, Legacy & March 2013: 164).
Jean Hillier (2002) claims planning has to live with both consensus and agonistic forces at
play, which might force planning to learn to live with ‘incompleteness, inconsistencies, con-
tradictions’ (p. 269) and ‘aporetic’ decisions (p. 291). She follows Mouffe and says it is about
‘domesticating’ antagonism to agonism (p. 15) by realising that ‘there can always be a reasonable
dissent’ (p. 256). The balance between opponents – ‘conflictual consensus’ (Mouffe), ‘agonis-
tic respect’ (Connolly) – can be reconciled according to the ‘there is no right answer’ or one
understanding of issues (p. 269), which opens up for the praxis of provisional agreements rather
than a belief in final decisions.
Hillier may be read as pre-empting later attempts to see planning as a ‘trade-off’ or trading
zone (Mäntysalo et al. 2011a), but she takes an agonistic turn and points to the need to look at
the decision itself as ‘incumbent’ to planners, but in a manner that is aporetic (Hillier 2002: 279).
These studies invite us to keep an interest in critical thresholds such as how to make a deci-
sion ‘open’ to a conflictual consensus, how to respect inconceivable disagreements, how to
move from conflictual consensus to dissensus. The crucial question is how is it possible to govern
through planning by means other than a hierarchical decisional system? Could making a tem-
porary relation between negotiation and dissensus the driving force of planning be an answer?
It is here we see the tension between Chantal Mouffe’s and Jacques Rancière’s elaboration
of dissensus against consensus at its core. If the discussion of consensus–dissensus departs from
agonism as contestation, they are both challenged by the ‘how’ of practice. If contestation is
built into a system, an institutionalisation of planning building on final decisions, it becomes an
exclusion of ‘the other’ and a closure of ineradicable difference or dissensus. How can difference
be kept alive within a politicised planning apparatus?

The Agon of Agonism

The Greek demos (democracy) is the public agon or meeting in the agora. The demos builds on
the full citizenry of free expression and agonistic respect that requires full openness and a full
civil dialogue on politics. Foucault calls the agonistic game typical for Greek life, and ‘the parrhe-
sia’ (speaking openly and frankly) is the will to set one’s discourse at risk. You have to persuade,
but might experience ‘the discourse of others . . . may prevail over your discourse’ (Foucault
2010: 105). A demos builds on contestation and the possible articulation of an opposition of
something different and incommensurable to one’s own discourses and values.
The agon is the core of democracy. Contestation and competition in politics are derived from
the will to power (Nietzsche 1967: §§751–753) and this will is constituted by the resistance
toward something (e.g. values). The will to power is a will to change society, the city, or life.

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The agonistic ‘attitude’ thus comes from a self that is ‘constituted in and through what it opposes
and what opposes it’ (Hatap 2002: 135).
Democracy as demos is never a meeting among equals, but the balancing of power relations.
Democracy is an unequal distribution of legal or legitimate power, for instance, when ‘a right-
holder has a claim against some treatment by others or for some provision that might be denied by
others’ (Hatap 2002: 143). Power in itself has to be permanently addressed.
The agon is more than a matter of adversaries (Mouffe) and contestation (Connolly). It more
precisely refers to a ‘critical “encounter”, a “confrontation”’, because ‘only in Auseinandersetzung
does a productive interpretation arise’ (Martin Heidegger, here Milchman & Rosenberg 2003: 6).
This Auseinandersetzung – literally the ‘setting-apart-of-each-other’ (Heidegger 2014: 146) – is
to Heidegger a strife as a confrontation that for ‘all (that comes to presence) is the sire (who lets
emerge),4 but (also) for all the preservers that holds sway’ (p. 65). The ‘agonal moment’ which
Heidegger refers to as Polemos (from Heraclitus) means, confrontation as strife. Strife ‘allows what
essentially unfolds to step apart from each other in opposition’, and it is in ‘con-frontation [the]
world comes to be’ (p. 67). The struggle ‘projects and develops of the un-heard of, the hitherto
un-said and un-thought’ (p. 68), and to Heidegger it is this ‘becoming-a-world’ that is ‘authentic
history’ (p. 68). Heidegger, here, claims the conflicting struggle – or in Heidegger’s words, ‘the
strife of the striving’ (p. 125) – is a confrontation between ineradicable differences. The struggle
is required, because ‘the other’ or ‘otherness’ is a way to find out ‘what is one’s own’.
The Auseinandersetzsung is thus, according to Heidegger, an ‘engagement in which differences
appear sharpened, in which question are posed, not answered’ (Milch & Rosenserg 2003: 10). It is
more than adversarial and contested, it is a ‘critical encounter’ (p. 6) as a ‘confrontational setting-
asunder (Auseinandersetzung) (of Being)’ that lets ‘gods and human beings step forth in their Being’
(p. 160) and otherness. Such a meeting is a clash between differences transformed into ‘a thought-
ful confrontation of minds at odds’ (Charles Scott, cited in Milchman & Rosenberg 2003: 10).
The confrontation implies contestation, but as a form of ‘problematisation’ (Foucault 1986:
388–389); the ‘problematizing experience and thinking’ of both oneself and others (Milchman
& Rosenberg 2003: 11).

Conflict, Consensus, Hegemony, Politics –

‘The Ineradicable Antagonism’ and the ‘War of Position’
The agonism of Chantal Mouffe’s political philosophy highlights irreducible difference, or as she
describes it, ‘the ineradicability of antagonism’ (Mouffe 2013: 11).5 The discussion of agonism,
to her, places too much emphasis on persuasion, and she is also critical of any idea of agonism as
contestation for at least one reason: contestation implies a possible reconciliation, but antagonism
and hegemonic order are ineradicable to politics (p. 14). This means, on the one hand, we can
never find the perfect moment for a just decision (there will always be antagonism toward it)
and, on the other hand, every decision is only a temporary hegemony to be challenged.
The key element to working with this antagonism–agonism relation is that of ‘adversary’.
These are opponents that disagree, but ‘see themselves belonging to the same political associa-
tion, as sharing a common symbolic space within which the conflict takes place’ (Mouffe 2005:
20). It is a shared symbolic space that builds on a ‘common allegiance to the democratic principles
of “liberty and equality for all”, while disagreeing in their interpretation’ (Mouffe 2013: 7). The
‘presence of antagonism is not eliminated but “sublimated” so to speak’ (Mouffe 2005: 21). Such
agonism is a form of meeting that ends up in a ‘conflictual consensus’: a recognition that we
disagree but share a symbolic space that secures this disagreement as legitimate, but constitutive,
to the continuing war of position within politics (Mouffe 2013: x, xii).

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Power is crucial to Mouffe’s way of political thinking. She claims, following Antonio
Gramsci, (discursive) hegemony is necessary to be able to confront the political establishment
of society, and the war of position is necessary to form the hegemony of politics. The war of
position is about ‘winning decisive positions’ and requires an ‘interventionist’ government that
is strong enough to secure ‘the “impossibility” of internal disintegration implying control of
every kind of political, administrative etc., reinforcement of the hegemonic “position” of the
dominant group’ (Gramsci 1999: 495). The position once won is ‘decisive finitely’ (p. 495).
Mouffe is, however, clear that hegemony is not won forever, but always contested. Gramsci
writes, ‘the ruler has to muster all his resources to demonstrate how seriously he takes his adver-
sary’ (1999: 495), meaning positions have to have a discursive and praxis legitimacy too. The idea
of war of position is Gramsci’s way of thinking about the position of civil society toward ‘the long
development of democratic inroads on the power of capital’ (Egan 2013: 535). This political issue
is key to make strategies and tactics toward positions or actors with agendas, values, and interests.
When Mouffe says, ‘we cannot escape the moment of decision’ and this will make ‘a space
of inclusion/exclusion’ (2014: 153), then it is planning’s task to make this space for decision for
politicians on planning issues. Planning has to set the line of inclusion/exclusion of arguments
according to law and regulations. It is the planner’s discursive praxis (persuasion, deliberation,
arguments) and dispositive techniques (such as legislations and the planning and building act)
that must do the work. The public, on the other hand, only has the power of critique and
counter-arguments against discourses, arguments and figures, and their interpretation against
planning as a governing apparatus. The public’s war of position must become politics or opposi-
tional political work. Planning itself might be an entry to politics, but the struggle for hegemony
and the war of position are a matter of organised and ordered politics.
To Mouffe, the opponent stands as a ‘competitor’ (2013: 8). Not all kinds of antagonism or
agonism are legitimate, particularly not those questioning or threatening democracy. On the
other hand, societies need a discursive and political hegemony to govern from and the need
for closure of ineradicable disagreements. This is why ideas of contestation, to Mouffe, are an
impasse. An opposition needs ‘hegemonic articulations’ as a ‘necessity not only of challenging
what exist but also of constructing new articulations and new institutions’ (p. 11). Contestation,
to Mouffe, is not a change of hegemony, just a challenge, and will only ‘disrupt the solid position-
alities of identity’ (p. 12). Agonism as streiten (strife) (p. 11) and contestation ignores the necessary
war of position, and the need to make new hegemonic discourses and institutionalise them.
Planning is part of what Mouffe terms ‘politics’ as part of ‘the ensemble of practices and
institutions whose aim is to organize human co-existence’ (2013: xii). An agonistic planning
democracy means an openness to plurality and disagreement, and antagonism means any con-
sensus must be seen as a ‘stabilization of something essentially unstable and chaotic’ (Mouffe
1997: 9) and thus temporary.
Mouffe, back then, in fact saw deconstruction as a form of thinking and analysing that ‘forces
us to keep the democratic contestation alive’ (1997: 9). Her later argument is that we have to
acknowledge ‘the existence of conflicts that cannot have a rational solution’ (Mouffe 2014: 150).
Politics, the institutionalisation of order by political decisions, must respond to antagonism by
aiming for ‘constituting a “we”’ within a context of diversity and conflict (p. 150) ending up with
a ‘shared symbolic space’ and a ‘conflictual consensus accompanied by dissensus’.

War of Position, Hegemony, Agonism – and Planning

It is common to say ‘planning is politics’, but it is how planning is politicised that matters.
Planning is a governing apparatus6 to politics and an apparatus that is supported by certain

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dispositive techniques – planning and building law, regulations, guidelines, an ordered public
planning process, rational planning paradigms – that give the apparatus its disciplinary power to
serve politics.
If one agrees with Mouffe on the impossibility of consensus without dissensus, and if there
is agreement that institutions are needed to govern disagreements, her political philosophy
is important to planning praxis. She wants to mobilise differences created by passion, plural-
ism, desire and dissent, while she also believes that consensus is needed in order to manage
and develop society. Her conflictual consensus is thus to be seen as a both-and argument: the
unavoidability of dissensus toward decisions and the need for moving forward by order and
decisions.
Societies have built ‘a battlefield’ called politics ‘on which hegemonic projects confront
each other, with no possibility of a final reconciliation’ (Mouffe 2014: 151). Conflictual
consensus – ‘divergent interpretations of shared ethico-political principles’ (2013: 23) – is
possible using institutions to ‘institute an order in the context of contingency’ (2014: 151).
However, order is only a ‘temporary and precarious articulation of contingent practices’
(Mouffe 2005: 18) always to be challenged, and hegemony is challenged by ‘the war of posi-
tion’ (Mouffe 2013: 75). This war of position is not just a war on contesting the legitimacy of
common sense or transforming partisans’ consciousness, but also a matter of shaping new institu-
tional hegemonies through a combination of ‘parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles’.
The task is to create synergy effect through ‘chains of equivalences’ between the movements
(pp. 75, 77) in order to create ‘new hegemonic articulations’ (Mouffe 2014: 152) within political
institutions. To Mouffe, an order or a decision is not necessarily ‘just’, but ‘proper’.7

Critical Paths Using Mouffe

Caution is necessary when using Mouffe in planning theory. First, she is talking about politics,
but planning means working from decided plans and has to implement policies. It is, as such, a
politicised praxis. Second, the war of position has a different institutional path to follow within
planning than within politics. Planning is not ‘representative politics’, but a ‘war of position’ and
communication between particular – single or collective – interests. Third, participants cannot,
within the formal planning process, exclude formal or informal politics, the ‘rules of the game’,
or influencing the lines and rules of decision. Fourth, making a planning decision is a political
task that excludes citizens’ influence on final decisions.
Public planning is politically legitimised as a way to avoid endless disagreements and the
process is supposed to prevent political ‘informality’ from flourishing (e.g. corruption, nepotism,
etc.). The position as opponent or ‘adversary’ means planning becomes politically treated as a
way to tame conflicts and disagreements. Within an apparatus guided by law and politics, and
not a debate on values or mutual talks, planning decisions are not seen as conjunctures to work
within, but where a disagreement is eradicated for consensus. Planning should close voids that
can delay or endanger plans.
Accepting Mouffe’s view that a democratic society ‘cannot treat those who put its basic
institutions into question as legitimate adversaries’ (Mouffe 2005: 120), and that ‘legal pluraliza-
tion cannot become the norm without endangering the permanence of the democratic political
association’ (p. 122), the question, then, is what is dissensus to Mouffe? Is it a ‘social fact’ within
a pluriverse society to be tamed by form (order)? Is dissensus not, as Althusser suggests, to ‘think
in the conjuncture’, to acknowledge all circumstances that make ‘an inventory’ (2000: 17–19)?
And is it not then to work from the ‘permanent provocation’ and contestation of modes of
thinking, values, interests, plans and decisions, which Foucault points at?

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Understanding politics as hegemony institutionalised is one of the reasons why Mouffe is hos-
tile to movements that will not ‘build institutions’ or political leaderships. Such ‘basic institutions’
are, however, not a form of governing given a priori or ahistorically. For one thing, even legiti-
mate actors and democratic societies’ basic institutions can be corruptive, suppressing opposition
and the revelation of misuse of power (see how ‘democratic’ societies such as Denmark and the
US treat whistle-blowers and the freedom of speech; see how the EU allows total surveillance of
its citizens because ‘the people’ are said to threaten their basic institutions of bank capital, specula-
tive economy, and politics). Is the institutionalisation of our societies and its apparatus not made
to cover up for contingency by knowing ‘the enemy better than they know themselves’?
In using the words legitimacy, order and adversaries, we should not forget Foucault claim-
ing that ‘the exercise of power consists in guiding the possible outcome’ (Foucault 1986: 221).
Government is ‘the way in which the conduct of individuals or groups must be directed’, and
thus ‘to govern is to govern the possible field of action to others’ (p. 221). Every political and
politicised institution in society is part of this kind of government regime.
Mouffe’s and Gramsci’s ‘war of position’ does not belong to the sphere of civil society, but
that of politics and political institutions. Mouffe may put the question of agonistic politics and
the political on its head instead of on its feet. When Mouffe states ‘every order is the tempo-
rary and precarious articulation of contingent practices’ (2005: 18), politics and planning are
still thought of as a closing of contingency for certainty and permanence. Following Foucault,
planning has to be seen as a set of dispositive techniques (e.g. planning law, legal binding plans)
made to avoid provisionality or preventing political decisions just becoming ‘a resting place’.

Dissensus, the Inadmissible, Politics – and Planning

Politics to Mouffe is to create ‘unity’ facing conflict and diversity, and, to her, politics is ‘the
ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions, which seek to establish a certain order and
organise human co-existence in conditions that are always conflictual’ (2000: 101). She further
states that ‘consensus exists as a temporary result of a provisional hegemony, as a stabilization of
power’ (p. 104) and that an ‘agonistic pluralism’ always includes consensus with an exclusion of
interests, why democracy has to ‘make room for dissent’ (p. 105). Because of this, she is critical
of any belief in ‘rational consensus’ and ‘impartial procedures’, and looks for how to make ‘a
vibrant “agonistic” public sphere of contestation where different hegemonic political projects
can be confronted’ (2005: 3).
To Rancière, agonistic disagreement is what cannot be defined as proper within the hegem-
onic consensus-proper. It is a dissensus in the sensible itself (reason), that the sensible cannot
explain or understand itself. To a consensus-based process, this kind of improper acting is to be
tamed, neutralised or ignored. To agonistic thinking, however, it is a matter of how to save the
content of the improper as a contestation of the proper sensible.
To Rancière ‘“real” politics is the irruptive event’ that challenges politics’ hierarchical order
(Bassett 2014: 887, Rancière 2010: 35). The ‘so-far invisible’ (Bassett 2014: 888) parts of con-
flicts cannot be ‘heard’ by any identity-politics or participatory community-politics, because
‘the invisible’ is what contests the possibility of a legitimate ‘collective’ that can be institutional-
ised. The ‘Occupy movement’ is one such example. They represent a dissensus as inadmissible,
because the movement questions politics ‘as we know it’: the need for leadership and decisional
hierarchies, the need for a ‘programme’. They wanted to remain an ‘insubstantial’ movement
(p. 892) always on the move, always unfinished. Like Rancière, they call for an ‘egalitarian dis-
sent [that] is activated not by existing classes or social groups, but the emerging voices of the
“part of no part”’ (p. 894).

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The challenge to a demos of our time is, for Rancière, to give those who have no legitimate
voice within the sensible a legitimacy and voice. He formulates the task like this, ‘the whole of
those who are nothing, who do not have specific properties allowing them to exercise power’
(2000: 124). As it is now, they are not ‘entitled’ to exercise any form of power, so their way
to be seen is to make a ‘rupture in the order of legitimacy and domination’. This is, according
to Rancière, why these people can only manifest themselves and get power ‘within the act’,
because if the act has a manifestation of a dissensus they might be seen (p. 124).
An act of dissensus ‘creates a fissure in the sensible order, the established framework of
perception, thought and action with the “inadmissible”’ (Rancière 2006: 85). ‘The inadmis-
sible’ is to Rancière a radical concept referring to ‘a specific measure of incommensurables’
(2011a: 12, 2011b) that shapes disjunctions and represents the incommensurable difference
that gives a situation of openness and contingency within politics that it cannot close, because
there is no hegemonic representation. Dissensus thus cannot, according to Rancière, build
a community, because this will be a community of ‘dis-identification’ and not substance.
Dissensus therefore cannot be institutionalised (e.g. politically). To be inadmissible and
incommensurable means to have a position outside, not inside. This is exactly what consen-
sualism rejects; the multiple that stays multiple or stays as ‘a break in the auto-representational
logic of society’ (Rancière 2000: 125).
Consensualists stick to the claim that disagreements have to be institutionalised to obtain
legitimacy. The Occupy movement seems to say, ‘we stay as multiples outside politics and play
our politics on the demos’. This way the movement will question ‘the consensualist logic’, as
Rancière defines it (2000: 126), and this way the movement is indicating that what we might
call ‘the unfinished’ is the only thread to challenge power as consensus hegemony. As we know
from Foucault, politics, governing forces and institutions are afraid of the unfinished, and what
is on the move and has no ‘head to cut’.
If agonistic planning is to be seen as a praxis of change, of being egalitarian, then the critique
from the agonistic positions of Rancière is important. He points at how planning studies need
to problematise the institutionalisation of how power becomes politics (Rancière 2010: 53), and
how institutions create a ruling that legitimises itself by the claim of the necessity of order, but
that it is also de-legitimising itself by not having space for the ‘autos or self’ (p. 52). Democracy
cannot, according to Rancière, ‘consist of a set of institutions’ (p. 54), because democracy itself
has to become political. This is done by ‘blurring and displacing the borders of the political itself’
(p. 54), meaning for instance that planning should always question itself, its legitimacy, its way of
working, its position within the institutional net, and as a democratic process. Mouffe (for many
good reasons) fears political disorder, and admits there is ‘a moment of decision to be confronted’
acknowledging it ‘implies closure’ (2014: 153). Her answer is a ‘collective will’ (p. 157) that can
go into the war of positions and here planning certainly might have a role to play.
Rancière conversely claims distinction, dis-junction, ‘the inexistent’ (that which is not seen,
given words, worded) (2010: 213) and the self (subjectification, particularity) are at the heart
of democracy. We cannot find a principle of democracy or a common ground of equality.
Politically we should, according to Rancière, look to how ‘forms of subjectivation re-configure
the topography of the common’ and this is ‘a matter of composition and not of constitution’
(p. 213). A constitution such as politics can never achieve equality; it is only the compositions
of difference in praxis that can fight for it.
Where Mouffe accepts the act of exclusion within politics as part of making (necessary)
decisions, Rancière focuses on the mode of exclusion of dissensus and how we think about the
‘givens’ such as democracy and equality. Societies exclude what does not fit their hegemonic
mode of thinking: the inexistent, the inadmissible. He wants to see a political that exists as ‘the

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gap in the sensible, of the givens’; not only rupturing the order of legitimacy and domination
but inaugurating ‘a manner of “doing politics” otherwise than politics does’ (Rancière 2011a: 8).
Planning actors face planning ‘focused on control, steering, and management of land-use and
physical change’ (Mouat et al. 2013: 152). Consensus planning, as Mouat, Crystal and March
point out, does not ‘show us the choices made, the alternatives’ (p. 152). Rancière says con-
test and act. Agonism is thus the permanent problematisation of hegemonies, legitimacy and
decisions made by consensus or majority force. Is this to be seen as a claim for contextualism,
sensitive to compositions of arguments and choices, and a temporary resting made from within
what is the here-and-now sensible?

Conflict and Agonism as an Inadmissible – and Planning

The aim of the war of position is to be able to constitute hegemony within proper planning
politics. In fact, it seems to be a war on how to get a position. The difference is here to be seen,
not as something to be excluded, governed, or mastered, but a thread of becoming different
kinds of ‘desires’ (for profit, ‘good life’, investment, community, etc.).
Public planning is a social situation, where participants are involved in a legitimacy play that
involves the war on position. Politics and hegemony, however, always end up by ‘compromis-
ing their [people’s] autonomy’ (Honig 2007: 5). If you do not accept the ‘shared symbolic
space’, you are not allowed a position. Injustice, deception and defeat haunt any democracy and
its communicative and deliberative processes. The question is how to work with this coercive,
power-ridden, subjugating reality, and simultaneously contest its permanence as decisions and a
hegemonic institutionalisation.
If planning theory has a one-sided attention to agonism as a form of institutionalisation, this
might be caused by following Chantal Mouffe instead of Rancière or Foucault. Mouffe makes
agonism a matter of power (hegemony, war of position) and the making of collective identities
arising from the shared symbolic space of common understandings and interests.
Foucault says the agonism between power and freedom – it is always about this relation – is
where we have ‘the permanent political task inherent in all social existence’ (1986: 223). We
should, Foucault says, focus on politics as a ‘system of differentiation which permits one to act
upon the actions of others’; as ‘types of objectives pursued by those who act’; as ‘the means of
bringing power relations into being’ (how is power exercised, by which effects and means); as
‘forms of institutionalization’ (legal structures, etc.); and as ‘the degrees of rationalization; the
bringing into play of power relations as action in a field of possibilities’ (p. 223).
Mouffe’s war of position and hegemony will rely on such modes of institutionalised power-
mechanisms, and such institutions work against Foucault’s agonism as ‘the recalcitrance of the will
and the intransigence of freedom’ (Foucault 1986: 221–222). Foucault’s lecture emphasises that
power is not interesting in itself (1986: 217), it is power as ‘a part of our experience’ that should
interest us (p. 209).
Mouffe and Foucault have an inherent assumption about selves and interests as not being
fixed, but rather always porous and exposed to processes and forces. The strife within politics
and planning is a strife between ever-changing positions and cannot build on fixed identities.
Thus, politics and planning need to discover how to keep differences and irreducible disagree-
ments alive facing a system of apparatus and public processes framed by closure and exclusionary
decisions.
Hillier (2002: 261) suggests seeing agonistic democracy as ‘a contestation of multiple repre-
sentations and interpretations through which identities and positions are formed’, and planning
might be able to work and respect strife by being a ‘strategic navigation’ part of a ‘multiplanar

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planning’ (Hillier 2007). Strategic navigation is ‘a conversation that weaves between specific
episodes or events and local or micro stories, the networks and coalitions, assemblages and
agancements of governance processes and the macro of governance cultures’ (Hillier 2011:
518). Hillier, however, leaves out the question about the institutionalisation of decisions and
legitimacy Mouffe defends in her ‘war’ for hegemonic positions.

Outlook – Agonism and Futures?

Many cities and planning institutions are responding to the publicly claimed democratic deficit
and they try to interact otherwise with a more diverse public (e.g. by making pre-plan work-
shops). Cities now try to find more dynamic ways to include people and interests in urban
design and development. ‘Urban gardening’ and ‘temporary space’ strategies are but two exam-
ples. ‘Tactical urbanism’ is a third, and they are an attempt to make planning more iterative and
flexible. In the US some have suggested looking at urban planning as a ‘series of phases’ over,
for example, 15 years, where each small project might add up to be a comprehensive plan. At
least it allows for ‘cheap’ experiments that might pave the way or give new ideas (Grego 2012).
The main challenge however, if we follow Rancière and Foucault, is how planning can keep
agonism and strife alive. How can planning institutions work productively with contest and the
inadmissible?
Planning not only has to work with its institutionalism and mode of conversation, but in par-
ticular its mode of procedural decisions. To make contest and strife productive, planning might
need a ‘wandering planner’ that ‘botanises’ streets and places (to paraphrase Walter Benjamin);
that is, a planner that listens to and knows the ‘street voice’. It needs a planner that is allowed to
work with agonism as a discussant within people’s everyday lives and as an ‘editorial’ organiser
of dialogues on everyday life questions, sense of place, aesthetics, design, art, feelings, and desires
contesting planning (see Haggärde 2008, Hillier 2007, Nyseth et al. 2010).
To allow for an agonistic war of position, planning might need a system that sees any political
and planning decision as a ‘temporary resting place’ (Healey 2009), acknowledging that planning
is acting in a pluriverse world of changing configurations and constellations of forces that will
affect development, everyday life, values, economy, culture and social conditions on a micro-
scale. A planning inclusive of strife needs to be allowed to make a non-excluding ‘strategic
navigation’, and give a robustness to plans from planners’ capacity and readiness to work with(in)
the ever-changing and emergent forces of place development.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ali Madanipour, Vanessa Watson and Michael Gunder for their constructive com-
ments, and Jean Hillier for her critique on several drafts, advice and inspiration.

Notes
1 There are many planning systems around the world and any attempt to make generalisations will fail.
Further, an introduction is always based on a selection of themes and sources, and there are many more
interesting studies on conflict and agonism available within planning studies than are shown in this chapter.
2 See for instance Flyvbjerg (1991), Healey (2006), Hillier (2002) and Huxley (2007).The chapter is speaking
from a global north perspective.
3 Disagreement leads to a political decision (Mäntysalo et al. 2011b). In the UK disagreement is met with
public inquiries – between inspectors, the public, private interests and ‘specialists’ (if needed) – for a process
of negotiation (McClymont 2011). Decisions are made by the inspector.

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 John Pløger

4 By ‘sire’ Heidegger is referring to ‘the father’ that ‘allows’ and ‘preserves’ the positions within a confronta-
tion (as free, slave, human).
5 Mouffe is here referring to Jean François Lyotard’s ‘le Differend’, which refers to ‘the unstable mode’
when something that should be put into words or sentences cannot be (Lyotard 1990: 147).
6 In Louis Althusser’s understanding of apparatus: diverse and specialised institutions that ‘serve’ the state
within the state apparatus (e.g. government offices, courts) as well as in ‘civil society’ (e.g. schools)
(see Althusser 1983).
7 Gramsci was not talking about a peaceful war of position, but using the military word ‘war’ as a metaphor
for an ‘interventionist government’ taking an offensive role ‘against the oppositionists and [to] organise
permanently the “impossibility” of internal disintegration’ (Gramsci 1999: 495). It is not a matter of
improving the position of weak voices in deliberation, but the power to govern by being in power.

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 22
INSURGENT PRACTICES
AND DECOLONIZATION
OF FUTURE(S)
Faranak Miraftab

This chapter further elaborates the concept of insurgent planning (IP) and why it needs to be
taken seriously in planning education, scholarship, and practice. Without strong conceptual
elaboration, ideas can be easily dismissed as fanciful or become buzzwords that fail to engage
deeply with transformative practices and actions. I therefore build this chapter on three sections.
The first section describes the crises and social contradictions of the late 20th and early 21st
centuries and the implications of the resulting political and ideological shifts for planning. This
supposedly post-political era, which has exposed the liberal democratic promises of inclusion
and equity, places citizens’ insurgent practices high on the political and intellectual agendas. I
discuss the political philosophies that drive liberal democratic and insurgent citizenship practices
and argue that IP ontologically departs from liberal traditions of so-called inclusive planning that
have held the inclusion of disadvantaged groups as an objective of professional intervention.
The second section takes a closer look at the range of citizens’ direct actions and conceptualizes
them through the analytic devices I offer as invited and invented spaces of citizenship. I discuss
the potential flexibility of these forms of action and dispel a binary misconception of invited
versus invented spaces for citizens’ direct action; instead, I focus on the theoretical construct of
IP as practices that are transgressive, counter-hegemonic, and imaginative. In the third section,
inspired by anticolonial scholars and activists of liberation, I discuss the urgency in decoloniz-
ing the future as a realm of political contestation and imagination. I conclude the chapter by
stressing the opportunities ahead as the crisis of capitalism leads to aggressive shutdowns of
democratic spaces and citizens innovate strategies and practices to invent new spaces of action.
IP is not a set of blueprints for action but a conceptual and normative construct to guide plan-
ning thought and action that promotes humane urbanism into the future.

Insurgent Planning: An Ontological Break with

Liberal Inclusive Planning
The planning profession as institutionalized in the West has traditionally served to mediate state
relations with citizens and the market. Conditions that have reconfigured the state’s relationship
with citizens and the market have placed the idea and the practice of insurgent citizenship high
on the political agenda; those same conditions have also had important implications for planning
thought and theorization.

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 Insurgent Practices, Decolonized Future(s)

The end of the Cold War, which removed the threat of the socialist bloc to the West,
unleashed a domination of free market economy that has resulted in seismic shifts of the politi-
cal terrain and has also produced significant recalibrations in planning theorization and practice.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, some commentators claimed to see the end of ideological war
between the capitalist and socialist blocs—and therefore “the end of history” (Fukuyama 1992)
and “the end of politics.” The subsequent hegemony of free market capitalism and global restruc-
turing of the capitalist state in this era have dramatically reconfigured the relationship between
the state and its citizens. When all political struggles and tensions are subsumed under the free
will and reach of the capitalist market, everything is privatized—from nature to public services
and public resources, and even the government and state (Watts 1994)—and the capitalist state
no longer defines its role in mediation between labor and capital through provision of basic needs
and development, but primarily in protection of optimal market functioning for capital.
These shifts in the broader political dynamics of state vis-à-vis citizens and market invite us
to reflect on how the planning profession has redefined itself and its obligations with respect to
the public good. In the 1950s and 60s, the capitalist state relied on developmental and welfare
programs, and public planning saw its role as serving public good through a scientific managerial
approach that claimed to find the best solution to problems that politicians defined. Planning as
“problem solving, not problem framing” was the mantra of the time (McLoughlin 1969; Faludi
1973). In the 1960s and 70s, with the rise of social movements demanding inclusion, the plan-
ning profession was also politicized. Planning’s professional role in addressing the public good
was to frame social problems and secure the inclusion of the most vulnerable citizens in the
state’s developmental and welfare programs. Advocacy planning and equity planning, originated
by US planning practitioners and scholars, are outcomes of this era when state welfare programs
were still in effect and progressive planners saw their role as helping vulnerable citizens win a
fair share of these public goods (Hillier and Healey 2008). But with the increasingly diminishing
responsibilities of the state vis-à-vis citizens since then, the intermediary role of planning profes-
sionals was redefined from a redistributive, political role to a facilitating role, which is managerial
and de-politicized. Communicative planning and collaborative planning, for instance, which
have dominated planning theorization, scholars argue, epitomize this post-political society in
which all is de-politicized and “ideology is past its ‘sell-by date’” (Gunder 2010, 303, citing
Habermas 1987, 196; Purcell 2009; Sager 2005). In this post-ideological neoliberal reign of the
free market, professional planning practice has boomeranged to its original managerial role—
one that believed in equilibrium. While the earlier genre of planning professionals believed in
reaching such equilibrium through scientific system analysis, this new genre—communicative
and collaborative planning—believes that an equilibrium among competing interests can be
reached through communication and ideal speech: in other words, if we find the right pitch,
the right keynote, we can all sing in harmony.
Moreover, decades of professional planning practice that advocates inclusion through par-
ticipation have shown that its conception within liberal ideals obscures, and at best is unable
to address, complex layers of conflict, oppressive power, and imposition. A liberal notion of
inclusion might recognize difference and call for citizen participation, but this inclusion is in
ways that do not challenge power but merely incorporate differences. Scholars document that
inclusive planning through citizen participation has, indeed, often served as an alibi for elitist,
private-sector-driven decisions, or as cheap compensation for state withdrawal from public and
social services (Angotti 2008; DeFilippis 2001; Mayer 2003; Miraftab 2003; Harwood 2007).
At this historical juncture of neoliberalism, where formal politics of inclusion is an alibi
for exclusion and normalization of neocolonial domination, the bankruptcy of liberal inclu-
sive planning urges us to rethink the epistemological and ontological parameters of planning

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 Faranak Miraftab

theorization and practice. Planning theorization needs to make an ontological and epistemo-
logical break with the ideas, ideals, and political philosophies that guided it through much
of the 20th century. IP, I argue, pursues such ontological and epistemological breaks in our
contemporary conjuncture.
IP builds on an earlier radical tradition in planning theory that recognized the practices of
citizens and local communities as forms of planning. This theoretical intervention, initiated
by Friedmann in the 1980s, reflected on citizens’ struggles in the global South cities and was
continued by Sandercock’s work in the 1990s reflecting on realities of North American cities.
Barrio planning (Friedmann 1987) and covert planning (Beard 2002) reflected predominantly
on grassroots practices in the global South, taking seriously the practices of subordinate groups
in shaping the plans, policies, and spaces. In the global South, where, among other historical
conditions, the state has had less ability to cover up capitalist contradictions through its welfare
programs, citizens hold fewer illusions about the state’s benevolence and have had determining
insurrectional urban interventions outside the state apparatus of inclusion. Radical planning in
its epistemic shift paid attention to the fact that residents of squatter settlements, favelas, and
townships make their own living space and livelihoods not because of, but often despite, the
state’s institutions, planning regulations, and laws. From this perspective, the informal settle-
ments that mark urban landscapes of most cities of the global South provide material, spatial
evidence of citizens’ insurgencies and direct action to plan and address their livelihood (Holston
1998). Drawing on Holston’s concept of insurgent citizenship (1998) and Young’s “politics of
difference” (1990), Sandercock (1998a, 1998b) articulated the notion of insurgent historiog-
raphies and IP to reflect on dynamics of power and production of urban space in increasingly
multicultural North American cities. In dealing with recognition of difference, Sandercock
furthers the earlier epistemological shift in radical planning by moving away from profession-
centered liberal North American traditions of inclusive planning, and recognizing the practices
of citizens and local communities as forms of planning—IP.
Today urban political insurgencies have gained traction in theorizing insurgent practices as
forms of planning (Stello 2012; Meir 2005; Meth 2010; Sweet and Chakars 2010; Harvey 1999;
Friedmann 2002, 2011; Sandercock 1998b; Roy 2009). This in part reflects the unprecedented
rise of citizens’ direct action in Western European and North American cities, which are now
experiencing the neoliberal unsettling of welfare capitalism and joining the rest of the world in
takeovers of urban space (Occupy movements). But the growing attention to citizens’ insurgent
practices and the urge to think through them in respect to planning also reflects the crisis of
legitimacy the profession faces in its inability to deliver on the promise of inclusion and service
to public good through a framework of inclusive representation. Planning theory, along with
planning education and practice, has had to deal with key questions of this century with respect
to difference and justice, where citizens reimagine and practice different kinds of democracies,
ideals, and citizenship.
IP builds on the epistemological contribution of the radical planning approach to make a
move that I argue is ontological—that is, it shifts the understanding of justice from a liberal
Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness to a Youngian notion of justice based on recognition of
difference and its politics. Rawlsian theory seeks justice in terms of individualized rights and fair
treatment. Young’s notion highlights the limitation of liberal policies of inclusion that might
satisfy beneficiaries’ rights as individuals yet, through stigma, oppress them as a group (1990).
This philosophy insists on recognizing self-determined and group-based forms of oppression
in reaching justice. Such an understanding of justice changes the terms of debate about inclu-
sion from representation to self-determination—a shift that validates citizens’ direct action and
has substantial implications for planning. In representative democracy, citizens as individuals

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delegate their rights to others—political representatives, bureaucrats, or technical experts. In

contrast, in participatory democracy disadvantaged and marginalized citizens who recognize
the inadequacy of formal rights turn to direct action to achieve justice. They do not hand the
advocacy of their interests to others but instead directly take part in shaping decisions that affect
their lives. Participatory democracy consequently promotes a form of citizenship that is multi-
centered and has multiple agencies, including the citizens and their direct social actions.
As IP de-centers the role of representation and relies on direct action as a means of inclusion,
a shift in the subject of its theorization is also noteworthy. In previous variations of inclu-
sive planning, the subjects of theorization are professional planners and their professionalized
practices. For example, in advocacy and equity planning, the planners’ role is to advocate for
citizens, speak in the face of power, and get the best deal on behalf of the citizens. In commu-
nicative planning, the professional planner is responsible for bringing all parties to a consensus
through ideal speech. In that theoretical framework, planning is conceptualized as a realm out-
side the community, and its agent is the professional planner. The core concern is with how
this “outsider” (the planner) needs to redefine his/her role and responsibility vis-à-vis the disad-
vantaged community. In IP, however, planning is no longer the prerogative of professionals or
trained planners. Professional planners are but one of the actors that shape the contested field of
action known as planning. In the conceptual architecture of IP, the core concern is therefore a
set of practices independent of their actors: the theoretical object shifts from planner to planning.
The discussion is not about insurgent planners as a category, nor do we expect actors to adhere
to a specific category of practice.
Insurgent practices ontologically break with liberal inclusive planning because IP calls for a
different kind of participation and inclusion. It does not aim for a bigger share of the pie but for
a different kind of pie. It does not seek inclusion in liberal democracy through better represen-
tation (be it by experts or politicians); it seeks to create a humane urbanism wherein people’s
rights are real and practiced. Moreover, while building on the earlier critical tradition of radical
planning, IP expands the notion of planning practice to include not only select forms of action
by citizens and their organizations sanctioned and tolerated by the dominant groups, what I call
invited1 spaces of action, but also the insurrections that state and corporation seek to ostracize
and criminalize—what I call invented spaces of action. IP makes an ontological intervention
in understanding the relationship between planning and citizens; I will expand on this in the
following section.
To summarize, the ontology of IP departs from that of its predecessors, which were guided
by the assumption that representative democracy works in the best interests of all with citizen-
ship rights, including disadvantaged groups. To the contrary, IP is guided by the principles of
participatory democracy—that is, understanding citizenship as a practice constructed from below
through citizens’ direct action for the development of their self-determined political community.
This difference does not, however, position insurgent and inclusive planning as binaries: they
are ontologically different but have a dialectic relationship. Just as participatory and representa-
tive democracy dialectically influence each other, IP and inclusive planning can do the same, so
untangling them conceptually is crucial while engaging in the complex terrain of planning today.

A Theoretical Elaboration: Invited and Invented Spaces of

Action and Misconceptions about Them
Because concepts of invited and invented spaces of citizens’ action are critical to my approach
in theorizing IP, I first offer a brief definition. Over a decade ago, reflecting on grassroots
movements in black townships of post-apartheid South Africa, I conceptualized their actions

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 Faranak Miraftab

in these terms: invited spaces are defined by grassroots actions through community-based infor-
mal groups and their allied nongovernmental organizations that are legitimized by donors and
government interventions and aim to cope with systems of hardship. Invented spaces I defined
as collective actions by the poor that directly confront the authorities and challenge and desta-
bilize the status quo. These two sorts of spaces, however, can stand in a mutually constituted,
interacting relationship, not a binary one. They are not solidified, and they change character
as dominating groups seek to appropriate them whenever a threat is posed. On-the-ground
evidence also shows that grassroots practices that seek to make structural changes in power rela-
tions often move across invited and invented spaces of action. If they are to reach more than
individualized needs (the goal of liberal inclusion), they often have to move across and between
those spaces as called for by specifics of the struggle. Insurgent practices are fluid, moving
across all spaces of participation and engaging both the formal and informal arenas of politics;
they aim to combine the struggles for redistribution and recognition, echoing Nancy Fraser’s
(1997) theorizations. But institutions of power, such as the mainstream media, the state, and
international donor organizations, configure these invited and invented spaces as binary, and
tend to criminalize the latter by designating only the former as the “proper” space for citizens’
voices and participation.
The authorities tend to vilify and criminalize one set of actions and celebrate another because
they try to steer citizens to a certain model of activism and to contain them within a space of
activism that can be more easily controlled. Svirsky (2010, 5), quoting Buchanan, points out
that “from conformity it is but a short step to complicity” (Buchanan 2000, 75), because activ-
ism that “treads established paths of dissent is always in danger of being besieged and contained
by the organism of the State.” Radical activists therefore need to shift strategies and create new
spaces through “practices of rupture and creation” (2010, 5). “Activisms that seek only to guar-
antee the workings of representative democracy,” Svirsky writes, “are essentially slave activisms;
they dwell in safety and their impact and potential is expected to be absorbed without draw-
ing the system into new structures of resonance” (2010, 3). This kind of slave activism is what
de-politicized planning theorization has celebrated and popularized as participatory planning,
citizen participation, and grassroots involvement.
IP breaks away from this mode of thinking in radical ways. It defies confinement and con-
formance of citizens’ actions to liberal state and market norms, but also recognizes how citizens
might use those norms to induce a rupture and create something new. In the recent South
African student movement against raising university tuition, for example, Julian Brown (2015)
points out how the South African police would beat up students when claims were made
through protests (invented spaces), but also invite them to dialogues between the administra-
tion and students’ leaders (invited space). For the authorities, binary construction is an effective
means of weakening progressive movements, but insurgent activists recognize the fallacy of
binary constructions and use all available means and spaces to make their demands heard and
addressed. In this instance, the invited space itself was politicized by activists when they failed
to produce “a set of leaders” to negotiate with authorities. The politics of containment works
through introducing a range of binaries—invited versus invented, leaders versus masses—so
as to identify and subdue projects of grassroots autonomy. On the other hand, the insurgent
student movement—precisely because it shifts attention from actors to practices—evaded this
construction by creating an ambiguous liminal space within which authorities lose their points
of reference (Irazabal 2014). For authorities the question was how to double down with the
force of law to make these spaces, times, and bodies legally legible. For insurgent citizens, the
question is how to sustain this illegible threshold long enough to frustrate and suffocate existing
modalities of law, state power, and capital accumulation.

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Invited and invented spaces of citizenship practice should be thought of as spaces with
“porous borders,” borrowing from Steven Robins’ (2014) reflection on the Toilet Wars waged
by the poor in Cape Town townships over the last few years. In that struggle, citizens used a
range of actions and strategies, some criminalized by the state (e.g., the Ses’khona movement’s
throwing of poop at the Cape Town international airport terminal) and others tolerated by the
state (e.g., the Social Justice Coalition [SJC] documenting lack of toilets and authorities’ false
promises). Whereas the sanitized terminology of formal politics such as “service delivery back-
log” obscured their plight and the urgency of their demands, “poop protestors” used abrupt acts
of insurgency to create spectacle and shock that moved the problem of defecation and lack of
toilets to the center of political debate—indeed it became top of the agenda in an electoral cam-
paign. But “politics of shit,” or “poolitics” as McFarlane and Silver (2016) call it, as practiced by
activist citizens was not limited to acts of sabotage or insurgency, such as throwing poop at the
mayor’s house or lining up by the hundreds to use toilets in plush suburbs and outside City Hall.
They drew on a rich repertoire of grassroots action which also includes practices of organiza-
tions like the SJC that predominantly concern remuneration and auditing using the language
and perspective of the state (McFarlane and Silver 2016).
We should note that a binary construction of these practices taking place through invited
and invented spaces risks an embedded misconception of stability in each space. It disregards
the flexibility and innovative nature of capitalism, which folds in whatever lies at its margin and
seeks to incorporate whatever might be a threat. What is today an alternative, or radical, might
become mainstreamed and de-politicized by containment and entrapment tomorrow, with its
transformative force hollowed out—leaving activists holding “a toy telephone with no lines
that reach anywhere,” a metaphor used by my colleague Ken Salo for such stolen movements.
Movements thus need to continually reinvent their spaces of action. Similarly, movements can
appropriate a space that has been created by the establishment to contain the creative actions
of dissent and use it to invoke new imaginations of inclusion. Neoliberal inclusion wants to
contain the grassroots actions in invited spaces where their demands are controlled and appro-
priated, but insurgent practices seek to push these limits by occupying those and other spaces.
These transgressions are necessary particularly because of capitalism’s ability to occupy the alter-
native imaginations and spaces of being and action.
In fact, the power of insurgent practices lies in their agility and ability to transgress and desta-
bilize hegemonic normality and open up new political terrains for the imagination of a different
future. To use the Deleuze and Guattari (1980) concept of nomadized politics that are agile,
insurgent movements must constantly reinvent and innovate new spaces as the oppressive state
appropriates whatever lies outside it. Clearly, citizens’ successful political action requires agility.
There can be no rigid joining of actors to actions. The point to reiterate here is that the theoriz-
ing objects of IP are practices, not the actors. The point is not to label a particular actor, or a
particular organization or movement, but to take into account the range of actions that move
toward a particular outcome—a more just and humane urbanism.
But skeptics raise important questions: How do we recognize insurgent practices that con-
tribute to building a participative democracy and create the foundation on which to develop
humane urbanism? Is every act of insurrection and interruption progressive in that it seeks a par-
ticipative democracy, or could it be anti-democratic, reactionary, or even fascist? Moreover, do
insurgent practices necessarily need to be in the form of insurrections, riots, and loud protests?
The answers are embedded in what we have so far discussed, but, to clarify, the response is
negative on both counts. Not all insurgency is theorized here as the democratic insurgent prac-
tice of citizenship; not all invented spaces of activism, nor all forms of insurgency by poor and
disadvantaged groups, are celebrated in this theoretical endeavor. Moreover, far from a unifying

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form of action, invented spaces can take as many forms as their context calls for, be it loud and
collective protest or quiet and under-the-radar politics of encroachment.
What determines radical practices and their promise for a humane urbanism is a set of
conceptual guideposts that I have discussed at length elsewhere: transgression (in time, place,
and forms of action), counter-hegemony, and imagination (Miraftab 2009). These practices
transgress false dichotomies, by public actions spanning formal and informal arenas of politics
and invited and invented spaces of citizenship practice. They also transgress national boundaries
by building transnational solidarities of marginalized people and move beyond time bounds
by seeking a historicized consciousness and promoting historical memory of present experi-
ences (Salo 2015). IP practices are counter-hegemonic in that they destabilize normalized relations
of dominance and insist on citizens’ rights to dissent, rebel, and determine their own terms of
engagement and participation. IP practices seize advantage from the contradictory nature of
neoliberal capitalism, exposing the rift between inclusion and redistribution. They understand
the world of such contradictions contrapuntally, looking not only at how systems of oppression
are conceptualized and exerted, but also at how they are contested. IP practices are imagina-
tive. They recover idealism for a just society. Insurgent practices recognize the symbolic value
of insurgent citizenship activities that offer hope from which to work toward alternatives.
In short, IP consists of purposeful transgressive actions that aim to disrupt relationships with
oppressors, and to destabilize the status quo through consciousness of the past and imagination
of an alternative just future.
Understood against these principles, not all acts of insurgency or invented spaces of activism
outside the normalized, routinized spaces of citizen participation have an anti-hegemonic
agenda. Nor do all counter-hegemonic practices need to be through confrontation, insurrec-
tion, or collective protest. Let’s take those on the far right of the political party spectrum,
such as Tea Party insurgency in the United States or the poor people’s protests against African
migrants in South Africa.2 In the latter case, xenophobic attacks in 2015 reinforced the interest
of the black entrepreneurs in Durban, who, subsequent to the attacks, used the riots to funnel
funds their way and enrich themselves, increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots.3 It
would be a grave mistake, therefore, to assume that any insurgency by the poor is an insurgent
practice—which we theorize here as radical planning and ontologically shifting planning dis-
course beyond the limits of liberal democratic inclusion. Paula Meth (2010), studying a vigilante
group in Durban, offers another example that poignantly reminds us of the complexity and
social thickness of the grassroots actions and warns against idealizing those as necessarily progres-
sive. While in some regards they might promote a just cause, they might also adhere to violence,
sexism, or racism. The vigilantes Meth studies are engaged in practices that are both liberat-
ing and oppressive, and we cannot flatten the complexities of grassroots movements and their
practices; we have to see these practices in relation to their overarching dimensions. First, we
need to remember that in theorizing the relationship between citizens and planning through an
IP framework, the focus is on practices, not actors. Actors—e.g., vigilantes or social movement
activists or organizations—might adopt practices that are progressive and transformative at one
point, but they might be coopted or misled into taking part in practices that are oppressive at
another point (or even at the same time). I therefore insist on terminologies that do not rigidly
link spaces of action we conceptualize as invited and invented to a particular actor, movement,
or organization—hence insurgent planning, not planner. Moreover, the form of action, whether
it is a “quiet encroachment” under the radar or an act of insurrection and “loud takeovers,”
does not determine the political potential of the action for broader social transformation. It is
important to inquire into the historical and transnational consciousness as well as the organiza-
tional matrix and strategic arc within which insurgent practices are nested. If citizens’ practices

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contribute to the fulfillment of a broader strategy of capital and colonialism, they are merely
episodes of reactionary tactics—regardless of their loudness or quietness.
To wrap up, whoever the actors (be it professional planners, activists, or regular citizens) and
whatever the specific form of an action, particular practices can be identifiable as IP practices
if they are guided by certain principles that I articulate as follows: transgression; destabilizing
hegemonic order; and imaginative of an alternative and just future. In evaluating any set of citi-
zen practices, we need to ask how they temporally and spatially historicize their struggles that
might lead or draw on transnational solidarities; how they engage in counter- or anti-hegemonic
practices; and how they evoke an alternative, just future—a key principle to which I now turn.

Imagination and the Urgency in Decolonizing the Future

The writings of African intellectuals teach us that liberation of the colonies could happen only
through “decolonizing the mind” (Fanon 1986 [1967]) and liberating imagination. Liberation
needs a new consciousness, one that is recovered from the colonial moral injury, the pro-
found alienation that believed development of the colony could happen only “upon condition
of rejecting itself” and wholesale importing of non-African scenarios and solutions (Davidson
1992, 199). Anticolonial scholars and activists of liberation expose means of domination beyond
direct use of brute force, and how tropes of inclusion can be used to subordinate groups.
Domination can work through internalized values and voices of the dominant groups—a condi-
tion that colonizes our imagination and validates only the knowledge of the West and the forms
of knowing and being under Western eyes, to borrow from Mohanty (1991). In planning, the
colonial gaze, to evoke Fanon, is the only contemplation that matters in how we theorize plan-
ning and see the outcome of plans as human habitats.

I move slowly in the world, accustomed now to seek no longer for upheaval. I progress
by crawling … under the white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed. Having adjusted
their microtomes, they objectively cut away slices of my reality. I am laid bare.
(Fanon 1995, 292)

African cities, for example, are dissected, critics remind us, under Western eyes as incomplete,
crawling, and not causing upheaval because they have not yet become like the superior models
they are expected to become; they are invisible to the colonial gaze (De Boeck and Pilssart
2004; Watson 2006, 2009; Simone 2004). In this normalized relation of power, inclusion means
erasure of difference and incorporation of subordinate groups into the norms, values, and ideals
of the dominant group.
For planning in this era, decolonizing planning imagination is by questioning the very
assumptions, norms, values, and ideals that shape every plan and policy—for example, that plans
and policies must insist on economic growth, or that planning models developed and imple-
mented in the West are models to be emulated. Echoing Steve Biko (1978), I assert the need for
a new consciousness that liberates planning imaginations. The elitist and consumerist planning
ideals persist in our post/neocolonial, neoliberal time, through suppression of any alternative
conceptualization of cities and of planning. IP scholarship aims at decolonizing the planning
imagination by taking a fresh look at subaltern cities to understand them by their own rules and
values rather than by the planning prescriptions and fantasies of the global and local elite.
History and future are intense sites of struggle and contestation. Concerning power and
history, the struggle is between forgetting and remembering, as Kundera (1999) calls it; and
concerning the future, the struggle is in imagining. Future is the political terrain of the core

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struggle this generation faces over opening and closing the realm of possibilities—that is, the
struggle between expanding the realm of imagination and closing it down. The future is inevi-
table. It is open and it is plural (Pieterse 2000, 6). People need it like they need air, writes
Pieterse (2000, xxi). But the future is also empty, meaning that what it constitutes depends on
how it is imagined, susceptible to be reinvented and be “opened by a horizon of possibilities”
(Santos 1995, 479). Because of its openness and its multiplicity/plurality, the future should be
understood as an object of dispute; should be thought of as open-ended collages with the power
to create interruptions, involving sense of direction, playfulness, and pleasure at the same time
(Santos 1995, 499). But the open-endedness, plurality, and unpredictability of the future also
makes it a political territory, a site of fierce contestation over its content. If we do not dare to
imagine the unimaginable, then the future is less open and more predetermined as persistence
and perpetuation of the present.
The concept of “colonization of future” is of key importance. In the first colonies land,
natural resources, and slave labor were objects of wealth creation. In the 1980s Mies and her col-
leagues (1988) provocatively wrote about Women: The Last Colony. That is, Europeans’ global
colonization had raped land that did not belong to them and which allowed their jump-start in
wealth creation, and now colonization had turned to women and their cheaply obtained labor
for more wealth creation. In that new international order, women’s bodies and labor were sub-
jects of colonial accumulation. Today, however, I argue that it is the imagination that must be
invoked as the last colony—imagination as a political territory, a “territory” to be “occupied”
to secure closure through totalitarian imaginations and through erasure of alternative imagined
futures. The latest subject of “colonial occupation,” then, is the ability to imagine a different
future, and the struggle for its emancipation is urgent.
The struggle between past, present, and future is inevitable, ongoing, and nonlinear (Browne
2014). The emancipation of one without the others is not possible. It is from historicizing and
understanding the past that we can understand the present struggles; it is by understanding our
present struggles that we can imagine a future similar or different. But without an imagination of a
future, we cannot change the present. We also need guidance to choose desirable future paths—a
necessity that makes imagination of futures an intrinsically political exercise (Friedmann 2000, 463).
Imagination of an alternative future requires a deep understanding of the present, what Santos
(1995, 481) calls the virtual archaeology of the present. Archaeology of the present involves under-
standing the historical roots of contemporary realities. This understanding of the present has been a
site of contestation against the production of a sanitized past that washes off the conflicts, contradic-
tions, and power struggles that have shaped it. Harvey (2000, 168) notes this entanglement of past,
present, and future through Benjamin’s (1969) observations of Parisian arcades. Benjamin observed
how—through museums and heritage centers, exhibitions, arenas of spectacle, and festivals—a
sanitized collective memory is produced, an uncritical aesthetic sensibility nourished, and the future
possibilities absorbed into a supposedly conflict-free arena that is eternally present.
Browne’s (2014) Feminism, Time, and Nonlinear History, in which she discusses polytempo-
ral pasts and futures and relational temporalities, helps us better understand IP’s heralding of
multiple futures.
As opposed to Fukuyama’s argument for the end of history, which seeks to bring closure to
the future, our citizens’ struggle is to overcome such closure and open the terrain of imagination
to conceive of alternatives. The end of history as we know it is also the beginning of history as we want
it. To open the realm of possibilities for an imagined ideal future, we need to seek practices, ide-
als, and ideas that allow us to overcome analytic and imaginative closures. Some might employ
performative actions that evoke imagination of a different world—for example, the performa-
tive practices of Turkish youth in the 2013 Gezi Park struggles recreated the imagination of

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an urban commons even if momentarily and temporarily (see Ay and Miraftab 2016). Others
among new social movements might turn to science fiction for social justice movements and
imagining a just world.4 Acts of insurgency that simply invoke such imagination can sometimes
produce enduring gain in this struggle for future. The communal spaces that Occupy move-
ments create, whether in Gezi Park or Madrid or New York, help us imagine a different world
and, for the participants, even provide a short experience of living in a different world. Both the
imagination and the experience are key to winning the struggle. This performative aspect of IP
superimposes future(s) on the present, entwining multiple times.
In short, politicization of imagination and the future as a terrain of struggle for justice is key
if we are to plan for a world more just, and an urbanism more humane. The potential of insur-
gency for humane urbanism lies in the normality that it disrupts and the new common sense that
it helps to create; in assuming equality and solidarity as normality interrupted by structures of
domination, not the other way around;5 and in its aspiration to recover an idealist imagination
of a different, more just future.

Conclusion: The Way Forward

Moving into the future, the editors of the volume before us ask, “What are the implications for
this theoretical construct of planning—insurgent planning?” I wish to first stress the understand-
ing of IP not as a set of blueprints for action but as a conceptual and normative construct to guide
planning thought and action to promote humane urbanism into the future. I next stress that,
because we live in times of crises of both capitalism and of the planning profession, IP will have
important contributions to make. The bottom line is that the capitalist state, and the experts that
seek to maintain the status quo through liberal democratic inclusion, are facing the limitations of
its promise. Planning as we know it is faced with a crisis of legitimacy, and the spatial injustices
it facilitates are glaring evidence of “an emperor with no clothes.” We need a different kind of
planning, and IP as a theoretical construct offers elements of that.
The notion of IP expands planning from the prerogative of a selected group of professionals
to a contested field of action by a range of actors, which includes professionals but also other
organized individuals and communities deeply involved in shaping our human habitats and
environments. This expanded notion of planning is more in tune with the reality of the 21st
century, discussed earlier in the chapter, whereby the state’s welfare and development programs,
of which planning professionals have traditionally been in charge, have increasingly diminished.
Moreover, as the crisis of capitalism leads to aggressive shutdown of democratic spaces, citizens
will innovate strategies and practices that invent new spaces of action and new means of shap-
ing the spaces we inhabit. These innovative practices and invented spaces are not fixed; indeed,
to survive threats of cooption or incorporation by dominant powers, they need to constantly
shift with agility. They might move to “under-the-radar politics,” or create ambiguous spaces
of action through performative acts, or opt for politics of agitation and protest. The point is
not the specific forms of action, but the range of innovative practices guided by principles of
transgression, counter-hegemony, and decolonized imagination discussed in this chapter, which
promises to invent new spaces of action previously shut down by powerful interest groups
that govern the cities and dominate human habitat. If we are to achieve a humane urbanism,
professional planning must recognize these other critical actors and the important spaces of
citizenship they innovate and invent, because their role and weight in bringing about change
are even more important than in the previous century. Professional planning educators, practi-
tioners, theorists, need to recognize the wide range of actors and actions undertaken to shape a
city more humane. (A qualifier: I take city and urbanism as broad terms, by no means referring

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to city as discrete territory binary to rural or other forms of human habitat.) In other words, in
the global North in particular, as the illusion of inclusion through the formal and representative
channels of inclusion wears off, citizens’ insurgent practices are taking center stage as means of
shaping a new world, one that is more just and embodies a humane urbanism.
What IP needs to develop, however, is greater imagination of what we want. It is easier to
mobilize action around negating the present. As important as that is, it does not replace the
need for what we wish to replace the present reality by. A greater understanding of the elements
constitutive of humane urbanism is what we must develop as we mobilize to transgress and
destabilize present hegemonies—hence the extended discussion in this essay on the importance
of decolonizing the future and imagination of what that future entails. An important opportu-
nity, and challenge, of progressive planning in this particular historic moment is to decolonize
the imagined futures and dare to imagine a radically different world. In this age of “realism,”
where ideals are looked down on and dreaming is stigmatized, the exercise of collective or
individual imagination of a just world and what elements a humane urbanism embodies, are
of prime radical value. For planning scholars, the frontier of anticolonial and anti-hegemonic
struggle is indeed the fight to decolonize the planning imagination, in its theoretical construct
as well as its pedagogy and practice. IP offers the theoretical guideposts for such an endeavor as
we move into the future we wish to construct.

Notes
1 I borrow the term “invited spaces of citizenship” from Cornwall (2002, 50) to develop the notions of
invited and invented spaces of citizenship.
2 In April 2014, I witnessed the unfortunate outbreak of violence against poor black African migrants in
Cape Town, South Africa. These attacks, which started in Durban and spread to other South African cit-
ies, took place by and large in townships, informal settlements, and areas poor people inhabit.There were
eight deaths and hundreds of injuries, and thousands of people were displaced, seeking refuge at police
stations, churches, and temporary accommodation set up by NGOs. Attackers looted or burned small
businesses owned by African foreign nationals, accusing them of “stealing jobs from citizens”—discourses
too similar to those we hear about immigrants in the United States.
3 Riding on the anti-immigrant discourse of “foreigners steal our jobs” the KwaZulu-Natal government
announced investment of over R300 million to assist local small businesses in competing with their
foreign counterparts (Hans 2015).
4 For example, see Imarisha and Brown (2015).
5 See Purcell (2015), drawing on Rancière’s work.

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 23
HEGEMONIC PLANNING AND
MARGINALIZING PEOPLE
Yosef Jabareen

Introduction
Often viewed as a public undertaking aimed at creating a better society and better cities,
planning has long been portrayed as a state responsibility that is visionary, utopian, progressive,
and reformist in nature and that is intended to serve as a fair and legitimate process for produc-
ing preferable physical and social spaces (Bridge & Watson, 2000; Hillier, 2010). Indeed, in both
theory and practice, it has typically been taken for granted “that planning is, could, or should be,
A Good Thing” (Huxley, 2010: 136). Despite these claims, however, planning is often not what
we were promised and can have catastrophic impact on different populations. Some scholars have
used the metaphor of a “dark side” of planning to draw attention to the negative outcomes of
the process (Flyvbjerg, 2002; Huxley, 2010; Jabareen 2017; Sandercock, 1998; Yiftachel, 1994).
This chapter interrogates the role of state planning in marginalizing and oppressing
religious, racial, national, ethnic, and other kinds of social groups with the aim of exploring
the existing theories and contributing to the theorization of the subject. Interestingly, the
literature review reflects that although much has already been written on this issue, little theo-
rization has thus far considered the role of planning as an instrument of marginalization and
domination. To begin filling this gap, this chapter pursues a theory of planning that engages
with broader society but that also sheds light on the state’s implementation of spatial planning
on a practical level.
Drawing on Lacanian, Žižekian, and Laclauian concepts of fantasy, lack, and desire I theorize
and propose the theoretical framework of “hegemonic planning,” which, I argue, serves to
approach fulfilling the fantasy of the state apparatuses, or precisely the politically hegemonic
groups, regarding their own ethnonationalist or ideological hegemony. This fantasy is related
to the “harmony” and “wholeness” of this hegemonic group, while excluding disadvantaged
groups, the “others,” from this total fantasy, and perceiving them as alien to their home-state
frameworks and as “others” who need to be addressed through marginalization, oppression,
exclusion, and dispossession. In this chapter, I suggest that hegemonic planning plays a powerful
role in promoting and accomplishing state supremacy on the ground by fulfilling state fantasies
through the use of common professional spatial planning practices and sophisticated, manipula-
tive, and often veiled planning measures aimed at displacing and marginalizing people.

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The next section reviews the literature on the darker side of planning and is followed by
a detailed analysis of examples of state spatial planning practices from three different countries
around the world: Iraq, Israel, and South Africa. The chapter’s final two sections discuss the
dearth of planning theory on the marginalization and oppression of people, and propose an
outline for a new direction in the conceptualization of hegemonic planning.

Theories on the Planning of Oppression and Marginalization

The past half century has witnessed a steady increase in literature that acknowledges the darker
side of planning and its adverse impact on minorities and immigrants. In the 1960s and 1970s,
planning theorists such as Davidoff (1965), Friedmann (1973), Grabow & Heskin (1973), and
Goodman (1971) began to draw attention to planning’s detrimental impact on social and ethnic
groups. During the 1960s, the decade of civil rebellion, some practitioners started to question
the premises of traditional land use and redevelopment planning, as well as the racial bias that
was inherent in the profession (Manning & Ritzdorf, 1997), and by the 1970s, some African
American communities had begun to realize the relationship between environmental problems
in their communities and discriminatory exposure to toxic substances and unwanted land uses
(Manning & Ritzdorf, 1997).
In After the Planners (1971), Robert Goodman argued that planning had already had disastrous
effects on the lives of the poor and the disenfranchised in the US and – though allegedly “value
free,” “scientific,” and “rational” – had contributed to social oppression and marginalization.
Planners, he contended, were “not the visible symbols of oppression like the military and the
police” but “more sophisticated, more educated, more socially conscious than the generals”
(Goodman, 1971: 13). Under the mask of rationality, efficiency, and science, planning had
become a sophisticated weapon for maintaining existing controls on populations. “Advocacy
planning” and “participatory planning” helped maintain this veneer by allowing the poor to
administer their own dependency (p. 172).
More recently, a number of scholars have reached conclusions regarding the racial sides of
early zoning in the United States (Manning & Ritzdorf, 1997; Shertzer & Walsh, 2016; Fischel,
2001). In their examination of the initial comprehensive zoning ordinance adopted by Chicago
in 1923, which was one of the first and most influential policies of its kind, Shertzer & Walsh
(2016) find zoning and racial and ethnic composition to be mutually constitutive; that is to say,
not only was zoning in the city influenced by the racial and ethnic composition of neighbor-
hoods, but it also served to reshape the urban landscape faced by black and immigrant city
residents. For example, neighborhoods that were home to higher percentages of black residents
were more likely to be zoned for higher density buildings, and neighborhoods with larger popu-
lations of black residents or recent immigrants were disproportionately zoned for manufacturing
(Shertzer & Walsh, 2016). According to Rothwell & Massey (2009), the higher population
densities in minority neighborhoods in comparison to white neighborhoods leads to the con-
centration of poverty and creates an additional exit barrier for racial and ethnic minorities who
wish to move elsewhere. Others have shown how zoning has been used to prevent the entry of
immigrants and poorer households into wealthier white neighborhoods, for example, by means
of minimum lot size requirements, which contribute to segregation by race and income (Shlay
& Rossi, 1981; Rothwell & Massey, 2009; Sharkey, 2013). In some cases, mixed use zoning has
been disproportionately allocated to low-income and minority communities, yielding disparities
in environmental quality across neighborhoods and depressed land values (Wilson et al., 2008).
Wilson et al. (2008: 212) also argue that zoning and land-use policies are often discriminatory
and exclusionary, resulting in the “inequitable distribution of health-enriching resources to poor

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and minority communities.” Regarding the disastrous outcomes of state planning, James Scott
(1999) interrogates failed cases of large-scale state plans and argues against state planning that
disregards the values, desires, and objections of its subjects.
Additional critiques of negative planning outcomes have been advanced from different
viewpoints, including feminist (see Fainstein & Servon, 2005; Sandercock & Forsyth, 1992)
and postcolonial (Legg, 2007; Rabinow, 1989) perspectives and indigenous studies (Howitt &
Lunkapis, 2010).
Since the late 1990s, the field of planning has also produced a rich body of knowledge
regarding conflict in cities, based largely on investigations of specific cities in states of deep
ethnic, religious, and social conflict that are polarized along ethnic and ideological lines. In the
literature, such cities have been referred to using a plethora of different designations, including
“cities under conflict,” “divided cities,” “deeply divided cities,” “ethno-nationally divided cit-
ies,” “polarized cities,” “contested cities,” and “frontier cities.” This scholarship explores the
role of planning in such contexts, with a focus on conflict mitigation and resolution.
Conflict in such cities has revolved around a wide range of issues such as sovereignty, legitimacy,
territory, collective identity, narrative, social control, the spatial division of labor, economics, and
the control of resources, culture, and administration (Kotek, 1999; Paasi, 2003; Anderson, 2010;
Kliot & Mansfield, 1999; Gaffikin & Morrissey, 2011). The cities examined in this context have
included Brussels, Johannesburg, Belfast, Beirut, Sarajevo, Jerusalem, and Nicosia.
Some scholars have suggested that, depending on how we use it, planning can result in
disempowerment and marginalization or empowerment and the achievement of peace and
political compromise in contested cities. Gaffikin and Morrissey (2011), who examine spatial
planning in the context of deeply contested cities, maintain that all cities are divided, as their
stakeholders are characterized by differential access and vested interests marked by categories
of class, ethnicity, and gender. Their analysis distinguishes between two primary forms of
contested urban space: one in which dispute and antagonism is related to issues of pluralism,
and another that is largely about sovereignty, stemming from an ethnonational conflict over
the legitimacy of the state itself. The latter form of contested urban space incorporates many
more problematic features, as the notion of indivisible territory minimizes the scope for
political compromise. Planners in these contexts, they explain, tend to present themselves
as “apolitical technical professionals,” though their professed “neutrality” in the midst of
urban conflict is a delusion. They also maintain that new forms of justice and comprehen-
sive, inclusive, and participatory spatial planning interventions that transcend the narrow
ambitions of physical land-use planning have the power to resolve such conflicts, and that
planning that remains within its traditional confines will continue to promote inequalities,
enclaves, and violence and inhibit democratic politics. Ultimately, however, Gaffikin and
Morrissey (2011) conclude that even collaborative planning has its limitations, particularly
in highly contested places.
Bollens (2013) has also framed planning as a force with resolving capacity that has a powerful
impact on contested cities. According to his analysis, planning reflects the intention and role of
the government in contested places (Bollens, 2007). Bollens also shows how planning can play
supportive and even catalytic roles in regional and national peace-building, help create physical
and psychological spaces that can contribute to and actualize political stability and co-existence
in such cities, and empower marginalized people (Bollens, 2007). Elsewhere, I have shown
how, under conditions of ethnic conflict, planning in the service of hegemonic ethnic groups
has the power to reshape, foster, and generate conflicts among urban identities by creating
“spaces of risk” in cities (Jabareen, 2006, 2015, 2017),as well as the power to create “spaces of
trust” (Jabareen & Carmon, 2010).

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Yiftachel (1994, 2006) highlights the dark side of state policies implemented in the context of
ethnic conflict and emphasizes their role in effecting territorial ethnicization. To better under-
stand these dynamics, he proposes the political-geography concept of “ethnocracy”: a regime
type that “surfaces in disputed territories, where one ethnonational group is able to appropriate
the state apparatus and mobilize its legal, economic, and military resources to further its territo-
rial, economic, cultural, and political interests” and that “facilitates and promotes the process of
ethnicization” (Yiftachel, 2006: 295). However, this concept does not provide a theorization of
the type of planning such regimes typically employ.
Overall, the planning literature conveys a vivid account of the disastrous, unjust, and detri-
mental impact of state planning practices on social and ethnic groups but also highlights planning’s
dual capacity for the empowerment/disempowerment and enfranchisement/disenfranchisement
of people and groups.

Three Cases of Oppression and Marginalization

This chapter analyzes state planning and its outcomes in three countries characterized by acute
ethnonational tension and conflict. Many states around the world, from the most advanced to
the least developed in both the North and the South, have employed planning for the purpose
of marginalizing and oppressing social and ethnic groups. This chapter considers three countries
based on two criteria: (1) the type of ethnic domination in place, and (2) the existence of a
domestic ethnonationalist state ideology, as such ideologies are typically clearly reflected in state
planning. Based on these criteria, this chapter will consider the following three cases: (1) Iraq,
which for an extended period (1968–2004) was ruled by a single dominant political party with
a nationalist state ideology; (2) Israel, which is governed by a dominant majority with a clear
nationalist state ideology; and (3) apartheid South Africa, which during its years in existence was
governed by a dominant minority with a clear race-focused ideology.

Case 1: Iraq
Iraq is replete with multiethnic sectarian strife. One predominant element of Iraqi state admin-
istration that has remained relatively consistent in recent decades has stemmed from Iraqi
ethnonationalist state ideology, specifically with regard to the Kurdish minority, which accounts
for between 15% and 20% of the Iraqi population (as opposed to a 75% Arab majority). Since
the establishment of Iraq in 1932, the Kurds, a people indigenous to the northern and eastern
regions of the country, have been struggling for self-determination (Aziz, 2011).
Since the establishment of modern Iraq, the hegemonic political power has desired to alter
Iraq to be an exclusively Arab-dominated country. Accordingly, the state political power has
been intervening in resetting the spatial-demographic distribution of ethnic groups in the coun-
try, and displacing the Kurds, the major minority of the country, and concentrating them in
specific designated areas.
In 1968, a coup led by the Ba’ath Party seized control of the state apparatus and continued
to govern the country for 35 years, until 2003. The Ba’ath Party espouses an Arab nationalist
ideology that celebrates the glories of Arab civilization and calls for rejuvenation and political
union of the Arab countries (Khalidi, 1993). In an effort to promote the party’s conception
that both the state and its territories should be dominated by Arabs, the country’s centralist
totalitarian government used a combination of nationalism, ethnopolitics, and a centralized
ideology of modernization to heavily intervene in the management and design of territory
(Recchia, 2012).

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The desire to fulfill this ideology on the ground was implemented through national state
planning, which had two major objectives: Arabization and modernization. The Arabization of
Iraq in general and a number of Kurdish minority areas in particular emerged as a critical tool
for contending with “the Kurdish question” and with other minorities in Iraq. Accordingly,
successive Iraqi governments have applied different tactics to transform the ethnic character of
the Kirkuk region and to force Kurds, Turkmen, and Assyrians from their homes and replace
them with Arabs from other parts of Iraq (Aziz, 2011). Primary goals of this geographical focus
have been to promote an Arab presence throughout the country, to safeguard Arab national
hegemony, and to ensure state control over the Kurdish region’s rich oil fields and valuable
arable land (Talabany, 2000; Recchia, 2012).
Under the fantasy of having a “clean” and “whole” Arab state, the Arabization mission
during the 1970s and 1980s was set forth with the government forcibly displacing hundreds of
thousands of Kurds, Turkomans, and Assyrians from their homes and replacing them with Arab
settlers (Human Rights Watch, 2004). Arabization on a massive scale first occurred in the sec-
ond half of the 1970s following the Iraqi government’s creation of an autonomous zone in parts
of Iraqi Kurdistan, when some 250,000 Kurds and other non-Arabs were expelled from a wide
strip of northern Iraq where Arabs were subsequently settled in their stead. During this process,
the land ownership rights of Kurds and other non-Arabs were negated and land in the area was
declared government land and leased to new Arab farmers by annual contract.
Moreover, the Ba’ath Party embraced a socialist nationalist ideology that, in the 1970s, led
the state to implement a grand national socialist-inspired plan aimed at reorganizing the country
based on Soviet projects of collectivization and agrarian transformation. The plan called for a
massive reallocation of resources from industrial development to agriculture, and to that end the
government engaged in a massive confiscation project that affected 64% of the privately owned
land in the country (Springborg, 1981). The reforms included the establishment of dozens of
Collective Towns throughout Iraq, based on the socialist government’s desire to develop a
Soviet model of socialist villages throughout the country. The Collective Towns initiative was
based on the premise that merging multiple villages into large towns would improve infrastruc-
ture, and was implemented not only in Kurdistan but throughout Iraq. Through this effort, the
Iraqi government encouraged people to live more modern lives in new houses with running
water and sanitation, and because their agricultural land was located in close proximity to the
Collective Towns, the people did not oppose it.
However, in the 1980s, the state began to use this framework to achieve ethnic goals rather
than fulfill the government’s socialist agenda as initially planned. Now, people were forced
to move to Collective Towns where the land had already been divided, and engineers super-
vised the forced construction of structures by the local population. The aim was no longer the
modernization of rural life but rather the Arabization of Kurdish areas; the incorporation of
the inhabitants of Kurdish villages into large Collective Towns in order to control the Kurdish
population. Ultimately, the government constructed 35 Kurdish Collective Towns, with some
containing a population of almost 60,000. Town and housing design – which was centralized,
conducted in Baghdad, and applied in equal measure to Collective Towns all over Kurdistan –
also facilitated the imposition of control. The towns were gated, located in close proximity to
military outposts, and positioned on a grid of wide perpendicular roads that divided the neigh-
borhoods into orderly blocks allowing for easy mobility, access, and visibility for purposes of
control (Recchia, 2012).
The fantasy of having a purely Arab state has sustained, as well as infused the desire of the
state hegemonic power to fulfill this fantasy through spatial planning alongside other military
and policy measures. Overall, national planning, which had served the state to achieve its desire

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of ethnic hegemony, had a catastrophic impact on minorities in Iraq, especially Kurds. The
grand plan of the Collective Towns, which in effect became Kurdish camps with dismal socio-
economic and spatial conditions, resulted in the depopulation and destruction of approximately
4,000 Kurdish villages. The impact of three decades of hegemonic planning, forced displace-
ment, and Arabization was immense, with approximately 900,000 displaced persons living in
the Kurdish governorates of Arbil, Duhok, and Sulaimaniyya in 2001, toward the end of the
period in question (Human Rights Watch, 2004).

Case 2: Israel
The fantasy of complete control and possession of the “promised land of Israel,” the historic,
pre-1948 Palestine, as an exclusively “Jewish State,” or what has politically evolved in recent
years as a “Jewish Democratic State,” despite the presence of some millions of indigenous
Palestinians, has been infusing the Israeli desire for certain territorial and demographic poli-
cies, at least since the state’s establishment in 1948. The Palestinian minority within Israel has
been perceived as a demographic and territorial threat to fulfilling the national fantasy, which
needs to be addressed, tackled, and confronted through spatial planning and other security and
national policies (Jabareen, 2014, 2015, 2017).
During the 1948 war in Palestine that resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel,
780,000 Palestinians were dispossessed and displaced and an estimated 400 Palestinian cities,
towns, and villages were completely uprooted (Abu-Lughod, 1971). In this way, the over-
whelming Palestinian majority of pre-1948 Palestine was transformed almost overnight into a
Palestinian minority in Israel, with most Palestinian inhabitants of the state’s territory becoming
refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and neighboring Arab countries. Within the borders
of Israel, only 156,000 Arabs remained, becoming citizens of Israel and constituting an ethic
minority of about 20% of the country’s population.
The roots of Israeli planning ideology reach back to the Zionist movement, which was
founded in 1897 as a Jewish national organization aimed at building a homeland for Jews in
Palestine through land acquisition and colonization. The Zionist movement conceived the
territory of Palestine as “under-cultivated,” “pure,” “empty,” and devoid of its indigenous
Palestinian population (Shafir, 2008; Kimmerling & Migdal, 2008; Ram, 2003) and framed it
as a “terra nullius” (an empty land) awaiting Jewish redemption after centuries of neglect. This
approach is reflected in the assertion by Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the state of
Israel, that “the Jews alone were capable of rebuilding Palestine and giving it a place in the mod-
ern family of nations” (Said, 1979: 13). On this basis, concludes Said (1979), the constitutive
energies of Zionism were premised on the excluded presence of “native people” in Palestine.
This traditional form of Zionism continues to provide the political and ideological foundation
for Israeli government planning practices up to the present.
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has acknowledged the power of national spatial planning.
Israel’s first national plan, known as the Sharon Plan (1951), portrayed the country’s landscape
as “lost,” “under-cultivated,” “abused,” and “neglected” by the native Palestinians, and, most
importantly, as only sparsely inhabited by Jews. On this basis, from Israel’s first national plan to
its most recent, the major concern of state and spatial planning has been to address the “lack” of
sufficient Jewish presence in various parts of the country, as well as the “gap” in development.
In an effort to fill this lack, Israeli state authorities immediately embarked on a grand spatial-
demographic project of Jewish settlement and internal colonization, which continues today.
Spatial planning has dramatically served Israel in its endeavor to achieve hegemony of the
territory and demography of Israel itself and beyond its border in the occupied West Bank

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and East Jerusalem. Although Israel has employed various strategies to actualize its spatial con-
ception, all have reflected the unifying approach of “Judaization”; this concept has been a
Master-Signifier, which has led the entire planning agenda. This concept was initially used by
state authorities to refer to the exclusionary ethnonationalist policy by which planning and eco-
nomic development has been used to promote the interests of the “Jewish People” rather than
the overall population of the country. Judaization, and its prevailing planning tool of “popula-
tion dispersal,” enabled the state to use the country’s new Jewish immigrant population as a
vehicle for extensive colonization and for filling the territorial void. In this context, Israeli lead-
ers and planners have perceived the country’s indigenous Palestinian population as a dangerous
demographic entity (Jabareen, 2015). This approach has been vividly manifested in national and
district plans, which have related to Palestinians in a hostile and antagonistic manner, portraying
them as “illegal builders” and “illegal invaders” of state lands, a “spreading and expanding popu-
lation,” and a “demographic threat.” Laws facilitating the “Judaization of land” have enabled
the state to effect a massive confiscation of Palestinian land that has resulted in state ownership
of 93% of all land in the country, with only approximately 2.5% of the country’s land owned
by members of Israel’s Palestinian minority (even though they account for nearly 21% of the
overall population). The state’s Jewish dominated military apparatus also plays a significant role
in spatial planning in the country, enjoying complete control, with almost no civilian involve-
ment, over vast swaths of territory which together account for nearly 50% of Israel’s overall land
area (Oren & Regev, 2008).

Case 3: South Africa

Despite their status as a minority, albeit a dominant hegemonic minority, the fantasy of the
white minority during the apartheid regime was to wholly control South Africa; to use its
human and material resources while neglecting the very basic interests of the vast majority. The
dominant minority fantasy of creating separate “homelands” for indigenous ethnic groups in
the same country had infused, channeled, and organized the apartheid desires and its subsequent
social, economic, and spatial practices.
The racially inspired social and economic divisions that characterized apartheid South Africa
(1948–94) were spatially constructed and systemized through national legislation and local
planning (Maylam, 1995; Hart, 1990; Watson, 2002). Spatial oppression, exploitation, and sep-
aration were based firmly on minority domination, as well as on a “scientific racial” ideology
that held that different races should remain separated from one another for their own mutual
interest. The cultural-anthropological rationalization of apartheid, at least initially, was that dif-
ferent cultures are incommensurable; that the integrity of each culture should be respected and
its survival safeguarded; and that the only way to do this in a multi-cultural society was through
political and geographical separation, that is, by creating separate “homelands” for each ethni-
cally defined cultural group (Van der Merwe, 1996). The resulting social engineering program
for the sweeping and violent institutionalization of separation, and the very real way in which
this program isolated communities from one another, brought about misunderstanding, bigotry,
and animosity (Van der Merwe, 1996: 85). Afrikaners held that it was impossible, impracti-
cable, and ungodly for the different races and cultures to live together. Apartheid itself was a
totalitarian system that specifically reinforced and politicized ethnic diversity and deliberately
accommodated the values, norms, and interests of the society’s white “Eurocentric” ruling class
at the expense of others (Van der Merwe, 1996). It was upon this vision that apartheid was
constructed and that the country’s successive white governments pursued a policy of separate
development (Brits, 2007).

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In response to the Afrikaner National government’s request in 1948 to conduct research into
the implementation of the official policy of apartheid, Professor Frederik Tomlinson advised
that a separation of the races could be effective if the government were to prepare a finan-
cial apartheid policy. The Tomlinson Report also recommended that reserves be set up in
seven areas as Bantu (native) homelands, or Bantustans (Roberts, 2001), which would remain
separated from the white community and eventually become independent. The report also rec-
ommended the construction of factories at the edges of these areas and the relocation, over time,
of all blacks in South Africa to prescribed Bantustans, from which they would be able to enter
white areas only for the purpose of work and with appropriate documentation (in the form of
a “passbook”). The key function of this system was to keep blacks and whites entirely separate,
thereby preserving the purity of the white race (Brits, 2007).
The ideology of territorial racial-oriented segregation, spatial surveillance and control, and
ethnic-oriented economic growth guided spatial planning policies for many decades throughout
the apartheid years and during the decades that preceded it. Yet, the legal system made perhaps
the most dramatic contribution to segregation and its spatial planning. The major piece of leg-
islation that served to facilitate racial-spatial segregation in South Africa was the Natives Land
Act of 1913, which decreed that only certain areas of the country could be owned by natives.
These areas initially totaled 7.13% (9,709,586 acres) of the entire land area of the Union, but
were later expanded under the Natives’ Trust and Land Act of 1936 to include approximately
13.6% of the total area of South Africa (Collins & Burns, 2007; Harrison et al., 2008), although
it appears that this goal was never reached.
Urban racial segregation became an explicit policy of the South African government, and
town planning was viewed as the primary tool for shaping the new urban landscape (Mabin &
Smit, 1997). Generally speaking, state spatial planning had long been used in South Africa to
play both a managing role in relation to the spatial separation of racial groups and a welfare-
oriented role in relation to the planning of housing and facilities for those of the African and
colored population deemed necessary for the urban economy. In the post-1948 years, how-
ever, urban racial segregation became an explicit policy of government, and town planning
was viewed as the primary tool through which the new urban landscape should be fashioned.
Planners justified their plans as reflecting a scientific approach to land allocations, and, as shown
by Watson, planning as a “tool of racial segregation” gained legitimacy from its discourse of
“improving welfare and modernization” (Watson, 2002: 25–26).
The spatial policy of apartheid incorporated separate development for black people, in their
own reservations according to their own national character, with the deprivation of political
rights for black people in “white” areas, the division of black labor among the country’s various
economic sectors, and influx control and apartheid in industry (Brits, 2007). State planning had
long been used to play both a managing role, in relation to the spatial separation of racial groups,
and a welfare-related role, in relation to the planning of housing and facilities for the members
of the Black African population deemed necessary for the urban economy (Harrison et al.,
2008). In this context, planners were involved in designing the new racially segregated town-
ships as discrete residential neighborhoods surrounded by green belts with few access routes. And
this, in turn, allowed for more effective policing and control (Collins & Burns, 2007) and the
imposition of coercive structures through which the racially exclusionary city was engineered
(Harrison et al., 2008).
Planners took part in designing “Grand Apartheid” and in building the new large public
housing estates required to both house the workforce and accomplish more comprehensive seg-
regation. They were also involved in planning the “township,” a term used in the South African

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planning lexicon to refer to the large segregated public housing estate that was usually located
on or beyond the urban periphery (Mabin & Smit, 1997).
In apartheid South Africa, state planning resulted in highly segregated socio-spatial spaces
throughout the country, as well as distinctive socio-economic spaces based primarily on race. It
also resulted in cities and towns with distinctive spatial forms (Harrison et al., 2008). The new
townships created for “people of color” – to which people were forced to relocate, breaking
up communities and social networks – were extremely poor in terms of land use and facilities.
These spatially segregated forms impeded the mobility of non-whites and physically trapped
them in poor areas (Harrison et al., 2008). Under apartheid, planning not only produced new
racially segregated townships but also employed various land-use related measures to enhance
security and policing, including the design of discrete residential “neighborhoods”; the encir-
cling of such neighborhoods by green belts or buffer zones; and the designation of few access
routes, facilitating more effective policing and control (Watson, 2002).

Planning, Oppression, and Marginalization: The Dearth of Theory

In the three countries considered in this study, state planning and its products reflect the dismal
status of minorities, marginalization, oppression, and dispossession. This chapter highlights the
influence of race and ethnicity on spatial planning in these case studies and concludes that spatial
planning is racially and ethnically differentiated. In addition to planning, which, as reflected in
the existing planning literature, has had disastrous effects on the lives of disenfranchised groups in
the guise of supposed rationality, professionalism, and scientific planning (Goodman, 1971), land
use and zoning have also been discriminatorily applied to the disenfranchised in different ways,
resulting in the restriction of movement, segregated areas, densely populated places, the lack of
economic resources, and inadequate social and physical facilities and infrastructures (Manning
& Ritzdorf, 1997; Sharkey, 2013; Shertzer & Walsh, 2016; Fischel, 2001; Rothwell & Massey,
2009; Shlay & Rossi, 1981; Watson, 2002; Wilson et al., 2008). State planning has also been
used to enhance the control and hegemony of dominant groups, for example, in ethnocratic
regimes aimed at the ethnicization of the state at the expense of other groups (Yiftachel, 2006).
However, the existing literature reflects that although much has already been written on
this issue, little theorization has thus far considered the role of planning as an instrument of
marginalization and domination, leaving unanswered major questions such as: Why do states
use planning to marginalize their own citizens in general and the members of specific social and
ethnic groups in particular? What justifications have been offered for national spatial agendas of
oppressing citizens? How do states legitimize their planning ideologies, values, discourses, and
missions and succeed in achieving consensus within dominant groups? And, on a theoretical
level, what is the ontological foundation for this approach to planning, which motivates states to
channel vast resources into oppressing their own citizens? In this way, the literature on planning
theory reflects a current need for theorization that is capable of illuminating the “overarching
ideological societal framework” in which such state planning resides. To begin filling this gap,
this chapter pursues a theory of planning that engages with broader society but that also sheds
light on the state’s implementation of spatial planning on a practical level (see Gunder & Hillier,
2009: 192). More specifically, the literature on the subject provides little ontological insight
into the nature of this type of planning, why it occurs, and its relationship to state and society,
all of which must be thoroughly understood in order to theorize it. The final section of this
chapter seeks to begin filling this gap by suggesting a future theoretical direction and proposing
a theoretical approach to the role of state planning in human oppression and marginalization.

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Theorizing Hegemonic Planning: Outlining a

Future Theoretical Direction
One direction for theorization, which I tentatively outline here, is that of “hegemonic planning”
which is carried out by states whose apparatuses oppress and marginalize different groups. Building
on the Lacanian perspective, I suggest that planning in general, and state hegemonic planning in
particular, are constructed around the “imaginary mode” and the concept of fantasy. Lacan sug-
gests that at the “mirror stage” the child in early months “primordially identifies with the visual
gestalt of his own body. In comparison with the still very profound lack of coordination in his
own motor functioning, that gestalt is an ideal unity, a salutary imago” (Lacan, 2006: 113). This
imaginary mode “turns out fantasies that proceed from a fragmented image of the body” to a
“form of its totality” (Lacan, 2006: 97). The difference between the whole, total, and ideal image
and the fragmented experience of the infant constitutes lack (Lacan, 2006: 186), which must be
understood not as “lack of this or that” but as “the lack of being, properly speaking” (Lacan 1988:
223). Furthermore, “lack” is always related to desire, and it is lack that causes desire to arise (Lacan,
1988). Thus, desire is a relation of being to lack (Lacan, 1988), a metonymy of the lack of being.
The desire for being is to “fill” the “lack” and become “whole” and “complete.” Therefore,
“desire is the metonymy of the want to-be” (Lacan, 2006: 623). Fantasy, another central concept
of Lacan’s perspective, in its fundamental use, “is the means by which the subject maintains himself
at the level of his vanishing desire, vanishing inasmuch as the very satisfaction of demand deprives
him of his object” (Lacan, 2006: 637). Thus, fantasy is what sustains the subject as desiring. Its aim
is not to ratify the fulfillment of desire but to sustain the subject’s desire by telling it how to desire
(Glynos, 2001). According to Žižek, desire is not something given in advance, but something that
has to be constructed and articulated through fantasy (Žižek, 1989: 9). Fantasy is “a scenario that
realizes the subject’s desire” (Žižek, 1989: 6) and “teaches us how to desire” (Žižek, 2009: 40). It
sustains the subject as a desiring subject by providing it with a mode of jouissance.
Here, I use Lacan’s abstraction to theorize hegemonic planning. Yet, this methodological
transition, from the psychoanalytical approach to a socio-political analysis is uncomfortable and
may raise some skepticism (Butler, 2000; Glynos, 2001). Here, I follow Laclau (2000) who
posits that if lack occurs at the level of the individual subject, then it also occurs in similar ways
at the level of the social. Moreover, I pay particular attention to Gunder & Hillier (2009), who
highlight the “critical awareness and insight” offered by Lacan into “the role of identification,
fantasy and belief in spatial planning,” and discuss how this is often synonymous with the
development of power as it shapes our communities (Gunder & Hillier, 2009: 181).
Hegemonic planning, I posit, is intimately linked to the desires, lacks, and fantasies of the
state’s hegemonic group and apparatus regarding their own ethnonationalist hegemony, or
ideological hegemony. The national fantasy of “wholeness” sustains the emptiness of the Master-
Signifier of “We,” “Our Nation,” “Our Lands,” “Our Security,” “Internal Threat,” etc. Yet,
the function of the fantasy is in filling in the void of the Master-Signifier (Žižek, 2009: 373). The
hegemony fantasy serves to bridge a perceived lack and is aimed at achieving ethnonational-
ist “harmony” and “wholeness” while excluding, marginalizing, oppressing, and dispossessing
other collective groups of citizens or residents, the “others,” those who are perceived as aliens
in their homelands and who prevent “us” from being a “whole.”
Planning has a central function in serving the hegemony fantasy and desire of the hegem-
onic group and their state apparatuses. More specifically, hegemonic planning plays a powerful
role in filling the “lack” of incompleteness on the ground. Ironically, this lack is related to the
very presence of “other” ethnic or social groups and their spatial and demographic distributions
as well as their hold of lands within the state. The hegemonic groups perceive this presence

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and territorial distribution as “holes” and “voids,” which harm the fantasy of the “total” and
“complete” “Nation,” “Ethnic,” and/or “Territory” and so forth. In this context, the power
of planning is supreme since it has the power to manipulate both the settings and futures of
geography and demography, i.e. territory and people. As such, hegemonic planning addresses
what the hegemonic group “would like to be” in terms of territoriality through the use of com-
mon professional planning practices and sophisticated, manipulative, and often veiled planning
measures aimed at displacing and marginalizing people.
The main thrust of the fantasy of the hegemonic groups in our three cases, involves fill-
ing the “lack,” which is related to the very presence of “other” groups: the Kurds in Iraq, the
Palestinians in Israel, and the majority of Africans in South Africa. In these countries, various
terminology of Master-Signifiers, such as “security,” “historic rights,” “destiny,” and “divine
promise,” conceive the “others” as “inferior,” “threatening,” “unwanted,” and “disruptive”
groups. In our cases, we identified fantasies regarding singular national ethnic purity, uniformity,
uniqueness, exceptionalism, cohesion, homogeneity, and purging, typically accompanied by a
belief in one national ethnic group’s unique form, if not superiority to others.
In our three cases, hegemonic planning appears as a powerful tool with the ability to manipulate
territories and spaces using a multiplicity of commonplace planning practices, such as: changing
land uses and allocating resources in ways that result in the moving and removal, replacement
and displacement, and dispersal and concentration of people; the construction, destruction, and
rebuilding of settlements and neighborhoods; the allocation and confiscation of land and materials;
and the renaming of places. These practices tend to work to the advantage of dominant, privi-
leged groups and to the detriment of the underprivileged. These observations are consistent with
the literature’s previously noted assessment that although it typically operates behind a veneer
of “objectivity,” “science,” “rationalism,” and “the public interest,” planning has the power to
oppress and marginalize, and that although not “the visible symbols of oppression,” planners often
possess a sophistication, education, and social consciousness lacked by the police and the mili-
tary (Goodman, 1971: 13). Ultimately, hegemonic planning is a coercive process involving the
manipulation of spatial, demographic, and other material and symbolic resources; the sometimes
unscrupulous translation of “ideological” agendas into planning; and the employment of dynamic
spatial practices and strategies (based on modern and postmodern planning professionalism) that
may be violent, racist, and oppressive, and that often raise profound ethical questions. Finally, the
history of Iraq, Israel, and South Africa tells us that the fantasy of hegemony is premised on the
impossible: the vanishing of its disruptive others, who in many cases are simply ordinary citizens
whose fault is that they belong to the “other” skin, nation, or simply social group.
Finally, the framework that suggests the grand fantasies of “wholeness,” “total,” and “com-
pleteness”; the lack, the holes of incompleteness, which the presence of others impose; and the
desire of the hegemonic group or the state apparatuses to fill the lack, addresses this chapter’s
main questions of why do states use planning to marginalize people, what are the justifications
for oppressing people, and what is the ontological foundation for this approach to planning that
motivates states to channel vast resources into oppressing their own citizens? In this manner,
planning is central to the mission of hegemonic fantasy.

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 24
ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY
Yvonne Rydin

Introduction
When the term ‘actor-network theory’ or ANT is raised, probably the most immediate thought
conjured up is that ANT proposes material ‘things’ have agency like human actors. As this chapter
will explore, this is not exactly what ANT in any of its varieties proposes, nor is it a sufficient
account of what theoretical perspectives drawing on ANT can offer planning analysts. This
chapter will set out the origins and development of ANT thinking, explain the key concepts
and discuss the mode of argumentation and research implied by adopting an ANT perspective.
It will consider some of the key criticisms made of ANT – including those relating to the above-
mentioned agency of things – and consider some responses. It concludes by outlining some
possible trajectories for ANT research within planning studies.
In setting out this account of ANT and planning, a claim is being made for the importance
of ANT thinking to understanding key aspects of how planning processes work. The claim rests
on ANT’s ability to develop a relational analysis appropriate for the complexity of the world
we live in and which planning practice seeks to impact. It implies an acceptance of the critiques
of rational modes of planning theory and practice, with their emphasis on seeing planning
actions in terms of a set of prescriptions and on implementing agreed policies and plans. It also
shies away from developing grand narratives of social order or economic crisis within which
the operation of planning systems can be set. Both of these perspectives have their roots in a
modernist view of the world and ANT is, above all, against a singular modernism. As a result
ANT cannot provide a comprehensive and dominant account of planning practice. Like any
theoretical perspective, it highlights some aspects and downplays or even ignores others. If those
areas on which it shines a spotlight seem significant and even practically useful, then ANT has
a role to play.

Origins and Applications

To appreciate the contribution that ANT can make to planning scholarship, it is important to
realise how and where it arose. ANT was originally a contribution to science studies, under-
standing how scientific expertise is accredited and scientific knowledge generated. It fitted
within the social constructivist turn of the 1980s that saw knowledge claims not as objective

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reflections of reality but rather as created and maintained through social processes. The dis-
cursive construction of knowledge claims was considered worthy of attention, including the
detailed processes by which scientific institutions worked and thus the early work of Bruno
Latour (the theorist most closely associated with ANT although the contributions of Michel
Callon, John Law and Annemarie Mol should also be acknowledged) concerned detailed
ethnographic studies of laboratories.
This emphasis on how social processes are involved in generating scientific knowledge
led at the time to a rather crudely drawn debate over whether there was a material reality or
whether the social constructivist perspective denied the physical reality of our world (Collins
and Evans, 2002). This proved an arid debate and Latour himself (1999a) has made it quite
clear that he is a realist as well as a social constructivist. Indeed the controversial claims over
the agency of the material arise from the desire to have both a realist as well as a constructivist
element within ANT.
While Latour and Callon pursued this line through widely cited studies of Pasteur’s ‘discovery’
of bacteria (Latour, 1993) and the role of expertise in promoting scallop fishing (Callon, 1986),
ANT was providing inspiration to a range of researchers working in different fields. Mol (2002),
for example, has used it to explore health issues and Feldman and Pentland (2005) to consider
business management. But there is also an increasing number of planning-related applications.
Latour and Yaneva (2008) have used it to provide an ethnographic account of architectural
practice and Murdoch (1997, 1998) was an earlier pioneer in considering how spatial planning
could be understood through ANT, while Rydin (2012) drew on ANT concepts to understand
the regulation of office development; further planning-related references are provided below.
Also highly influential have been the variant of ANT termed assemblage thinking (see also
Chapter 26 in this volume). As will be explained below, this shares certain common features of
the ANT framework but does not utilise all the conceptual toolbox. Farias and Bender’s edited
collection (2009) applying assemblage thinking to urban studies has been widely cited and there
are more specific applications such as Brownill’s research (2016) on the Localism agenda in
Oxfordshire, England and Guy et al.’s (2016) analysis of an innovative district heating system
in the Hague, Netherlands. These works suggest the value that ANT and related theorising can
bring to planning studies (see also the introduction to Rydin and Tate, 2016).

Key Concepts and Dynamics

The central image at the heart of ANT is the network, an image that suggests linkages between
different elements. ANT is a relational perspective which means that it places emphasis on
the qualities of relationships between elements in accounting for what is happening and how
outcomes occur, rather than the characteristics of the elements. The inclusion of an actor in a
network depends on the capacity for linking within the network, not the strength, mobility and
intentionality of the actors. This puts the emphasis on power and agency as relational effects not
the result of actors’ inherent or acquired characteristics.
Within ANT the term ‘associations’ is commonly used to describe such relationships.
Assemblage thinking focuses almost exclusively on such associations and how they are built
(DeLanda, 2006; see also Murray Li, 2007); this is the key point of contact between ANT and
assemblage approaches. Both also see the ‘networks’ as something rather different to the fixed
network graphs of, say, engineering or mathematics or social network analysis. The network
image is meant to highlight the importance of relationships or associations but not suggest a fixed
pattern of connections between nodes. Hence a variety of other terms have been suggested:

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the biological metaphor of ‘rhizomes’ or the more fluid ‘gel’. Assemblage itself is a metaphor
taken from the translation of the French term ‘agencement’ which suggests the work undertaken
to bring things together, to create associations; the English word ‘assemblage’ puts more emphasis
on the fixture that results.
Here the term ‘network’ will be deployed but in the understanding that the theoretical inter-
est is in the associations it represents and how they came to be forged. For Latour, the persistent
riddle is not how society creates order but how it comes to be ordered through such associa-
tions. Order and stability in relationships is not to be taken for granted but, rather, is the result
of active work, what Ren et al. (2012) describe as “a precarious achievement”. Murdoch was
particularly prescient in seeing plan-making in terms of networks that were in flux, either being
actively stabilised or destabilising (1997, 1998; see also Tate (2013) for her study of growth-
management planning in Vancouver). For Star this stabilisation is not a given fact but always
from a particular perspective; there are “critical differences between those for whom networks
are stable and those for whom they are not, where those are putatively the ‘same’ network”
(1991, p. 42). Ren et al. (2012) emphasise that ANT has a radical ontology whereby multi-
ple realities take shape according to how they are enacted (see also Latour, 2005, p. 36). The
emphasis is, therefore, more on how the connections work from multiple perspectives rather
than the static ordered thing.
The work of building associations is also cross-scalar. ANT operates with a flat ontology
in which relationships can be between elements operating at a number of different scales. A
network might involve a local site, local communities, national developers, national and inter-
national policy artefacts, global flows of finance, global climate change and – down again – to
regional water courses, regional commuting patterns, urban housing markets, site-specific habi-
tats, etc., etc. ANT rejects the idea of layered scales whereby the higher one(s) influences the
lower one(s) in a cascade: macro to meso to micro; global to European to national to regional
to urban to local. It sees network relationships as existing across all these scales at the same time
and thus tracing the connections will necessarily and repeatedly take the analyst to and from the
localised site. Tait’s work (2002) on central–local relations in plan-making makes good use of
this aspect of ANT.
The work of forging and stabilising (always temporarily) relationships within networks is
done by intermediaries or – a more active term – mediators. Callon (1991, p. 135) sets out four
types of intermediary: “texts or more generally literary inscriptions (books, articles, patents,
notes); technical artefacts (scientific instruments, machines, robots, consumer goods); human
beings and the skills, knowledge and know-how that they incorporate; and money in all its
different forms.” So the agency in the network is provided by these mediators bringing actors
into association with each other, a process that is called ‘enrolment’. Enrolment is also one of
the four stages proposed by Callon (1986) as a framework for analysing network dynamics.
Before enrolment can take place, the focus of the network is determined by problematisation –
the identification of the focal problem – and actors have to be gathered as potential network
participants, a process called interessment. Enrolment then follows, with Callon particularly
identifying the way that mediators can persuade actors that it is in their interests to associate
with each other. The final stage is then mobilisation, in which the further actors are made active
through their relationships within the network (see also Murdoch, 1997).
The entire process through these four stages is called translation, a term that sounds like lin-
guistic rewording or reframing; while this can be an important facet of all four stages, translation
is a much broader dynamic, more akin to the mathematical meaning of the term: “To translate
is to displace” (Callon, 1986, p. 75). Translation forges and stabilises the networks of ANT but
it also plays a particular role in actually generating actors and their identities. Translation enables

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actors to speak, act and represent others through defining their roles vis-à-vis each other. It
links characteristics to entities and establishes provisionally stable relations between them. In
this way, actors’ identities, the possibilities of interaction and the scope for manoeuvre are all
negotiated and delimited (Ren et al., 2012). The role of mediators which “transform, trans-
late, distort and modify the meaning or elements they are supposed to carry” is central to this
dynamic (Latour, 2005, p. 39).
ANT, therefore, does not attribute any essence to actors so that they come to be – to have
identities, characteristics and functions – through the associations they are engaged with: “as
entities come to be enrolled, combined, and disciplined within networks so they gain shape and
function” (Murdoch, 1997, p. 741). And if they resist enrolment, this too alters identities and
functions. Thus a ‘community’ involved in networks being built around an urban regenera-
tion project is not a pre-existing entity but formed through the network-building. This helps
explain why ‘this’ kind of community, with its specific social character, becomes part of the
urban regeneration effort.
The account of network dynamics so far could apply to many relational perspectives.
Where ANT and also assemblage thinking differ is that they include non-human elements as
actors. This is the so-called symmetry principle, whereby human and non-human actors are
treated equally within the analysis. Latour (2005) goes further at times to suggest this means
actors are always both human and non-human. Latour coined the term actant to cover this
but the jointly human and non-human nature of actants can be difficult to operationalise and
so the distinction is commonly maintained. Pickering gives a good account of the way in
which human and non-human elements are “mutually and emergently productive” of each
other (1993, p. 567).
Non-human actants can take a variety of forms: animals, aspects of the physical environ-
ment such as rivers or mountains, technology including pipes and wires, and paper artefacts
such as forms, files and plans. This is where the idea that the non-human can exercise agency
comes in. However, following the above account it should be clear that it is not the actant that
is imbued with agency but the relationships within the network that carry agency. Thus the
argument is that associations with non-human actants can be agentive; although the language
of some analysts can often suggest more direct agentive properties of material actants – even
Latour himself (2005, p. 72).
Turning the discussion of agency into one of power, individual actors or actants do not hold
power as a resource. Rather, power is something that is distributed across the network, arising
from how the relationships are formed and activated. For example, McGuirk’s analysis (2000)
of property-led regeneration in Dublin emphasises the distributed nature of power. This aspect
has led, as we will see, to the criticism that ANT does not recognise structures and inequalities
of power within society.
This basic account of ANT can be supplement by few more relevant concepts. First, the
idea of a black box is taken from computing, where a complex set of transformations within a
circuit is represented by a box and reduced to an overall relationship between input and output.
As long as input and output are known, there is no perceived need to explain all the activities
involved in transforming the former into the latter. ANT takes this idea and uses it to under-
stand how some social transformations within a network are black-boxed so that the internal
dynamics are never questioned. This idea of a black box can be applied in planning contexts to
sustainability classification schemes for urban developments such as BREEAM (the UK BRE’s
Environmental Assessment Method) or LEED (the US equivalent – Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) (Spinks, 2015) or to the capturing of a building as a ‘high-rise’ with all
that implies (Jacobs et al., 2007).

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Black-boxing often involves calculation, as with the transformation of a complex set of

characteristics of a city into an aggregated sustainability index or score. The processes of calcula-
tion play a relational role in bringing actors and material actants together but the black box of
the sustainability metric then discourages people from asking how that metric was calculated,
what relationships went into its calculation, and so on. Cost-benefit analysis and Landscape
Assessment are other examples of quantitative and qualitative calculative exercises within plan-
ning and Collins et al. (2009) analyse ecological footprinting in these terms.
Another useful concept is that of the inscription device or immutable mobile, an artefact
that has stability but also centrally mobility and combinability (Murdoch, 1997, p. 742). Such
immutable mobiles can take the form of black boxes and sometimes involve calculation. The key
emphasis though is on how they can play a role in multiple locations; the materiality of these
artefacts is often central to such mobility. Thus Tait and Jensen (2007) analyse the concepts of
the Business Improvement District and urban village and how they are carried by key documents
(artefacts), leading to mobility of the ideas.
There are links here with the idea of a boundary object that can operate within different
networks and thus opens up the possibility of new connections between networks. Star and
Griesemer (1989) suggest that standardisation protocols often play an important role as boundary
objects so that network-building and standardisation are inter-linked. In a planning context, one
could see building regulations or standards, say for energy efficiency or broader sustainability,
as performing this work, connecting construction, planning and design networks through their
mobility, a mobility that does not threaten their form as fixed standards.

Modes of Researching and Arguing

It is worthwhile spending a little time considering the distinctive nature of researching and
arguing implied by an ANT perspective. In part this is because ANT is a perspective driven
by a methodology informed by a specific conceptual understanding, rather than a fully fledged
theory that invites empirical inquiry by a variety of means (see Ruming (2009) on the opera-
tionalisation of the methodology). ANT offers no causal hypotheses for empirical testing and so
the outcome of analysis can seem rather circular in its reasoning (see Amsterdamska (1990) for
such a critique).
ANT has been heavily influenced by the anthropological background of its chief proponent,
Latour. This suggests ethnography as the methodology of choice, involving the researcher’s
immersion in the context being studied and a willingness to observe and absorb actors’ percep-
tions and practices through observation, although other means of tracing associations (such as
document analysis) might be appropriate. Latour also describes ANT as “a very crude method
to learn from the actors without imposing on them an a priori definition of their world-building
capacities” (1999b, p. 20). This has led to the famous ANT dictum that the researcher should
‘follow the actor’ or actant (Latour, 2005, p. 12). So ANT research involves identifying a starting
point – a social actor such as a planner or developer or a material actant such as a planning appli-
cation form, a site or a water flow – and then building the network by tracing the associations
outwards. The networks are followed rather than mapped in any fixed and formal way.
The result should be a rich description of actants and their associations, how they come
to be in relation to each other, how the relationships become stable and ordered (or not),
and the implications of these relationships. Such a narrative depends heavily on the skill of
the researcher, both in tracing the associations and also telling the story of the network in an
interesting and convincing way. This is not a methodology that can just be followed step-by-
step for its successful implementation. Discretion and choice remain at the core of an ANT

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methodology, implying that two researchers might come up with different accounts of a
network that they both choose to trace, starting from a different actant and finding a different
story to tell. The ANT field of knowledge will then comprise the collectivity of such stories
and not competition between alternative stories for the ‘true’ account. The relational and
constructivist heart of ANT applies to itself as well as its object of study. This does not mean
that all ANT accounts are necessarily a contribution to knowledge; some accounts might be
poorly done and some might be more true than others. There is still scope for debate between
ANT researchers on the relative insights to be gained from their accounts.
Latour is clear that current notions of explanation as following on from description and being
essentially different are wrong:

Explanation does not follow from description; it is description taken that much further.
We do not look for a stabilized and simplified description before we begin to propose
an explanation … it is from them [the actors] and them alone that we extract any
“cause” we might need.
(1991, p. 121)

Callon makes a similar point:

Some will say that I have offered a methodology for describing [his case] and their
asymmetries, but not a theoretical framework for their explanation. But the opposi-
tion between description and explanation is in large part undermined by the method
I have proposed. The more convergent and less reversible a network, the more the
descriptions delivered by the intermediaries turn into explanations or predictions. Talk
of explanation assumes that network evolution can be described using a small number
of variables or concepts. But this requires a very strong assumption about the shape of
the network and the convergence of its translation.
(1991, p. 154)

The emphasis on contingency in ANT analyses is also at odds with the search for generalisations.
Callon makes this clear: “networks only stabilise at certain places and at certain times” so that it
does not make sense to look for regularities and laws (1991, p. 155).
Confusion can also arise from the richly metaphoric nature of the language deployed
(see Fine (2005) for a failure to appreciate this). As indicated above, the term network is used
to convey something about the understanding of connections between actants. It is not a math-
ematical graph (although some analysts, including Latour himself, have utilised networks graphs
as heuristic snapshots). Rather the term ‘network’ was the result of a search for an insightful
term in a particular analysis at a particular time. This metaphor could be replaced by another and
often is. The key lesson here is that the language of an ANT analysis matters, not because it is
‘right’ or ‘wrong’ but because it carries the import of the analysis.

Critiques and Responses

ANT has certainly not been without its critics. These criticisms can be summarised as focus-
ing on the symmetry between human and non-human actors, the treatment of structure, the
approach to power and the inability to underpin a normative agenda for change.
Taking the vexed questions of the agency of the material and whether or not some primacy
should be given to human agency, there are two aspects to consider. First, there is the argument

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that human actors are essentially different to non-human actants because they have motivation,
intentions and, one might add, consciences and a sense of ethics. Second, it can further be
argued that means human actors are in a position to take action for social ends, including the
goal of reducing inequality and addressing structural imbalances of power.
Murdoch (1997) recognises that many ANT theorists are not interested in ideas of inten-
tionality or motivation. But there is scope for handling these with ANT. ANT requires human
or social and non-human/material elements to be treated equally within the analysis; it sees
agency as resulting from relationships between actants and does not distinguish those involving
the material from those involving the social. This does not mean that ANT assumes the social/
human and the material are the same; it is capable of accepting that humans are different from
material elements. As DeLanda (2006) states clearly (from an ANT-inspired assemblage perspec-
tive) only humans can have motivations or intentions in a social setting. In planning contexts,
motivations and intentions ‘to plan’ are central and thus they can be built into the analysis of
how different actants (human and material) are associated to generate outcomes.
Pickering proposes a way of looking at the agency of the human and non-human through
the temporal dimension. He argues that material agency is temporally emergent in practice, i.e.
it is “never decisively known in advance” but has to emerge through resistances (1993, p. 564).
Because human agency involves intentionality, this also has a temporal dimension: “we humans
live in time in a particular way. We construct goals that refer to presently nonexistent future states
and then seek to bring them about” (1993, p. 566). Such intentionality exists on a longer time-scale
than the practices of resistance. Given the way that timescales are inherent to planning practice,
this might offer a fruitful way of characterising human and non-human agency in planning studies.
Turning to the treatment of structure within the analysis, it is clear from the above account
of ANT as rooted in an ethnographic methodology that it begins from micro-description, of
necessity at the most local scale. But the flat ontology that ANT espouses implies attention to
associations across scale. The macro-scale is not ignored but the idea of ‘structure’ as an entity
only existing at the macro-scale is not relevant. For some, the loss of a structural dimension to
an analytic account means the loss of a proper understanding of how power operates and soci-
etal inequalities are produced. And, further, without such an understanding – it is argued – it
becomes impossible to consider how measures might be taken to redress such inequality, to
make a contribution to critical studies.
Law acknowledges that ANT can “miss out on the ways in which the great distributions are
laid down and sustained” (1991a, p. 14). Interestingly he suggests this arises because of “its pro-
pensity to select heroes for deconstruction” (ibid.). He is proposing that because ANT studies
have tended to focus on cases where networks have been stabilised and the agency of network
relationship demonstrated, this has led it to overlook distributional outcomes.
Star makes a related point, arguing that ANT tends to focus on higher-status social actors
alongside the material; thus, ANT looks at the role of the scientist and the material elements in
the laboratory but not the janitor (1991, p. 33). She suggests that the impact of this is personal
and that exclusion from a stabilised network ‘hurts’: “A stabilized network is only stable for
some . . . And part of the public stability of a standardized network often involves the private
suffering of those who are not standard”. Focusing particularly on the implications of soci-
etal standards, she sees the imposition of standards on those who are not part of the stabilised
standard-setting network as “annihilating our personal experience, and there is suffering” (p. 48).
This is a novel take on the way that ANT analysis can miss the experience of weaker, excluded
sections of society.
Star then offers a potential solution, suggesting that analysts should pay attention to the non-
user, the as-yet-unlabelled: “that which is permanently escaping, subverting, but nevertheless in

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relationship with the standardized” (1991, p. 39). So she wants a wider appreciation of experi-
ence beyond that suggested by the standardised (powerful) network. What and who lie just
beyond this network but are impacted by it? She suggests that this would involve ‘splitting’ by
which she means recognition of multiple network memberships and zones of ambiguity, mak-
ing space for multivocality and allowing for the costs of this (p. 49). This would acknowledge
the centrality of marginality to the experience of many. She points out (p. 43) that “heuristic
flattening does not mean the same thing as empirical ignoring of differences in access or experi-
ence.” These are key lessons here for all planning research that wishes to include the voice of
the marginalised in society.
Stabilisation centrally is linked to the exercise of power across networks. For Latour (1991),
power and stabilisation are descriptions of states that have come into being: “Power and domi-
nation are the words given to those stabilizations and not an account of their coming into being.
They are only one possible state of the associations” (p. 123). Furthermore, “When actors and
points of view are aligned, then we enter a stable definition of society that looks like domina-
tion. When actors are unstable and the observers’ points of view shift endlessly we are entering
a highly unstable and negotiated situation in which domination is not yet exerted” (p. 129). Star
(1991) sees power in terms of things becoming accepted and of creating irreversibilities (such as
certain standards): “Irreversibility is clearly important for an analysis of power and of robustness
in networks” (p. 40). In robust, irreversible networks, knowledge in particular becomes stripped
of its contingency and thus of its ability to be challenged.
This is an unnegotiable aspect of ANT; the way it sees power as distributed among multiple
relationships between actors and actants. Latour (2005) makes it clear that power is not a stock,
reservoir or capital: “Power and domination have to be produced, made up and composed”
(p. 64). Or again, the power of society is “some sort of summary for all the entities already mobilized
to render asymmetries longer lasting” (p. 68). There are links here to the Foucauldian approach to
power; Law pairs Latour and Foucault, arguing that: “These writers want to reverse a long-standing
convention in social theory which assumes the unequal distribution of power and as a consequence
tends to ignore or conceal the techniques, strategies or ‘microphysics’ by which it is created”
(1991b, p. 169). Murdoch also agrees that Latour takes a Foucauldian perspective on power

in which forms of domination and control are established within multiple and com-
plex associations or networks, where power lies not in the properties of actors but in
the relations established between them. Power thus emerges as an outcome once the
translations are complete and the networks are stabilised.
(1997, p. 737)

For Law, this makes it difficult to talk about the distribution of power in a conventional socio-
logical way. But he does propose an alternative pathway for research interested in power. He
thus recasts the question, from a relational perspective, as: “for me the crucial research question
has to do with how it is that relations are stabilised for long enough to generate the effects and so the condi-
tions of power. Or, indeed, what ‘for long enough’ might mean” (1991b, p. 172).
For some, the radical symmetry of ANT and its proposed methodology seem to render it
lacking as a critical mode of analysis and unable to support a normative agenda, say for ethical
ends such as reduced inequality. This view might be answered by saying that ANT was never
intended to do all these things, that there is no requirement for a theoretical perspective to be
radical in terms of critiquing existing power structures or linked to very specific goals of reduc-
ing inequality or poverty or addressing environmental impacts. But leaving this to one side, it is
possible to argue that an ANT analysis could address some of these concerns.

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First, there are considerable analytic merits in deriving a thick description of situations. This
enables one to understand how multiple relationships are involved in creating and sustaining
(or not) that situation. It avoids crude and simplistic accounts that see a very small set of factors
as determining a situation. Such a perspective does not lend itself to simple policy solutions.
It does not identify a specific lever as operating across cases in ways that suggest policy option
for changing or replacing that lever. Neither does it identify a specific actor or set of actors as
holding power so that better outcomes could be achieved by removing their power. ANT does
imply a critique of its own with regard to such simplistic approaches which, one might argue,
are typical of both empiricist and political economy approaches.
Rather, ANT analyses will tend to emphasise the specifics of each case – a transport project, a
neighbourhood plan, strategic direction of economic activity, a resource conservation initiative –
and consider how outcomes are contingent on the sets of relationships involved. Achieving
change from this perspective involves thinking about how those relationships might be altered
in that specific context. Could new actants be enrolled and to what effect? How might an arte-
fact change modes of calculation and to what effect? This might seem too localised a way to
achieve change but ANT does offer a way of thinking actively about achieving change that can
travel across situations; it just does not offer a solution that can travel. Thus ANT implies ‘small
work’ but not exclusively local work. It might seem that what is proposed is not proportionate
to the problems that we face. Poverty, environmental degradation, social anomie require more
than these multiple instances of adjusting associations in specific contexts. This might be true
but ANT implies that this is all that is on offer.

Future Directions
As this chapter has stressed, ANT is a broad church and there are many different analysts explor-
ing its application in new areas, often far from the original issue of how scientific knowledge
is constructed. This means predicting where ANT scholarship will go can be a tricky exercise.
This chapter has sought to make the claim that ANT has much to offer planning scholarship.
In conclusion, I would like to suggest areas that seem particularly likely to be fruitful for future
research. Two of these relate primarily to analyses of current planning practice; two take on
board the challenge of developing a normative, even radical agenda from an ANT perspective.
While most planning research has focused on the interaction of social actors – communities,
developers, landowners, planners themselves – ANT draws our attention to material arte-
facts. This is one of its distinctive characteristics that might be able to offer something new
to planning scholarship. There are two possible directions here: considering the artefacts of
planning and reconsidering the relationship of planning practice to the natural environment.
Thinking of the artefacts of planning first, it is perhaps surprising that these have not been
explicitly considered to a greater extent. Planning departments and consultancies are full of
these: plans, planning application forms, files, models, etc. What is their role? How do they
shape planning practice? How do they act as mediators? How do they help enrol other actors
and on what terms?
A particular aspect of the role of artefacts to consider is how they shape calculation. Planning
is about decision-making on particular projects, on future visions. This is a calculative exercise
in itself but so often within planning practice there are tools and assessments along the way
that contribute to this decision-making. Among these we can count: cost-benefit analysis, risk
assessment, environmental assessment (both project-specific impacts and strategic), habitat assess-
ment, sustainability indicators, widely used standards such as ALARP (As Low As Reasonably
Practical) or BPEO (Best Practicable Environmental Option) within pollution control, the use

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of building standards for energy based on the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), the accredi-
tation systems of BREEAM, LEED, etc. And so on . . .. It is extraordinary how many aids to
calculation there are, all constituted through artefacts of manuals, software, etc. Many of these
have quantitative dimensions, others are more qualitative. The detailed operation of these calcu-
lative artefacts would be a major contribution to understanding how planning works. There has
been scholarship within the Foucauldian tradition that has seen these as shaped by and shaping
discourses, but ANT would provide a more nuanced account of how these tools are implicated
in the networks of planning.
The other area where the distinctive focus on materiality has much to offer planning research
concerns the natural environment. While planning practice is obviously involved with the natural
environment, this has tended to be considered in modernist terms as the control of the environ-
ment by planning systems. ANT invites a different perspective. It asks how the materiality of
the environment shapes planning practice and, in particular, how knowledge of environmental
systems is involved and makes a difference. Again, this goes beyond the Foucauldian perspec-
tive on environmental knowledge as power, seeing it as constructed through discourse. Rather,
ANT takes the resistance of the material environment to knowledge construction seriously
and looks to how this resistance, alongside the social construction dynamics, influences plan-
ning outcomes. This could provide a new perspective on planning for sustainability, looking
at nuanced engagements between social and material actants in pursuit of nature conservation,
circularity of resource use, pollution prevention and so on.
Looking more toward the ways that an ANT analysis can support a progressive norma-
tive agenda regarding planning practice, two areas look particularly fruitful: the role of path
dependencies and silences; and the scope for specifying directed agency through procedural
innovations.
ANT has been criticised for describing current situations rather than provide an account of
change. It might be fairer to say that ANT can helpfully identify how planning networks are
stabilised and the work involved in such stabilisation. This can be turned to advantage. ANT can
provide a means for understanding path dependencies, where stabilised networks are actively
maintained. Rather than just identify the path dependency, ANT could help understand how
they work. Given that such patterns are ‘taken for granted’ and usually not actively discussed
(this being part of the way they are maintained), ANT’s ability to understand silences through
processes such as black-boxing could be helpful. This then has programmatic potential by sug-
gesting points of pressure for breaking associations or creating new associations in such a way as
to disrupt the established pathway. While the world of planning practice might seem a crowded
one with many stakeholders, goals and dimensions to consider, this emphasis on silences and
path dependencies would search for avenues that have not been fruitfully explored.
Finally, there is clearly a need to understand more fully exactly how ANT analysis can lead
to directed action – through alternative network building – for progressive change. Creating
new or different networks can be difficult. It has been suggested that this might occur through
many cases of ‘small work’ encouraging new associations in a variety of ways but this is subtle
work (Rydin and Tate, 2016). To be effective this would require much more guidance on how
practitioners can come to understand their practice in network terms and then build effective
action on the back of that understanding. The more ANT case studies of different areas of plan-
ning practice that can be conducted with a view to not just understanding but also acting, the
closer ANT will come to a normative planning theory.
Such links can also be fostered by considering the implications of ANT thinking for the pro-
cedural innovations that planning theory has emphasised, notably those based on deliberation.
As other chapters in this volume identify, deliberation as a practice and deliberative democracy

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as an ideal have been hugely influential within planning theory. Latour has considered modes of
politics that could fit with the radical symmetry of ANT under the banner of a Parliament of
Things, suggesting an enhanced form of deliberation that includes the ‘voices’ of material and
environmental elements. This has opened up a fresh avenue of debate about the value of delib-
eration. For Marres, this is a wrong turning, since the emphasis on procedural models is at odds
with the insights of ANT itself. She sees ANT as committed to following practices as they are
made and thus the effects of a given procedural model cannot be assumed nor any such model
generally recommended (2007, p. 763). However, Whiteside (2013) sees the potential for a
much more productive engagement between ANT and deliberative democracy, which might
lead to a re-invigoration of normative planning theory and, indeed, wider political theory.
Thus ANT has much to offer planning studies. It can provide a detailed relational account of
how links and associations generate outcomes, create stabilised situations and give rise to power
(understood as distributed agency). In this it has much in common with other post-modern
relational approaches but it also provides a rich ‘toolbox’ of concepts that can be useful to the
researcher in exploring these links and associations in specific cases. ANT’s most innovative
(and perhaps contentious) aspect is its insistence on treating social and material, human and
non-human actants equally. This opens up new avenues of research and allows a spotlight to
be shone on planning practices that practitioners (often implicitly) know involve the material
or non-human but researchers have tended to treat only in social terms. The possibilities this
affords are exciting but also challenging. Not only does using ANT involve some considerable
investment in understanding and learning to use its ‘toolbox’ but the kinds of narrative that
emerge require the audience to accept new models of empirical investigation and knowledge
generation. With openness to the possibilities of such narratives, though, ANT can offer new
insights and enhance planning scholarship.

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 25
SPATIAL PLANNING AND THE
COMPLEXITY OF TURBULENT,
OPEN ENVIRONMENTS
About Purposeful Interventions in a
World of Non-Linear Change

Gert de Roo

About Planning, a Biased Mindset and the Idea of Change

What planners should know: revolution and evolution are as real and essential to life as water
and air. Traditionally, planners’ concerns are about effectively intervening in space and place,
hence the desire for controlled environments. Since the 1990s, planners have also preferred to
act on the basis of consensus among the various parties involved to attain an agreed-upon world.
Revolution, evolution or whatever kind of change is current is usually not part of a planner’s
ideas about what the world should look like. Here we challenge the suggestion of a controlled
world and an agreed reality. The message here is that aside from controlled environments, we
should also accept that our daily environments can be full of unintended, autonomous and
surprising change. We would be wise to live by this understanding, whether we like it or not.
In this chapter we will construct a kind of reasoning that is supportive of this alternative
frame of reference. We will argue that discontinuous change is the only constant factor in the
world we are part of, and what seems stable to us is actually nothing more than a temporary
period of persistence, a frozen instant within a dynamic world, the lee side of a world in flux.
As there is no permanent stability, how can we reach an ideal situation? Instead, we have to
acknowledge that tensions, frictions, mismatches and breaks will be more or less ever-present
(de Roo, 2016a; Weinstock, 2010). This means we continuously have to consider and recon-
sider how the world around us is ‘becoming’, and to what it is we have to adapt (de Roo, 2012;
Hillier, 2007). This understanding is fundamental: instead of the planner being the creator of
space and place, we are acknowledging that the world also creates itself, often develops beyond
our control and progresses autonomously despite our intentions. It might be worth considering
planners as guides to coping with autonomous and non-linear change.
This contribution starts by exploring the meanings and background of the relevant ideas in
this discussion, such as non-linearity, complexity and uncertainty. Together, these notions rep-
resent the complexity sciences, processes of discontinuous change and evolutionary pathways
through time. We will see, among other things, how these notions can be instrumental to the

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evolution of settlements. This route to transforming settlements will be framed by an evolutionary

model that not only explains the transformation of settlements as complex adaptive systems, but
also frames the transformative space at the edge of order and chaos. Consequently, we will see how
transformations and bifurcations can be understood as mechanisms of non-linearity and change.
Finally, this contribution confronts contemporary planning theory with our set of ideas from the
complexity sciences and our evolutionary model, and how the model frames reality in a non-linear
and transformative way. It will demonstrate the relevance of a non-linear, transformative and
dynamic understanding to the planning debate.

Time, Non-Linearity and the Complexity Sciences

I would argue 1963 is the year that certainty lost its absolute sense on a human scale and its
supremacy as the route of knowledge to which science contributes. In this year, Edward Lorenz
(1917–2008), mathematician and meteorologist, published an article that had tremendous impact
on science as well as on our view of the world. In the 1950s meteorologists, like all other scien-
tists at that time, struggled with models based on mathematical formulae which were relatively
simple and which straightforwardly described a reality that behaves decently, and in orderly and
predictable ways. Meteorologists were meant to predict the weather correctly, and their system-
atic approach was initially linear. Linear primarily means proportional. Weather does not show
proportional change, which made Lorenz go for an alternative systems approach that resonates
better with our daily environment responding non-linearly and therefore unpredictably.
Using a non-linear model, Lorenz (1963) noticed a strong deviation in results when repeat-
ing his calculations using the same input. He used the same data, but with a different number of
decimals. Instead of using 76.853 over and over again, he used a shorter version as well: 76.8.
This small difference entered at the beginning of the calculations resulted in output that cannot
be expected in a linear and proportional world. Dynamic and iterative models, however, are
able to produce major differences between inputs that hardly differ. Such effects result from a
circular causality which became known as the ‘Butterfly effect’, a metaphor for a small event
(a butterfly flapping its wings) triggering turbulence that, at some point, evolves into devastating
forces (a hurricane). This discovery is substantial and fundamental: it means the end of exactness
and the claim of certainty.
In 1975 Li and Yorke coined the term ‘chaos’ to label non-linear deterministic systems and
their unpredictable behaviour. The academic interest in a contextual and dynamic world rap-
idly increased in the 1990s (Waldrop, 1992). Various fields of research were grouped together
as the complexity sciences (Keller, 2009), including Chaos theory. Currently there is a wide
range of research streams focusing on non-linearity, such as self-organization (de Roo, 2016a;
Portugali, 2000), coevolution (Garnsey & McGlade, 2006), socioecological systems (Holling,
2001; Kauffman, 1990), resilience (Davoudi, 2012; Folke, 2006), transitions (Geels, 2013)
and complex adaptive systems (Cilliers, 1998; de Roo, 2012; Miller & Page, 2007). All these
ideas share a common reference to a world that is open, multilayered and dynamic, and which
behaves in a non-linear and unpredictable way.
These ideas beg for an alternative world view. In this world view systems are, to vari-
ous degrees, open to change in a reciprocal relationship with their environment. Instead of
considering situations and systems as being permanent and stable, they are temporal and in a
continuous state of becoming (de Roo, 2010, 2012). To survive the system has to interact
with, adapt to and coevolve with its environment. This interdependency has consequences
that depend on the dynamics of the environment varying from being placid to turbulent

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(Emery & Trist, 1965), and which depend on the flow of energy, matter and information
between environment and system (Prigogine, 1980).
The ordering principle – so much the focus of the planner – is no longer order, balance or
symmetry. Instead the focus shifts to change and transformation (de Roo & Silva, 2010; de Roo,
Hillier & Van Wezemael, 2012; de Roo, 2015). The complexity sciences have concentrated
extensively on understanding how this change might happen, to what this change will lead and
what this tells us in abstract (Pagels, 1988). At various levels of scale we can see a flow of energy,
matter and information. This flow is more than a Newtonian response of action and reaction in
isolation, and a repositioning of some body, node or entity. These flows do not leave systems
untouched. At the macro level we can see an environment of multiple systems interacting in
such a way that patterns emerge (Allen, 1997, 2016). The individual system (or agent) in search
of a fit with its environment deviates toward such patterns, independently from other systems
and unintentionally adding to the presence of these patterns. The system’s search for a good
fit – a city, for example – goes hand-in-hand with the system adapting to its environment. This
has consequences for the system internally, within which a process of self-organization is trig-
gered, through which structure and function might coevolve into something new, resulting in
a change of the system’s identity and functioning.
For our story it is important to consider thermodynamics, the weather, population dynamics
and cities and their development as representations of the same type of system, all behaving in
the same way: non-linearly and dynamically. Traditionally, science focuses on isolated entities,
systems and situations, taking into consideration the parts out of which these are formed. This
is helpful in understanding these entities, systems and situations as they ‘are’, and is supportive
of understanding their structures and functions, and content and process (Prigogine, 1980). This
reductionist approach brought us the universal laws in physics and chemistry. However, it kept
us from considering entities, systems (also known as ‘complex adaptive systems’) and situations
as being positioned in an environment that is ‘out of equilibrium’; and it does not say much
about them undergoing change, this change being the consequence of energy, matter and infor-
mation floating around and being passed on, allowing fluxes, flows and potentialities to exist,
and generating progressive dynamics (Prigogine, 1980). This is particularly the case in biosphere
environments, where matter, energy and information conjoin to evolve into living creatures and
all that comes with that: ecological, social and economic networks, and sociospatial structures
ranging from termite hills to urban agglomerations.

Settlements as Non-Linear Dynamic Systems

Van der Leeuw (2009), archaeologist by origin, adopts a non-linear perspective, which he
describes as ‘the archaeology of innovation’, to elaborate on how humans have created a
socialized environment. Central to this reasoning are humans absorbing energy from their
environment to become organized and to socialize, ensuring a shared capacity for information
processing, an activity out of which societies emerge (Figure 25.1(b)).
Far back in time, humans had the option to adapt to the conditions they were confronted
with, taking resources (matter and energy) from their environment to stay alive until these ran
out, after which moving was the only option. Around 10,000 bc, groups increased in size and
started living together in settlements, beginning to cultivate their environment. It meant they
started investing in their environment, securing an organized living, reducing nature-related
risks and working with an increased energy production capacity. As settlements grew, soci-
etal problems increased, and institutional responses were needed to solve them. Institutional
arrangements did not just enable life in settlements; their organizational effects began to extend

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Object oriented focus Resource oriented

CAUSALITY: direct – remote ENERGY: affluent – constrained

ENTITY: clear – fuzzy MATTER: elementary – composition
CONTEXT: stable – unstable INFORMATION: explicit – induced

Technical Communicative Axiomtic Capacity

rationality rationality behaviour building

PERSPECTIVE: unifocal – plural SHARING: well defined – conceptual

CONSENSUS: implicit – explicit ORGANIZING: routine – collaborative
STORYTELLING: explaining – exploring LEARNING: prescriptive – explorative

Intersubjective reasoning Collective oriented

Figure 25.1 (a) A transformative model in between planner’s rationalities (de Roo, 2015, 2016b);
(b) The transformative model of the evolutionary patterns of clustering society (de Roo,
2016b). For explanation, see text.

into their wider environment. This was rather essential as the difficulty of taking energy from
the environment began to amount to a serious constraining factor.
While the growth of individual settlements was constrained due to limited natural resources,
it stimulated the emergence of groups of settlements. A new balance was found between the
ability to share information among increasing numbers of groups and the dispersion of settle-
ments to maintain their capacity for energy production. These groups of settlements and their
institutional design required administrative structures, including methods for keeping accounts
and records, which is only one step away from the emergence of a ruling class. Consequently,
the capacity for information sharing increased as the footprint of settlements began to cross
societal borders, with energy and material remaining the constraining factors. Unsurprisingly,
infrastructure also began to be developed to secure access to resources.
The moment printing technology became widely known, the sharing of knowledge exploded
and the existence of different cultures and behaviours resulted not only in global trade routes but
also in competing markets and monetized urban developments. A further increase in information
sharing led to a rise of a global economic system and to civil society, which at some point stood
up for its rights and for better living conditions. Innovations were no longer found within exist-
ing frames of reference, which focused on survival risks and resources. In the nineteenth century,
thinking outside the box made innovations endemic, with an energy revolution, an industrial
revolution and a technical and a scientific revolution which altered urban life fundamentally.
A sequence of rapid changes in economic prosperity, social behaviour and cultural attitude
led to what our world is today: a global village, with time and space shrinking fast; an urbanized
way of life all over the planet, with schools as institutionalized knowledge-sharing nodes; the
creation of surpluses in various ways, including through an amazing extension of property and
life expectancy, and an unprecedented change in information sharing, due to the rise of the digi-
tal era. Today we find ourselves in a world of extremes, in which a strong belief in functionality
and economic value burdens us with a narrow focus on life values and contextual influences, as
a consequence of which we struggle (often happily) from one crisis to another. These crises are
perhaps part of life, and while some might feel that crises must be avoided, crises are also occur-
rences that are quite ‘natural’ in a world we consider to be non-linear and dynamic.
Central to this understanding of societal evolution is a balance between the ability to gain
access to energy sources and the ability to share information among collectives and communi-
ties, to exploit and manage the availability of energy intelligently. Energy becomes available
through processing matter, on the basis of experience. In this respect information is experience
shared among many actors, who organize themselves in collectives, to optimize the shared
information and to enhance their capacity to generate energy. Figure 25.1(b) presents a circular

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and iterative evolutionary model that represents the sharing of energy, matter and information,
and which challenges collectives to organize themselves to enable them to learn from the dif-
ficulties encountered.
The moment a circular or iterative situation is confronted with a break, mismatch, crisis
or barrier, society’s response is to require innovation. This could result in a great many dif-
ferent actions meant to secure or increase the capacity for access to energy, which results in
additional, surplus or advanced information. This information would then be the result or the
consolidation of the innovation society has experienced. If this is done successfully, society
as such will evolve to a higher standard of living (see Figure 25.2); while failure will result in
lower living standards. Whichever direction is followed, it will affect society’s settlements and
their environments.

Framing Dynamics
The evolutionary model (Figure 25.1(a)) represents the world at the edge of order and chaos.
The model is built around a spectrum connecting these two extreme environments: on the left,
an orderly environment, on the right an environment that is diverse – chaotic even – and full
of uncertainty. The evolutionary model has a cognitive orientation, with the spectrum repre-
senting our mental capacity to understand the world as it comes to us: on the right, clarity and
certainty – which we claim on the basis of a factual reality – versus fuzziness and uncertainty
on the left, which forces us to relate to each other to create an agreed reality. When certainty
diminishes and uncertainty cannot be ignored and is increasingly present, humans change their
attitude toward how to consider the world around them. This finds expression in the shift on
the spectrum from left to right: mentally, the intersubjective attitude gains the upper hand the
moment our world becomes fuzzy, while our object orientation diminishes. Figure 25.1(b) on
settlement development qualifies object orientation as ‘resource oriented’ and intersubjective
interaction as ‘collective oriented’.
In Figure 25.1(b) we have added to the ‘resource oriented’ triangle the conditions under
which the system ‘lives’ while moving along the spectrum, explained in terms of content, pro-
cess and context. In Figure 25.1(b) content, process and context are considered to be energy,
matter and information. The same is done for the ‘collective oriented’ triangle, which includes
the conditions under which actors perceive the system. It conditions them to come to a com-
mon understanding, which is explained in terms of perspectives, framing and acknowledgement.
In Figure 25.1(b) perspectives, framing and acknowledgement are explained as sharing, organ-
izing and learning. What we get out of this exercise is an understanding of the world at the edge
of order and chaos, as it comes to us through the senses (object orientation – Figure 25.1(a))
and as it can be understood through the views of the various actors involved (intersubjective
interaction – Figure 25.1(a)).
A mutual relationship between what we observe and what we agree about how to see and
value what we observe results in an understanding of what we perceive and a position about
how to act. Out of this mutual relationship, a circular process of development emerges, as we
can see in Van der Leeuw’s elegant explanation of human settlements. This circular process is
acknowledged in Figure 25.1.
As it moves along this circular path the world no longer remains the same. It has been
enriched in a transformative way. We can call this change, growth, development or progress.
It is relevant to recognize that such developments are expressed as iterative processes, feedback
loops or rounds of progression (Coveney and Highfield, 1995). These iterative processes can
be perceived as cognitive shifts from object orientation on a reality that becomes increasingly

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Figure 25.2 Transitions representing a coevolutionary process in a non-linear dynamic system

dynamic, fuzzy and interpretable, to the intersubjective interaction needed to get to grips again
with reality, producing a new and shared storyline that includes lessons learned and offers guid-
ance for taking actions.
At some point we find ourselves back at the beginning and the round of progression can
start again. However, we are not ‘exactly’ back where we started. Along the circle, things
have changed. There has been progress and a new level of development has been reached
(see Figure 25.2). The cycles of progress encounter enabling and constraining conditions that
produce, feed and support a transition or bifurcation (See Figure 25.3), which consequently
gives expression to the iterative process and the change occurring somewhere along the circle.
This transition is a coevolutionary process in which the structure (object orientation) and
function (intersubjective value) of what we observe will fundamentally change (de Roo &
Rauws, 2012). And as a transformed construct it will continue to develop further at a new
level of existence.

Bifurcations and Transitions

A transition becomes feasible within the action space that is allowed by the frame of dynamic
change. This frame is explained in detail for human settlements (Figure 25.1). The rounds of
progression have also been discussed. These rounds of progression are the stepping stones to
other levels of development. Within the complexity sciences, bifurcations and transformations
are possible routes toward these other levels of development.
A bifurcation is considered to be the moment the trajectory of a system encounters an
unstable environment that is likely to lead to change in the system’s trajectory as well as to the
system itself (Ruelle, 1989). The bifurcation is subject to a new kind of order within a chaotic
environment: the bifurcation can go either way, but whatever the route, it will affect the sys-
tem. The system will adapt to its new environment and therefore will change fundamentally.
The uncertainty that comes with this adds to the non-linearity a system is confronted by while
floating around in a dynamic environment.
Our daily environment is full of change, transitions and bifurcations. Conditions allow or
force this change to happen. Conditions both enable and constrain change. A couple of trajec-
tories are presented in Figure 25.3, with bifurcations that relate to the presence of enabling and
constraining conditions.

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 Gert de Roo

Figure 25.3 P
 athways with moments of instability resulting in bifurcations as a consequence of enabling
(ᴗ) and constraining ( ) conditions
ᴗ

The first example presents us with developments of residential areas, here labelled as ‘home
vicinity ambience’. In the distant past there were hardly any regulations to secure liveable housing
conditions. At the turn of the eighteenth century the urban was heavily constrained by diseases,
including highly contagious cholera. This led various European countries to introduce legislation
intended to prevent the spread of contagious diseases (Wagenaar, 2011). Consequently, housing
programmes were established. This marked the beginning of serious spatial planning (De Klerk
et al., 2012). While cholera can be regarded as the constraining factor, the new legislation proved
to be an enabling factor for new and highly planned developments in support of much more than
a healthy environment. While the planning regime remained throughout the twentieth century,
various developments were made affecting the ‘home vicinity ambience’. Around the turn of
the twenty-first century, another fundamental change emerged. In some countries this started
relatively mildly with authorities and housing corporations no longer being able to ‘control’ or
to guarantee environmental standards, and gestures and invitations were made to residents to take
responsibility as well (Tonkens, 2014). The 2008 financial, housing and mortgage crisis made this
desire only more prominent. While this crisis can be regarded as a constraint, enabling factors can
also be observed with various residents collectively taking the initiative to explore, develop and
maintain public space near their homes (Warren, 2009), resulting in collective gardening, urban
food farming and so forth.
Another example is the use of cars within the urban. At the turn of the nineteenth century,
horse-drawn carriages were a common mode of transport. Horse manure, however, began
to contribute substantially to cities becoming malodorous and unhealthy places (Wagenaar,
2011). The combustion engine made it possible to replace the horse with an alternative trans-
port mode which did not leave any droppings behind. In the 1960s, mass production of cars
exploded thanks to a rapidly emerging middle class. The rise of the car-driven society resulted
in multiple car owners per family. In particular, in the US the lack of public transport compa-
nies (cleverly bought up by various car companies with the intention of bankrupting them in
the period before the Second World War (Kunstler, 1993)) supported this process. The car was
everywhere and people wanted to be able to go everywhere using their cars. Eventually, the
car became a destructive force in urban life, with traffic jams, noise pollution, smog and a lack

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of recreation space. Even before the turn of the century, various strategies were proposed and
implemented to restrain car use and constrain the omnipresence of the car, in particular in city
centres and residential areas (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). A response to some of the nuisance
is the hybrid and electric car. It is likely that cars will soon be able to operate autonomously,
without drivers, using sensors connected to the internet and interacting with their environment
to keep on course. No doubt this will again result in a bifurcation and a fundamental change of
our understanding of transport.

Complexity and the Planning Debate

Cities coevolve, which means that they do not simply emerge from nowhere, grow linearly or
come as the result of a planner’s ‘command and control’. Coevolution is the non-linear trans-
formation of the various structures and functions of cities through which cities change physically
and socially in fundamental, discontinuous ways (Shane, 2005; Weinstock, 2010). Throughout
their evolution cities’ institutional realities will also be redesigned repeatedly. It is a course of
discontinuous adjustment toward a fit between what communities value and the changes that
emerge within the physical and social environment. Such a course will obviously also trans-
form communities themselves. The result is an institutional design which – like any design – is
strongly influenced by the societal and scientific perspectives championed and valued at any
given moment. This is particularly visible in the domain of spatial planning.
In 1969 Horst Rittel (1972), with Weber (Rittel & Weber, 1973; see also Ackoff, 1974),
made a challenging contribution to the planning debate by introducing ‘wicked’ problems.
‘Wicked’ problems differ from ‘tamed’ problems, which are well defined, with a clear begin-
ning that results in – if dealt with properly – a clear end, after which the problem is ‘solved’.
‘Wicked’ problems have no clear beginning and no clear end, they are hard to define precisely
and undisputedly, and they cannot be solved. ‘Wicked’ problems are intrinsically uncertain. For
example, when is the right moment to conclude a neighbourhood is in decline? At which point
do we conclude that a city centre has too much car traffic? What is the effect of hypermarkets
and factory outlet centres on inner city development? The answer is ‘We don’t know’, at least
not exactly.
Rittel’s ‘wicked’ problems did not make it into the mainstream planning debate. Perhaps they
were not the right answer to the debate at that time, which was very much focusing on bounded
rationality (Simon, 1960). ‘Wicked’ problems did not provide an answer to boundedness. On
the contrary, they made the difficulty of boundedness even more complicated. The planning
debate eventually took a ‘communicative turn’ (Fischer & Forester, 1993). The complexity sci-
ences, however, rediscovered Rittel and embraced his ‘wicked’ problems fully (Conklin, 2005).
Wickedness represents precisely the fundamental uncertainties that were observed by the com-
plexity sciences in the real world: ‘wicked’ problems are a consequence of non-linear behaviour.
The planning debate (Figure 25.1(a)) started in the 1950s with a technical rationale attitude:
it builds on the assumption of certainty being within reach and capable of being understood by
facts that are open to us – a factual reality. In the 1960s this attitude came under severe pres-
sure, with various notions, methods and arguments being proposed to find realistic alternatives.
The technical rationale proved to be an illusion, an ideal that would only work in theory.
The more realistic alternatives were all still very much object oriented, assuming that certainty
is still somewhere to be found, and aiming for it despite the fact that complete certainty will
never be achieved. Humans are bounded (Simon, 1960), muddle through, behave incremen-
tally (Lindblom, 1959) and are best advised to follow Etzioni’s mix-scan approach (Etzioni,
1967). Probably the best response at that time – in the 1970s now – was to replace the ideal of

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a one true and certain world by various possible worlds. These were proposed and constructed
through a process of scenario planning. The constructs were basically linear extrapolations of
past developments.
In the early 1990s the idea of certainty was set aside and replaced by the ‘communicative
turn’ (Fischer & Forester, 1993; Forester, 1993). Quite suddenly the planning community was
ready to become participative (Innes, 1995), interactive and collaborative (Healey, 2003). It was
a major jump, a true paradigm shift, which brought us the communicative rationale (see Figure
25.1(a); Sager, 1994). This is a shift from goal maximization to optimizing processes. The com-
municative rationale brought us an agreed reality. This agreed reality creates an agreed certainty.
This might be a different kind of certainty from the one promised to us within a technical
rationale; however, it is something to hold on to, again.
The communicative rationale also proved to be ideal and quite extreme in relation to eve-
ryday difficulties. The difference between the two is that a technical rationale attitude is valid
in situations that are clear, certain and straightforward. Fuzzy, diverse and plural situations
with multiple actors and their various interests are often decentralized to a level where these
situations become manifest: integration of policies, approaches, responsibilities and actions is
recommended in such cases. What effectively happens is a process of communication between
stakeholders. In other words, integration – seemingly object oriented – will not work as a strat-
egy without accepting a communicative rationale (Figure 25.1(a)).
The communicative rationale works quite well in situations full of uncertainties due to
the involvement of various interests, power relationships and multiple actors and factors.
Communication strategies are intended to achieve consensus about the issues in question, the
parties involved, their shared responsibilities, their actions and so forth: the construction of an
agreed reality. The moment such an agreed reality is internalized and resonates effectively with
events in the daily environment, clarity, straightforwardness and certainties begin to reappear,
bringing a technical rationale again within reach . . . the circle is complete (see Figure 25.1(a)).
In addition to the contemporary approaches in planning, we propose alternatives that relate
to an autonomous, emergent, adaptive and self-organizing reality. In such unstable and dynamic
realities planning issues should not be regarded as isolated problems or as difficulties that need
to be agreed upon on the basis of consensus. Situations become manifest due to various path-
ways and their path-dependencies coming together at a particular moment. It would be strange
to view such situations as fixed, frozen and utterly stable. Aside from content and process, it
becomes relevant to consider what conditions such a spontaneous, emergent situation.
Complexity reasoning does not provide clear-cut solutions (there are no clear-cut problems
either), which requires another attitude toward planning and decision-making. This means
being prepared to deconstruct traditional and contemporary views on planning (not that these
become redundant or outdated), to constructing a new mindset on non-linear reasoning. This
is the background against which spatial institutions, their organization, development and evolu-
tion can be viewed, accepting a dynamic environment at the edge of order and chaos. It is a
radically different view from what we are used to.

Synopsis
Certainty, the predictability of a future to come and the creation of a world according to plan,
all these promises connect to scientific approaches that relate to logic-positivism: but they are
an illusion. Nevertheless, it is a kind of planning that is still greatly appreciated. While it can
no longer be regarded as a universal kind of planning, it is still relevant in a situational sense.
It relates to situations in which certainty is not only thought of as a given but an essential

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condition: housing sites, building blocks, systems for energy, drinking water and waste disposal,
infrastructure – we do not want these to collapse. Such situations require certainty and the
avoidance of risk, but even in these situations, certainty is not a given. Moreover, even those
practices that include blueprints, vertical decision-making lines and functionality as their guid-
ing principles must acknowledge that reality is not always susceptible to planners’ proposals,
assumptions and perspectives.
Planning is also a social project with purposeful interventions intended to add value to a civil
society (Sandercock, 1975). Through communication processes the need and appreciation of
such interventions can be considered collectively. Collaborative approaches are meant to result
in commonly defined and agreed-upon understandings of issues that could be dealt with via a
planning regime. These agreements are particularly relevant in situations that are highly norma-
tive, fuzzy and unclear. Here, too, uncertainties cannot be ignored, which affects the planning
process and drives it in unexpected directions.
Complexity thinking and spatial planning seem almost antagonistic, a conflict of reasoning.
Complexity labels theories of spontaneous change. Spatial planning relates to a science of pur-
poseful intervention. At first glance a dichotomy, and at the very least paradoxical. For most
planners, decision-makers and all those somehow involved in spatial interventions, reasoning in
terms of complexity is not immediately their cup of tea. Some assume it is about issues being
complex and therefore beyond their competences. Some stubbornly translate it into ‘being
complicated’ and therefore ‘being problematic’, which – with a bit of luck, goodwill and a
prayer – can be dealt with in due time.
Complexity thinking has nothing to do with these assumptions and beliefs. Complexity
relates above all to a world full of developments we can describe as non-linear. In such a world
jumps, shocks and surprises are all part of the game, succeeded by periods of temporary stabil-
ity. A non-linear understanding means we consider the world as undergoing discontinuous
change, which is fundamentally uncertain, and which is and becomes manifest largely beyond
our control. A non-linear, unstable and uncertain world is likely to be more real than a world
that is stable, linear and certain. This does not mean that planners are being out-manoeuvred.
On the contrary – non-linear situations require alternative approaches in addition to approaches
that relate to factual, possible and agreed realities. Instead of focusing primarily on content
and process, such adaptive approaches should focus first on the conditions under which reality
unfolds and on conditions that keep systems together. In non-linear environments planning
becomes conditional.

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 26
ASSEMBLAGE THINKING
IN PLANNING THEORY
Joris Van Wezemael

Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to show how and why Assemblage Theory matters for planning
theory, to explain how it deals with the critique of collaborative approaches toward ration-
alist planning, and how it fixes important shortfalls of collaborative approaches. Assemblage
Theory is a young strand of thinking within the field of planning theory. It draws on Deleuze’s
idea1 that social and material formations are assemblages of other complex configurations, and
they in turn play roles in other, more extended configurations. It has been introduced to the
field in the late years of the first decade of this century (Van Wezemael 2008) and developed
significant influence since then in planning, urban geography, urban studies and architecture
(Anderson and McFarlane 2011; Anderson, Kearnes, McFarlane and Swanton 2012; Ballantyne
2007; Farías and Bender 2009; Hillier 2007; De Roo, Hillier and Van Wezemael 2012; Hillier
and Abrahams 2013; McCann 2011; McFarlane 2011a, 2011b; Palmas 2007; Van Wezemael
2009; Van Wezemael and Silberberger 2016). I will argue here that we should pay attention to
the context and to the reasons of its introduction to planning theory. This will lay the ground
for its explanation and evaluation in this chapter.
Both content and reason for an interest of planning theorists in Assemblage Theory refer to
the need of a stronger appreciation of materiality, technology and space – without losing the
power of dealing with uncertainty or fluidity (Healey 1996) that made collaborative approaches
so influential. But there is also planning as an academic field that reacted rather late to notions
and theories of complexity of all sorts (De Roo et al. 2012). The mobilization of ‘complexity’ in
planning theory and a clarification of language or processes of negotiation can be seen as another
virtue of Assemblage Theory.

Assemblage Theory and Traditions of Thought in Planning Theory2

Planning theory has never been one consistent body of theory. Nevertheless, different traditions
of thought can be identified. In their collection of essays, Jean Hillier and Patsy Healey (2008a,
2008b, 2008c) identify and name such traditions. They used different organizing principles3 in
order to identify the strands; one of these is the role of the planner and the question of agency. Let
us take a brief look at those two important theory traditions (rational and collaborative planning)
in order to clarify what Assemblage Theory has to offer for planning theory.

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Rational Planning
If we look at rational planning, a key concept is its positivistic underpinning, the assumption
that there is one, even if partially hidden, essential or sometimes transcendental logic on which
the world is operating. Knowledge about this world would be achieved through systematic,
deductive thinking. Therefore, planning theory is to provide scientific methods that should be
applied in planning practice, a practice that in turn is seen as social management. Accordingly,
the significant academic influence came from economic and management science, and from
them planning theory inherited the traditions of a reduction to the micro-level (the individual)
or the macro-level (society or ‘national’ economy as a whole). Furthermore, it inherited a form
of realism that is based on a correspondence theory of truth and a realism deeply committed
to essentialism and linearity. In the rational planning model, the planner is a scientist with an
objective outside view who has the task of rational trade-offs between (given) interests on the
basis of scientific methods. The planner, as collaborative planners will criticize, is apparently
defined as value-free.
The representatives of this approach, as Healey and Hillier (2008a) argue, understood the
value conflicts in society, but believed that with a joint effort, politicians and experts could
achieve better, more informed decisions. However, due to increasing social dynamics in urban
development (diversification, strongly fluctuating economies) and obvious implementation
deficits, the call for new approaches became stronger.

Communicative Planning
Very much born form the criticism that the prevailing logic of rational planning failed in its
planning attempts and could not meet the increasing diversity of lifestyles, a new branch in
planning theory emerged in the 1990s: collaborative or communicative planning4 (Healey
1997; Forester 1980, 1999). The core of this tradition of thought is a more inclusive form of
decision-making according to the logic of negotiation, based on a relativistic worldview that
acknowledged different subjectivities. A crucial conceptual resource was the German philoso-
pher Jürgen Habermas, who decisively shaped the ‘communicative turn’ with his work Theory
of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981).
Various lines of development led to the establishment of collaborative planning theories.
I would like to highlight important connections to a particular Zeitgeist5 that included the
acknowledgement of fragmented identities and diversity in human perception, the centrality of
discourse in the production of collectively accepted realities and a focus on agency and practice
(Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones 2005). This basic perspective has been enriched with refer-
ences to the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1976) and Anthony Giddens (1984), which became,
in addition to Habermas’s work, an important basis for the development of a more inclusive
approach in planning. With what some call the practice turn, collaborative approaches also give in
to a form of meso-reductionism (practice as an intermediate global level or Bourdieu’s habitus
as a master process; see DeLanda 2006a).
Communicative or collaborative planning situates the planner in a context that is shaped
by the logic of negotiation. This moves attention of planning theory to the planner him/
herself, in other words: it focuses on the subject(s), not the object of planning. The who and
the why replace the what. Planners take on the roles of innovators of joint learning processes
and as communication specialists (moderator, mediator, and transformer of power relation-
ships). Collaborative planning assumes that a planning process allows, despite subjectivities,
the production of a temporary collective frame of reference. Openness of process and the
fuzzy distinction between expert and lay knowledge were key to expelling planning theory

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from rationalist, deterministic approaches and alleged ‘objective’, linear thinking. Collaborative
approaches bring the fluidity, uncertainty and complexity of the world to the fore, but this comes
at a price. They do so by placing them on a symbolic/linguistic plane. In order to grasp the
contribution of Assemblage Theory, it is important to notice this specific philosophical opera-
tion which is shared among approaches that sail under the flag of post-modernism and partly
also post-structuralism (see Doel and Clarke 2004; Arbor and Hirt 2003). So, broadly speaking,
communicative rationality reinforces a perspective where almost everything is related to her-
meneutic, linguistic or sociological constructions (Srnicek, no year: 300). Within this paradigm
change in wider social sciences, planning theorists have reconciled themselves to the idea of
observers as active participants (Healey 2006) in the research of social reality, giving them a
central and pivotal role. However, collaborative approaches provide a second order representation
by reading all instances of human/non-human relations as somehow culturally determined
(Hinchcliffe 2003). A sort of linguistic idealism has become a predominant paradigm that has
accepted the fortification of the symbolic/linguistic dimension (and also an anthropomorphic
view of the world). As a consequence the term ‘construction’ is not used in the sense in which,
for example, Foucault (1995) talks of the construction of soldier bodies through drill and dis-
cipline, but to the way our minds (socially) ‘construct’ the world of appearances via linguistic
categories (DeLanda, Protevi and Thanem 2006). This consequently reinforces an essentialist
perception of matter as inert, passive and docile (Van Wezemael 2012). The result is a theory-
led and systematic overestimation of the capacity of human action – in our case, of planner’s
interventions – as it is cut off from the relations of forces that govern hybrid and non-human
systems that are so common to planners.

A Relational Turn
Since the 2000s various ‘relational’ approaches (e.g. institutionalist thinking and various
traditions of complexity thinking such as Assemblage Theory) have tried to deal with some
points of criticism toward collaborative planning. Whereas institutionalist perspectives are an
attempt to have a concept of structure without being too deterministic, as in rational scientific
management or critical political ecology, Assemblage Theory goes much further as it leaves
such a framework and provides different ontological foundations. On this basis, planning
theory can

1 avoid the essentialism that characterizes naive realism and forms of rationalism (collabora-
tive planner’s critique toward rationalism), and simultaneously
2 remove one of the main objections that non-realists make against the postulation of an
autonomous reality as it offers an integration of language and negotiation into a realist and
materialist worldview.

Because Assemblage Theory introduces a realist and neo-materialist perspective, complexity

is no longer placed on the plane of interpretation, meanings or linguistic structures – as col-
laborative approaches suggest – but rather on the plane of a relational materiality and a realistic
constructivism6 (Law and Urry 2004). The Leitmotiv might be that every observable order,
including every spatial setting or social or communicative ensemble, is a product of interac-
tions of (usually amazingly heterogeneous) elements. The resulting focus on the dynamics of
non-equilibrium and on multiple futures, historical path dependency and intrinsic uncertainty,
describes systems on the basis of interaction, non-linearity, instability, self-organization and
unpredictability.

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What Is Assemblage Theory?

The following thought embraces the basic idea of Assemblage Theory (see DeLanda 2002; Van
Wezemael 2008).
An individual person, a population of individual persons, project teams, organizations, inter-
organizational networks, community networks, or cities do not differ in ontological status; they
are all historically produced individuals, which work on different spatial scales (or different layers)
and which are produced by connections on the next lower scale. The parts – such as a subject or
a project team – would not dissolve into the next scale – such as the project team or the organiza-
tion. They can unplug from one entity (e.g. the subject from a project team) and connect to parts
of another entity (such as a family or a sports club or another project team) without changing its
constitutive elements. The scales are not self-referring, essential entities, but statistical results from
the connections on the lower scale. Which one is part and which one is whole consequently is a
solely relative question. The question what a thing ‘is’ (its ‘essence’) would be replaced by the ques-
tion what it ‘does’. The production of an entity becomes a constituent element of its definition.

A Brief Outline of Assemblage Theory

In the section above, the mentioned individuals are conceptualized as assemblages. The relations,
which upkeep heterogeneity, are called relations of exteriority.7 The concept of the ‘exterior-
ity of relations’, originally from the Philosopher David Hume (Deleuze 1994, 1991) offers
the opportunity to think many intermediate levels between an absolute ‘micro’ and ‘macro’,
between a ‘structure’, and an ‘individual’. It thus turns these terms into relative ones at any given
scale. Due to such relations the heterogeneity of an assemblage’s parts does not dissolve into the
next larger scale, but attests to a creative process and thus remains active for new and different
connections and thus for (immanent) change.
An assemblage can conceptually and empirically be grasped along two axes. The first one
refers to the processes of production (de-stabilization and re-stabilization); the second one refers
to the question what it can do, which role it can play.
The first axis defines the variable roles that an assemblage’s components might play, from a
purely material role at one extreme of the axis, to a purely expressive role at the other extreme.
‘These roles are variable and may occur in mixtures, that is, a given component may play a mix-
ture of material and expressive roles by exercising different sets of capacities’ (DeLanda 2006a: 12).
However, expressivity – in Assemblage Theory – is not reduced to language and symbols; there are
also bodily and behavioural forms of expression, as well as the direct expression of colour or design
and so on. Material elements in a social assemblage, such as a lobby or pressure group, also include
the time and energy expended, for instance, in maintaining the assemblage’s relations, negotiat-
ing agendas, hiding struggles from public view (Hillier and Van Wezemael 2008). Similarly the
material parts of a planning competition would consist of the energy and labour involved in setting
up and maintaining a jury, patching together provisional coalitions, hiding internal struggles from
public view. The representation hardware – plans, texts, design models, computer animations –
play a material role, too.
DeLanda argues that specialized expressive media (such as language) can be seen as an addi-
tional dimension or a differentiation of the expressive roles in social assemblages. Specialized
expressive media consolidate and rigidify the identity of the assemblage (e.g. by shared stories,
metaphors, professional design discourses and architectural or planning ‘schools of thought’) or
allow the assemblage certain latitude for more flexible operation while benefiting from linguistic
(and other) resources in processes of coding and decoding. (DeLanda 2006a: 18–19).

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The second axis in Assemblage Theory concerns ‘variable processes in which these compo-
nents become involved: processes either stabilizing or destabilizing the identity of an assemblage’
(DeLanda 2006a: 12). The former are referred to as processes of (re)territorialization, the latter
as processes of deterritorialization. De- and reterritorialization can be understood as a move-
ment that produces change. It indicates the creative potential of an assemblage to become; to
connect differently and to grow in a disorganized way. The emergence of semi-stable patterns,
of coalitions between projects and people can be viewed as movements that introduce change
into other coalitions. To deterritorialize means to free up the fixed connections that contain
an assemblage, all the while exposing it to new organizations (reterritorialization). Processes of
(re)territorialization increase an assemblage’s degree of internal homogeneity or the degree of
sharpness of its boundaries. By contrast, processes of deterritorialization either destabilize an
assemblage’s boundaries or increase its internal heterogeneity.
Assemblage Theory thus is all about assembling, about relational processes of assembly of
heterogeneous entities. Such entities might, for instance, be cities or regions (viewed as agglom-
erations of heterogeneity; see Amin 2002). Assemblage Theory defines the rules or the basic
concepts one must follow when studying or interfering with processes of assembly in order to
avoid the essentialism that characterizes naive realism and forms of rationalism.
DeLanda (2006b) relates the terms micro and macro to the terms molecular and molar in
the philosophy of Deleuze. What is molecular at any one ‘scale’ is that which plays the role of
component, while the molar is the statistical result of molecular populations at any given level of
scale (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Thus, which one is the part (the molecular) and which one
the whole (the molar is a statistical rather than a causal product) is a relative question. An assem-
blage can be seen as a mostly unintended and not completely determined product. Therefore,
the ‘larger’ entity is not self-referring but an emergent result of the connections at the lower level.
However, once a larger scale entity emerges, it immediately starts acting as a source of resources
as well as a limitation for its components. Consequently forms of path dependence will start to
evolve. Its molar lines enable the parts in specific ways and constrain them in others. This intro-
duces a top-down aspect to the so far bottom-up approach. The striking characteristic of this
approach is that heterogeneous assemblages do not homogenize when they build a larger – or
simply another – assemblage by connecting with other entities. For instance, internal hierarchies
of a public administration unit do not cease to matter or exist when they become involved in a
flat hierarchy of heterarchic governance, neither do the persons and groups that form the unit
on the basis of their connections.
It is important not to trivialize the approach so as not to cause the concept of assemblage
to lose meaning and its explanatory force. At the highest level we do not get ‘society as a
whole’, but simply another concrete, singular entity (DeLanda 2006b: 252). The assemblage-
based ontology is open to any connections or expansions as long as any addition is defined in a
non-essentialist way and as long as any new entity introduced maintains relations of exteriority
with those that are already included (DeLanda 2006b: 265). This is precisely what I meant with
the rules to apply above.

Assemblages Are Virtual-Actual

The discussion so far indicates that assemblages are more or less concrete arrangements of ‘actual’
things (like networks and organizations, or buildings, streets and trees). However, their mode
of functioning cannot be understood independently of the ‘scripts’ (Belliger and Krieger 2006)
that they embody. At this point I turn to the virtual-actual character of the real. The key credit
of Deleuze for urban governance lies in his deeper insight that nothing can be understood if it

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Table 26.1 A realist ontology

Virtual Intensive Actual

Virtual continuum formed Fields of individuation/ Extensities and qualities
by multiplicities morphogenesis
⇒ Progressive differentiation ⇒

Source: author’s draft based on Deleuze (1994)

is reduced to the properties that it displays at any given moment. Deleuze introduces a realist
ontology which I roughly map out in Table 26.1.
Real assemblages consist of a field of actualities (exercised properties), a possibility space,
which refers to the virtual, containing potential properties, and a generative field: the inten-
sive, individuating level (DeLanda 2002: 143; Deleuze 1994: 173). The virtual is necessarily
structured since different assemblages exhibit different sets of capacities. We can address the
virtual by means of unactualized tendencies (‘singularities’) and unactualized capacities to affect
and be affected (‘affects’) (DeLanda 2002: 62). Singularities are virtual, but they are individu-
ated in assemblages, and so they are vital to the operation of those assemblages (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987: 100). Resource interdependencies between agents in governance settings might
be a good example: resource interdependence would be the virtual diagram that guides the
actualization and the dynamics of any governance setting (or assemblage) – independent of its
actual form. Since no individual is ever (ontologically) independent from its environment, every
individual must be viewed as an open system through which matter, information and energy
pass. Therefore, all individuals need certain singularities in order to maintain their identity; those
singularities, however, are not transcendent types. Rather they are generated on the basis of the
relations that give rise to the system itself. In other words they are immanent. This means that
every assemblage must be understood not only on the basis of its actual relations, but also with
regard to a space of possibilities that is structured by singularities (see Table 26.1). However,
singularities do not exist independently of the specific assemblage in which they are expressed
and thus incarnated. On the basis of different connections of component parts, singularities
are modulated. Thus we can say that a space of possibilities is structured by a map of relations
between forces or a map of intensity. It is not a copy of the actual, but it constructs a real-to-come,
or a becoming. Singularities allow for a variety of actualizations to one problem. Since actualiza-
tions are (temporary) solutions that are derived from processes of individuation, real (not actual)
problems are defined by singularities. Problems, therefore, maintain certain autonomy from
their particular solutions. Or as DeLanda (2002: 115–116) poses it: ‘To give consistency to these
well-posed problems . . . means to endow them with a certain autonomy from their particular
solutions, just like the virtual multiplicities do not disappear behind their actualised individuals’.

What Does Assemblage Theory Do for Planning Theory

(and What Does It Not Do)?
DeLanda (2006a) provides an excellent conceptual outline of assemblages and how they can
work for the social. However, his illustrations of intermediate entities such as social groups, mar-
kets or cities do not match that quality. Rather, planning theory is challenged to build specific
theories in and for planning on the basis of a philosophy of assemblages. Thus we can answer
the negative part in this section’s title. Assemblage Theory is not a theory that can be ‘used’
in planning. What does it do for planning theory? It provides a foundational framework with

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 Joris Van Wezemael

regard to ontological rules to build planning theories. Its strategy and plane for experimentation
to re-address the what (content) in planning theory will be addressed in the next section. There
are, however, two specific contributions to the field of planning and planning theory that I want
to discuss here. The first addresses the planner’s specific question of agency. Assemblage Theory
addresses this problem within a framework of complexity thinking. The second concerns those
intermediate scales and heterogeneous settings that planning deals with and that planning theory
must address. As mentioned earlier Assemblage Theory clarifies their ontological status.

Agency as an Emergent Phenomenon

Assemblage Theory offers some important conceptual tools for planning theory in order to deal
with the planner’s capacity to make a difference, while maintaining a fully relational perspec-
tive. At this point it becomes necessary to introduce a key differentiation that has found its way
into the debate as a translation issue. As Phillips (2006) points out, the translation of the French
term agencement (which Deleuze and Guattari originally used) into the English term assemblage
is not the best choice, although most authors now retain it (as I do). In contrast to the English
word assemblage, the French word ‘agencement’ has a far broader meaning. In its everyday use it
refers to an arrangement of parts of a body or of a machine, fitting or fixing two or more parts
together and it can be used to refer to the activity of fixing as well as to the arrangement itself. As
Hillier and Abrahams (2013) explain, an agencement is more than simply an assemblage. The term
agencement implies agency and strategy, which assemblage does not. It is an active bringing-into-
existence of its own agency. In asking ‘what makes an assemblage into an agencement’, Hillier
and Abrahams (2013) suggest that one would critically investigate the relations between the
entities or elements in the collective. What are important are the relations between the elements
and their space of possibilities, rather than the elements themselves.
A planner would identify the relations of people, infrastructure, discourses and policies that
might pick up speed and create agency of the collective as an emergent property.
Analytically and backward-looking we call this tracing. Tracing asks how something came to
be. It would explore, in particular, the force relations between heterogeneous component parts,
between human and non-human actors. Tracing is concerned with understanding path depend-
encies, transformations and ruptures, investigating how elements and processes (such as human
and non-human actors) involved in a governance setting or a planning competition respond to
their own relational logics and to external pressures and stimuli. Tracing, then, overlays a product
(what happened) onto the process of its production (how it happened) (Hillier and Abrahams
2013: 57).
Forward looking we refer to a mapping of possibilities. As Hillier and Abrahams (2013: 58) explain,
mapping involves the creative discovery and perception of landmarks, useful for orientation pur-
poses as something to head toward. This would not be an attempt to define long-term detailed
programmes of action, but to raise questions of potential agency and of socio-economic-political
and institutional conditions of change. The idea is to attempt to anticipate the ways in which force
relations and alliances might be redistributed in different circumstances and situations and to work
out what kinds of changes in relations between humans and non-humans could be vitally impor-
tant: ‘It is never filiations which are important, but alliances’ (Deleuze and Parnet 2002: 69). For
instance, the various project proposals that are submitted by the teams in a planning competition
explore a space of possibilities, but they also map it out. This relational map piecewise appears as
a framework for evaluation criteria to emerge in the jury debates. Coalitions form between parts
of discourse, representations in the projects, identifications and affects and so form alliances (Van
Wezemael 2010).

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And at the time when one starts to interfere into the relations in order to trigger change, one
can call this machining. It concerns the evaluative study of assemblages and their potentialities
with a view to intervening strategically (agencement). Key elements in machining are questions
of ‘what might happen if . . .?’ (Hillier 2007). However, this questioning is very different to that
generally associated with more rational comprehensive forms of strategic planning. Deleuze and
Guattari emphasize the importance of the force relations between elements rather than simply
the elements themselves.

Intermediate Scales and Heterogeneous Settings

Given the general importance of heterogeneous settings in the field of spatial planning DeLanda’s
(2006a) critique of the micro-, meso-, and macro-reductionism of social sciences and their
inability to adequately deal with intermediate entities obtains major relevance. He states that the
ontological status of various scales which are neither micro nor macro – such as project teams,
peers, organization segments, organizations, cities – ‘has not been properly conceptualized’
(DeLanda 2006a: 5). He claims that scientists that deal with these intermediate levels ‘without
ontological foundations . . . are typically using an implicit and thereby uncritically accepted
ontology’ (DeLanda 2006a: 7). Assemblage Theory allows for a proper dealing with the hetero-
geneous entities of different and differing scales that planning has to come to terms with. There
are countless other forms of ‘planning assemblages’ waiting to be adequately theorized (from
participation to network governance; from strategic planning to planning competitions.

Content Theories as Actualizations of Assemblage Theory

In his seminal work Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, DeLanda (2002) mobilizes Deleuzian
concepts. He uses them to explain with regard to the study of non-linear dynamics (such as in
thermodynamics under far-from-equilibrium conditions), that classical mechanics and ‘low-
intensity’ thermodynamics dealt with special cases.8
This thought paves the way for an experimental method to work with Assemblage Theory in
the field of planning theory: many classical planning theories and concepts, broadly understood,
can be treated as special cases.
DeLanda obviously had this – as a strategy – on his mind in his New Philosophy of Society
(2006a). He draws largely on the work of urban geographers, but also on the work of sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu, and he shows where Bourdieu’s Field Theory contradicts the rules of Assemblage
Theory. DeLanda argues that Field Theory ‘works’ as an Assemblage Theory if the habitus were
not reified as a ‘master process’. Besides, the suggestion to mobilize Assemblage Theory in order
to contribute to planning theory by means of experimentation with existing specific bodies of
thought/theory has a very strong precursor in the Work of Deleuze. Deleuze did not interpret
Kant, Hume or Spinoza. He experimented with their potentialities, traced their own singularities of
thought and mapped out what their thinking could become.
The experimentation with mid-range theories and with content-oriented theories must
be understood in an analogous way. DeLanda (2006b: 265) argues that ‘the assemblage-based
ontology is open to any connections or expansions as long as any additions are defined in a
non-essentialist way and as long as any new entity introduced maintains relations of exterior-
ity with those that are already included’. The theories and conceptions that deal with such
expansions (content) have to follow the non-essentialism and the rules of exteriority, too.
Those content-oriented theoretical expansions include management and decision-making,
urban governance, city development, neighbourhood outreach, strategic regional planning or

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infrastructure networks and much more. The experimentation with content-oriented theories
allows bringing the what (content) back into planning theory while re-addressing these fields on
the basis of a sound and complexity-based theory of social assemblages. Examples of such work
can be found in Loepfe (2014) who embeds urbanist concepts of place quality into assemblage
thinking. Silberberger (2011) conceptualizes planning competitions as nested assemblages and
works on design and decision-making theories. I have elaborated on theories of knowledge
creation, planning competitions, surveillance (Craviolini, Van Wezemael and Wirth 2011),
network governance or neighbourhood development, or collaborative planning in order to
show how existing approaches can be adequately accustomed in order to work on a proper
assemblage basis.
The mobilizing of existing theories within an assemblage framework opens the doors to a
precious treasure – theories that are the key to empirical fields, while avoiding their reduction-
isms and their widespread ignorance with regard to ontology. This redefines and clarifies the
position and function of Assemblage Theory. It is not a theory. It lays ground for theories.

Conclusion
In this chapter I have sketched out a discursive space using rational and comprehensive planning
in order to argue why Assemblage Theory has been a major contribution to planning theory in
recent years and how it contributes. Furthermore, I have outlined Assemblage Theory and
highlighted its most important concepts. These basic concepts have been addressed very prag-
matically as rules. Rules that must be respected when novel elements are added to an assemblage,
but also as rules that can be mobilized in order to experiment with theories that have been
developed to deal with precisely those elements that can be reconceptualized as assemblages
or component parts of nested assemblages. In times when everyone claims to be a relationalist,
Assemblage Theory might be a good companion in order to make sure that one walks the walk.
However, Assemblage Theory is also an ethical approach. Why is that? As I explained above,
it must not be used as a ready-made ‘tool’. Assemblage Theory makes us question given identities
on the basis of a radical immanentism (and does away with essentialism and transcendental short-
cuts). By this means it allows for novel identities to emerge, for novel connections to materialize.
Therefore Assemblage Theory itself can be understood as a diagram that must be actualized with
respect to (and with respect for) the empirical field where it should work. Assemblage Theory
lays ground for theories to be generated in an experimentation of what they might become. This
inherent procedural logic helps avoiding the subjugation of the researched under the researcher,
or the empirical field under a theoretical conception that already defines what will be voice,
and what will be neglected as noise. However, this ethical aspect also moots the question of
how Assemblage Theory can help us develop theories about what to do. The contribution of
Assemblage Theory to the normative foundations of planning must still be written.

Notes
1 DeLanda (2002) does not examine a direct interpretation of Deleuze’s texts, rather he reconstructs his
philosophy, using entirely different theoretical resources and lines of argument. The main focus lies on
Deleuze’s ‘world’, not his ‘words’, in the sense of his ontology. DeLanda identifies Deleuze as a realist
philosopher.
2 For a good overview see Loepfe (2014).
3 They include: interface theory and practice, self-conception (the idea of planning), role and identity of
the planner, kind of knowledge and its production, interface planning and politics, political and social
background.

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4 For our purpose here I will treat them synonymously.

5 There were several precursors before the 1990s. For example, John Forester (critical pragmatism; Forester
1980), inspired by the pragmatist philosophers of the early 20th century, argued for planning that
mobilizes the potential of situated knowledge through social learning processes. In a similar vein, John
Friedmann (transactive planning; Friedmann 1973) argued to see planning as an instrument of innova-
tion, not (only) as an instrument for control.
6 See also Latour (2005) who explains that the world is constructed, but not socially.
7 This is opposed to relations of interiority, where component parts are constituted by the very relations
they have to other parts in the ‘whole’. This means that a ‘part detached from such a whole ceases to be
what it is, since being this particular part is one of its constitutive properties’ (DeLanda 2006a: 9).
8 Social scientists inherited their classical vocabulary (like social strata) from these special cases. And, one
could argue, also much of their thinking.

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 27
LINES OF BECOMING
Jean Hillier

Introduction
A theory is exactly like a box of tools …. A theory does not totalise; it is an instrument
for multiplication and it also multiplies itself.
(Deleuze, in Deleuze and Foucault 1977: 208)

Several concepts derived from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have provided
powerful exploratory tools for planning theorists who have begun to advance a range of visions,
strategies and governance agendas for planning in contrast to the traditional objective/goal
setting of instrumental planning. In this chapter I explore Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of
becoming and the potentialities it might offer theorisation in spatial planning.
Uncertainties are inherent in planning practices. Plans and legislation that present fixed
rules or policies project inflexibility and do not allow for commitment to less precise goals,
provisional advice and adaptive futures. Inflexibility may relate to an essentialism prevalent in
planning (what constitutes a “sustainable” city, a “good” city, a “healthy” city and so on): a
Platonist “being”. I concentrate not on specific issues as such, but on the ontological ground
that prefigures and makes possible such structural relations and argue instead for a theoretical
grounding in non-essentialist becoming rather than being.
Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming resonates with a world marked by uncertainty.
Everyday “glimmers of becoming” (Connolly 2011: 7), include the contingent globalisation of
capital and enhanced visibility of natural disasters. Further, Braidotti (2002: 118) refers to a crisis
of humanism in which what were typically regarded as the world’s “others” (women, nature,
the Global South and so on) challenge the structures and boundaries of traditional subjectivity
dominated, as it has been, by male anthropocentric performativities of being. I discuss becoming
as an encounter between elements which effects a transition of those elements from one state to
another. Becoming is concerned with how something emerges and with what it can do, rather
than what it is.
For Deleuze, “things have essences, but essences are not things” (Baugh 2006: 39). Deleuze
offers ideas and concepts designed to challenge and disrupt our theoretical and practical under-
standing and a “tool-box” (Deleuze and Foucault 1977: 208) for thinking and working differently

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in the more-than-human worlds we encounter. Following brief discussion of uncertainty and

essentialism, I outline Deleuze’s concept of becoming, emphasising its alterity to traditional
notions of being. I then consider becomings of specific types, which Deleuze and Guattari term
becomings-minor. The authors’ first specific becoming is that of becoming-woman, followed
by becoming-animal, both of which are relevant for planning theory and practice.
Savini et al. (2015: 309) suggest that “today’s [planning] practice does not seem to recog-
nise the urgency for the inclusion of openness and complexity in generally linear planning
processes”. As such, I explore potentialities for development of DeleuzoGuattarian-inspired
pragmatics with regard to emergent forms of law and strategic spatial planning before engag-
ing in discussion of the potential for “revolutionary-becoming”. I inconclude that becomings
undermine the essentialist identities and fixed terms of majoritarian planning cultures. In
so doing, they offer us ways to think and act differently: to become with the world rather
than in it.

On Expecting a Non-essentialist Unexpected

Uncertainty is rapidly becoming a buzzword in urban studies and related fields and is receiv-
ing increasing attention in spatial planning theory (see, for example, Balducci et al. 2011;
Portugali 2012; Savini et al. 2015). It has long been known that planning practice is faced with
the contingencies of “wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber 1973) and inherent uncertain-
ties. While many planning theorists (notably Albrechts 2015; Albrechts and Balducci 2013;
Christensen 1985; Gunder and Hillier 2009; Healey 1997, 2007; Hillier 2007, 2011, 2013;
Innes and Booher 2010; Portugali 2012) have proposed and debated theoretical approaches
and associated methodologies for potential planning practice, it appears that regardless “of
reality, planners, managers, and politicians persist in their efforts to impose certainty (admin-
istratively, bureaucratically, legally, and politically) in an uncertain world” (Silva 2002:
336–338). Practitioner strategies of coping with uncertainties by ignoring them or through
attempts to eliminate, reduce and manage them (Abbott 2005, 2009, 2012) are inherently
paradoxical (Portugali 2008). The challenge to theorists and practitioners is thus not to “open
additional boxes fitting the same models” (Lagadec 2009: 473) – which only offers an illusion
of certainty (Gunder and Hillier 2009) – but to cultivate disconcertment with these models
and think anew.
Abrahams (2016) claims that a key problem is the majoritarian, essentialist nature of plan-
ning. Essentialism “holds that any material or non-material entity has a number of traits that
are deemed essential to its identity and/or its function” (Abrahams 2015: 33). Ranging from
conceptualisations of space as a measurable continuum in which things are located and of time
as progressing at even speed from past to future, to universalist codes and guides for determina-
tion of things including urban deprivation or wellbeing, sustainable homes, town centre vitality,
etc., essentialist representations impede creativity and flexibility as they encourage practitioners
to apply rules rather than to respond to specific issues (Abrahams 2015: 36).
Deleuze offers a non-essentialist alternative to such transcendent fixities. He proposes an
ontology of “real essences” (Baugh 2006) which do not restrict possible forms of existence,
or preclude new forms from emerging. Deleuzean essences are mobile and immanent: “a
power of metamorphosis” (Deleuze 1990a: 266), inherent in a world that is “open, divergent
and creative” (Baugh 2006: 32). As Deleuze (1988: 125) explains, “the speed or slowness of
metabolisms, perceptions, actions and reactions link together to constitute a particular individual
in the world”; the particular, individual essence of a body as any entity comprised of parts
(a non-human animal, a practice, an idea and so on). Each “whole” then endures “as long as its

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parts remain under the relation which characterises it” (Deleuze 1990b: 213). An essence, for
Deleuze, is a capacity of a body, which might or might not be realised. An essence is constituted
through its relations and dynamic interactions with other essences. Essences are thus particular
rather than general, immanent rather than transcendent: essence, but not essentialist.
I have argued that planning practitioners should “expect the unexpected” (Hillier 2007: 315;
2014: 40). As I demonstrate below, the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari offers a range
of conceptual ideas that might assist us, not least of which is that of becoming.

How Is Becoming? What Does Becoming Do?

Becoming is a cornerstone of Deleuze’s thinking. Deleuzean becoming refers to “the continual
production . . . of difference immanent within the constitution of events, whether physical or
otherwise” (Stagoll 2010: 26). Becoming, however, is not a phase between states of being
through which something passes, but the dynamism of change itself: “there is no being beyond
becoming” (Deleuze 1983: 22). Deleuze thus attempts to render becoming ontologically inde-
pendent from being. Being is a post-facto social abstraction of the becoming of forces that
encounter each other and manifest themselves together.
An ontology of being in which change reflects being’s temporal becoming, both ignores the
different means of becoming and is bound by essentialist representation. It insists on a singular
truth – the truth of being – that reduces difference to identity. In contrast, an ontology of becom-
ing (such as that of Deleuze) regards change as transformation to creatively express non-linear,
differential becoming (Rae 2014). For Deleuze and Guattari (1987) the question is not “what is
a thing?” (as thinking of what threatens to reduce a thing to the essentialism of an identity), but
rather “how does it become?” Consequently a thing is determined by its relationality and by what
it can do rather than by what it is.
Becoming is an encounter between bodies and/or essences or forces that effects a transi-
tion of both. It constitutes passage toward a new assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:
257–258) while retaining some former resemblance. Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 10) offer
the wasp-orchid assemblage by way of explanation. The Drakaea (wasp-orchid) is a genus of
Australian orchid, pollinated only by the Thynnid wasp. Female Thynnid wasps are flightless
and need to wait on top of flower stems for male wasps in order to mate. A Drakaea flower
assumes the resemblance of/codes itself as a female wasp in the colour of its labellum and pro-
duction of similar pheromones. When a male wasp lands on the labellum, pollen adheres to
it. Eventually, the male wasp realises that the orchid is not a female wasp and flies away to try
again. When he lands on another orchid, he transfers pollen to this plant, thereby effecting
pollination (Hillier 2014: 40–41).
One must be careful not to fall into an ontological trap here. Regarding an orchid and/
or a wasp as of essentialist quality will privilege being. Instead, focus is on the wasp-orchid
assemblage of essences in its becoming. In the wasp-orchid assemblage, both the wasp and the
orchid are changed by their incorporation into the assemblage (by the addition of pollen) which
is marked by emergent properties greater than the sum of the parts (pollination). The becom-
ing of a wasp-orchid assemblage is a creative alliance of heterogeneous essences. In the process
of becoming wasp-orchid, the encounter between the wasp and the orchid releases something
from each (a process of destabilisation or decoding which Deleuze and Guattari term “deter-
ritorialisation”) and, in the process, releases a series of enabling and potentialities by which the
entity is transformed (“reterritorialisation”).
Deleuze and Guattari see the world in terms of varied lines: “we are made of lines” (1987: 194).
Being, as a point, is “an inflection of lines” (Deleuze 1995: 161). Lines can be rigid, hierarchised

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and segmentary (molar), such as social class, gender, species and so on, which perform modes
of ordering. Or they can be supple (molecular) lines of desire and affect. A third form of line
ruptures the other lines, in flight from what has been. A line of flight is an abstract molecular
line; a vector of escape toward a destination that is unknown. It marks a threshold of lowered
resistance to something (“you can no longer stand what you put up with before”; Deleuze and
Parnet 2002: 126), a change in desire or the intensity of desire, a new anxiety and so on. Lines of
flight might be born out of resistance, but they can be positively creative. “It’s along this line of
flight that things come to pass, becomings evolve, revolutions take shape” (Deleuze 1995: 45).
For Deleuze and Guattari, lines are

always in motion, never static, lines may leave lingering traces, but they are vectors,
trajectories, courses of movement and becoming, some [molar lines] so predictable in
their journeys that they may be charted, demarcated by intersecting regular trajecto-
ries, graphed by grids of coordinated vectors, but others [molecular lines, including
lines of flight] as … a vital, nonorganic zigzag passing between things.
(Bogue 2013: 157)

Molecular lines always pass between things, where “the between” is a set of relations or in-
between: the middle (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 293). Such lines are perpetually in progress,
branching and folding. While molecular lines often return to a reterritorialised molar state, lines
of flight perform creative disordering. They are dynamic relations moving toward destinations
that are generally unpredictable: a terra incognita (Deleuze 1994: 136).
The three types of lines are entangled in complex interrelations of ordering and disordering.
De Vries (2013: 127–128) writes that

because lines entangled in a complex play of movements and relations can turn any-
where, one must establish and predict where or how the line will pass; however, this
cannot be done without producing the forces from which one seeks to escape.

If planners seek to predict what will take place, therefore, they risk capturing and reterritorialis-
ing creative change, stymieing its productivity and foreclosing becoming. Deleuze and Guattari
(1987: 270) suggest, nevertheless, that we should experiment, because while reterritorialisation
might recapture and foreclose our attempts, it also produces a platform for creative becomings.
As Deleuze (1998: 65) explains, “it is becoming that turns the slightest of trajectories, or even a
fixed immobility, into a journey (un voyage); and it is the trajectory that turns the imaginary into
a becoming” (my translation).
I now turn to becomings of specific types, as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) suggest that it is
specific becomings that affirm the nature of becoming.

Becomings-minor
All becomings are, first and foremost, becoming-minor (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 291):
becoming-woman, becoming-animal, becoming-world. It should be explained that “minority”
does not refer to specific numbers or quantities, but is the counterpart to “majority”, the domi-
nant, mainstream of stable identities that frames cultural ideals and behaviours. Majority and
minority are mutually determined through their positions in relations of domination, rather than
through possession of a defining characteristic, although typically in our societies, the two go
together.

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 Lines of Becoming

When we say majority, we are referring not to a greater relative quantity but to the
determination of a state or standard in relation to which larger quantities, as well as the
smallest, can be said to be minoritarian: white-man, adult-male, etc. Majority implies
a state of domination, not the reverse.
(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 291)

There are two simultaneous movements in processes of becoming-minor: one in which major-
ities are dissolved and one in which more fluid identities are created. Minor and minority
imply a positive subversion of the domination of the majority. For this reason, there can be no
becoming-man, becoming-human and so on. For Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 248) all becom-
ings-minor start with becoming-woman as woman is the main other against which men have
defined their self-image. While the authors identify becoming-woman, becoming-animal and
becoming-imperceptible (1987: 279), they stress that there is no linear sequence of becomings.
Becoming-woman or becoming-animal does not imply mimicking or becoming “like” a
woman or animal. “Becoming is certainly not imitating, or identifying with something; neither
is it corresponding” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 239). When Deleuze and Guattari (1987:
243ff.) discuss Captain Ahab in the novel Moby Dick as possessing “an irresistible becoming-
whale”, they do not mean that Ahab imitates or sympathises with the white whale, Moby Dick.
Rather, the subjectivity of Ahab, as sea-captain, is pushed over a critical threshold into a creative
synthesis of symbolic, physical and mental forces. Ahab encounters Moby Dick and becomes
something between the two of them, outside them both.

Becoming-Woman
Becoming-woman is a fundamental becoming that is necessary in order to challenge the hierar-
chical dualisms constructed round man as the dominant figure: male/female, white/non-white,
rational/emotional, strong/weak, breadwinner/homemaker and so on. Becoming-woman rup-
tures the rigid gender binaries that have traditionally organised human bodies, experiences,
institutions and histories (Sotirin 2005: 103). In order to deterritorialise such binaries, both men
and women must become-woman because women, too, are prey to particular body images and
sexual behaviours constructed by male-dominated machines of commodification and consum-
erism (for example, Grabe and Hyde 2009; Hamilton 2009; Shaikh et al. 2015). The concept of
becoming-woman allows us to consider, discuss, challenge and subvert such issues in terms of
how they work and what are the forces that drive them.
Braidotti (2010: 307) reminds us, however, that the “woman” in becoming-woman is not
an empirical referent or homogeneous aggregate of same-sex subjects with a shared identity,
but a topological position of intensities and affective states (see Braidotti (1993, 2002, 2011),
Colebrook (2010, 2013), Grosz (1994, 2005), Irigaray (1985) and Jardine (1985) for positive
and negative appreciations of becoming-woman). It is a question of expressing and actualising
new ways of affective interaction; of the reconfiguration of becoming-woman as a post-feminist
concept which abandons both man and woman as basic political units (Colebrook 2013: 436).
Hillier (2016) utilises materialities of cultural heritage – the former women’s Venereal Disease
(VD) Clinic in Melbourne, Australia – to explore new potentialities of becoming-woman-in-
prostitution. She discusses the performative role of buildings, such as the clinic, in gendered
practices of spatial planning and argues that the location of the heritage VD Clinic, in what was
the core area of sex work in early twentieth-century Melbourne, could trigger people to think
about attitudes to planning and health-related legislation referring to adult entertainment premises
today. The monument of the VD Clinic could also trigger people to question how societies have

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typically reduced sexuality to sex and women to purveyors of sex, whether as wives/partners,
mothers or sex workers. Perhaps Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of becoming-woman can per-
form as starting-point to challenge essentialist appropriations and to acknowledge the intensities
and actualities hidden in such insufficiently nuanced terms as woman, prostitute and sex worker.

Becoming-Animal
The world that Deleuze and Guattari invoke is one of connection between human and non-
human behaviours. Every species participates in a multiplicity of intersecting assemblages
comprising human and non-human encounters. Houston et al. (2016) suggest that two impor-
tant questions for planning theorists and practitioners are how multispecies relationships might
be ethically and politically considered in planning decision-making and how non-humans can
be engaged meaningfully with humans in deliberative practice without reducing non-humans
to objects or symbols of political struggle (Metzger 2014a).
Geographers have recognised for some time that it is impossible to separate the non-human
into its own ontological space and the “cry of the nonhuman” (Johnston 2008: 636) is gradually
finding voice in planning-related literature. Approaches are advocated that focus on new modes
of human-non-human animal existence which go beyond traditional anthropocentric spatial
orderings (see, Hinchliffe et al. 2005; Metzger 2014a, 2014b).
For Deleuze and Guattari, non-human animals can potentially “dislocate our common-
sense understandings of the world” (Young 2008: 245) as we encounter non-human animals in
creative alliances of heterogeneities. Essentialist categories would dissolve into the more-than-
human. Becoming-animal would involve processes of encounter in which humans accept the
alterity of the more-than-human and introduce such a manner of existence into the way they
think and act. As mentioned above, becoming-animal does not consist in imitating the essen-
tial nature of an animal, but in enhancing one’s sensory appreciation of smell, colour, sound,
rhythm and the milieu that we inhabit.
Houston et al. (2016) advocate processes of planning becoming open to the capacities of
all non-humans in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987: 10–11, 280) notion of “becoming-world”:
“we are not in the world; we become with the world” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 169).
Becoming-world refers to a relational process of ethico-political interaction that moves away
from speciesism and from human and non-human rights (see Braidotti 2006: 106–109) toward
an ethical appreciation of what more-than-human bodies (including water, fire, rock and so
on) can do. Becoming-world is a post-human process that appreciates the shared, common
condition of the world as a whole (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 200). We are all in this together
(Houston et al. 2016). As such, we have a responsibility to develop new ways of copoietic plan-
ning the meshwork of relations we share with non-humans.
What might be the usefulness of becomings-minor for planning? I suggest that it relates to
the question of minor politics explored below. Deleuze and Guattari (1986) suggest that minor
politics arises in the “cramped spaces” and “impossible positions” (Thoburn 2012) of those who
feel constrained by majoritarian societal relations and the identities which they impose. Minor
politics, however, is not the same as minority politics which is often essentialist, concerned with
issues of self-expression and recognition by the majority. Minor politics is concerned not with
representation, but with creation. It engages those “who are missing from majoritarian social
relations” (Deleuze 1989: 216); those “to come” in what would be a de- and reterritorialisa-
tion of civil society and its determinations (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 106). Minor politics
is, therefore, a mode of engagement that always begins “in the middle” of any situation and is
specific to that situation.

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Pragmatics
“We are; we live; we think on the fringe, in the probable fed by the unexpected, in the legal
nourished with information” (Serres 1982: 127). A major tension in spatial planning is that
between the increasing theoretical and empirical recognition of the world as contingent, com-
plex, non-linear and unpredictable and the essentialist codified predictability of plans, regulations
and laws through which planning is practised (Savini et al. 2015). One of the main concepts
that Deleuze and Guattari offer planning theory is that of pragmatics: “a set of tools for undoing
certain habitual [or path-dependent] ways of being in the world” (O’Sullivan 2006: 309) and
for creatively doing things differently. For Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 146) pragmatics – or
cartography as they sometimes refer to it – is a material practice concerned with conditions
for potentiality of creativity and transformation; of lines of becoming that disrupt thought and
practices, such as planning law and strategic spatial planning.

Emergent Law: Becoming-Law?

As Hillier (2015) illustrates, legal certainty is valued in planning, defining what is expected, permitted
and prohibited. Such juridical “certainties” are designed “to help and protect (potential) property
owners, investors and residents, and safeguard public goods” (Savini et al. 2015: 298). This very
characteristic, however, might actually prohibit more flexible or adaptive forms of practice able to
work with contingency and uncertainty (see Hillier 2015; Moroni 2007; Savini et al. 2015).
Law is a social construct that invests space with particular valences and possibilities (Blomley
2003). It harbours a danger of rigidity, attempting to force the unexpected into material norms and
standards. There is thus a need to rethink planning law more radically than is usual, where existing
regulations tend to be amended (frequently streamlined) incrementally (Savini et al. 2015).
Abrahams (2015, 2016) demonstrates how Deleuze’s non-essentialist thinking can assist in
the creative construction of a new (minoritarian) form of methodology more in tune with the
contingencies and unpredictability of the real world. The question is how might we estab-
lish “general legal conditions and open procedures” (Savini et al. 2015: 306) while offering
some form of certainty for particular issues without creating an essentialist machine to block or
encourage potentialities in predetermined visions of “what should be”.
Deleuze (1996) advocates processes of jurisprudence as a creative, open practice of case law
which is more flexible than the civil law systems in continental Europe and elsewhere. We
can build on Deleuze’s ideas to develop the concept of emergent law as a hybrid, or both/
and, which would follow the flows of problem spaces, searching out the significant conditions
of possibility in a problem through which connections can be made to trigger change (Murray
2013). Emergent law is not a fixed set of normative laws, but “continuous processes of know
how to organise things in relation to the problematic of legality, organising processes and events
through immanent processes and events” (Murray 2013: 148).
I suggest (Hillier 2015) that Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) distinction between logos and
nomos is helpful for development of a more emergent form of law. The traditional legal model of
law is that of principle of order or logos: rationality and sovereign/state judgement. In contrast,
nomos does not rely on permanent structures. It implies a rhizomatic form of organisation (the
Deleuzean logic of “and” rather than “is/is not”) and changes of direction. Often self-organised,
it is a fractal motion demonstrating an emergent order (Cowan 1996). Perhaps law can work
in a less limited, more open, democratic, inclusionary direction, as outlined in Abrahams and
Hillier’s (2016) exploration of nomos as a loose organising principle (or refrain) that is locally
defined appropriate to circumstances and which avoids the transcendence of logos.

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 Jean Hillier

Strategic Spatial Planning: Planning for Not Having a Plan?

The “concrete tendency” of many spatial plans is to “produce a particular target in space and
time” (Savini et al. 2015: 304). I argue a need for a more flexible, adaptive form of strategic
spatial planning that “must advance towards a future which is not known, which cannot be
anticipated” (Derrida 1994: 37). I regard strategic spatial planning as a set of practices concerned
with the future transformation of place, folding together social, environmental, economic and
political values. I have proposed (Hillier 2011, 2013) that planning practice be concerned with
strategically navigating pathways (or lines) rather than points; with speculation and experimenta-
tion rather than prediction. As such, Deleuze and Guattari’s pragmatics offers a basis for thinking
potential methodologies.
For Deleuze and Guattari, pragmatics comprises four components: a generative component –
the retrospective tracing of concrete conditions of possibility and pointing toward the potentiality
of what might emerge; a transformational component – making a map of assemblages and their
possibilities for creation and transformation; a diagram of the relational forces that are in play
either as potentialities or as effective emergences; and a machinic component – the outline of
programmes of what new assemblages might emerge and what might take place (Hillier 2011:
508). Pragmatics involves processes that allow heterogeneous elements to encounter each other
in an essentially open future. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 329) write, “it is no longer a
question of imposing a form upon matter but of elaborating an increasingly rich and consistent
material, the better to tap increasingly intense forces”.
Hillier (2011) attempts to develop Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of pragmatics
into a methodology of strategic navigation for strategic spatial planning. Calling for planning
theorists and practitioners to “step outside what’s been thought before, . . . venture outside
what’s familiar and reassuring, . . . to invent new concepts for unknown lands” (Deleuze 1995:
103) to allow possibilities for something new to emerge, Hillier, nevertheless, agrees with
Deleuze and Guattari (1994: 201) that there is a need for “just a little order to protect us from
chaos” and that some form of coding or territorialisation is inevitable. A plan might, in Purcell’s
(2015) words, provide us with a “home” in the midst of chaos. But it is important to point out
both that Deleuze and Guattari do not regard chaos and order as equivalent and also that such
a “plan” would no longer feature as a complete ordered entity that can be divorced from the
processes of actualisation. A plan would be designed to guide decisions as they are being made in
the maelstrom of practice, rather than specifying the outcomes of those decisions (Abrahams and
Hillier 2016). It would “help us commune with chaos without getting overwhelmed” (Purcell
2015: online).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987: 161) advise that

this is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the
opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of
deterritorialisation, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunc-
tions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a
small plot of new land at all times.

The stratum, then, is functionally necessary for us to “commune with chaos, as fully as we can,
without going up in flames” (Purcell 2015: online). We cannot “live in chaos” (Purcell 2015),
but we can experiment with potentialities and opportunities to encourage as many becomings
as possible (Abrahams and Hillier 2016).

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On Revolutionary-Becoming
Deleuze (1995) refers to his work as a pragmatic, political philosophy. He suggests that “we
don’t need an ethical committee of supposedly well-qualified wise men, but user-groups” and
continues “this is where we move from law into politics” (1995: 170). The intention is to trans-
form existing forms of thought and practice: “men’s [sic] hope lies in a revolutionary becoming”
(1995: 171). Deleuze is careful to distance his ideas of revolutionary-becoming or becoming-
revolutionary from actual historical revolutions (the “old model”, [Purcell, 2014a]), which are
blind to the dimension of becoming (Žižek 2004: 12). He concentrates on the political creativity
of minoritarian becomings of “user groups” and their role in “reshuffling” the “binary distribu-
tions of sexes, classes and parties” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 217). Becoming-revolutionary
is concerned with challenging and overturning existing, normalising orders in order to diagram
and machine something new.
Mark Purcell (2013a, 2014b) interprets Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation as referring
to social revolution such that people come to govern themselves in Deleuze and Guattari’s “plot
of new land”, escaping from “capture” by the state apparatus. As Purcell (2013b) explains, a
“new land” is a generalised condition in which becoming pervades a community of association,
repelling capitalism, the state and other apparatuses of capture for a time. Escape is only tempo-
rary, as fleeing elements might be recaptured, flee again and so on. Each escape, however, has an
impact on the apparatus or system as a whole, “reshuffling” and weakening it potentially to the
point of collapse. Since apparatuses can never be eliminated entirely, escape attempts “continue
the active process of warding off these apparatuses, preventing the formation of institutions”
(Purcell, 2013a: 29) that try to organise, code and control.
The “new land” would be a land of association between elements that link together in rela-
tions (“revolutionary connections” [Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 220]) of mutual support. Yet,
while some form of coordination will likely develop, Purcell (2014b: 175) explains that it

cannot constitute a new system of rule, since becoming and flight by definition cannot
rule. They cannot dominate, or establish a hegemony, or constitute an apparatus of
capture. They are an association of “becomings”, a plane, a land traced out by flows in
motion, a rhizome without a ruling order.

As Purcell (2013a) suggests, it is difficult to imagine a role in such a new land for traditional, or
even any, forms of planning practice. Purcell asks what a city without planning might be in a
future of emergent self-organisation. He envisions a planning “that entirely refuses the state and
capitalism” (2013a: 35); a planning that fights against organisation, institution and hierarchy,
which does not try to coordinate activity or take autocratic decisions. “Planning would have
to be conceived of as a power that is immanent to society, that is not done intently by any
specialised group, but by everyone acting together to coordinate activity” (ibid.). I ask whether
this is practicable or whether anarcho-socialist networks could be subject to domination by
power-plays of the “usual suspects” (see Pløger this volume).
Marie-Sophie Banville (2014) agrees with Purcell about the need to reject constructions
of state-led planning. Banville explores the notion of becoming-imperceptible (the most radi-
cal form of becoming), not only with regard to planners, but to planning itself. She engages
Deleuzean immanent ethics as creative, always-dynamic action concerned with what some-
one or something can do, rather than what they are, and offers a set of six proposals for the
becoming-imperceptible of planning. Banville’s proposals include fostering autonomy through

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 Jean Hillier

inaction or through enabling action; a flexible, horizontal rhizomic structure; emergent law;
agonism; multiscalar practice and engaged, reflexive practitioners who are themselves becoming-
imperceptible (Banville 2014: 72–88, my translations).
It is difficult to imagine a revolutionary-becoming of societal constructs, such as planning,
as becoming-imperceptible. Several authors (such as Nail 2012; Patton 2000, 2009, 2012;
Tampio 2009) read revolutionary-becoming as including problem-based participatory forms
of inclusive, democratic organisation. They suggest that Deleuze and Guattari do not neces-
sarily mean the abolition of molar (e.g. state) organisations, but their transformation into a
“fabric of immanent relations” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 358). As Deleuze and Parnet
(2002: 145) tell us,

the question of a revolution has never been utopian spontaneity versus State organisa-
tion. When we challenge the model of the State apparatus or of the party organisation
which is modelled on a conquest of that apparatus, we do not, however, fall into the
grotesque alternatives: either that of appealing to a state of nature, to a spontaneous
dynamic, or that of becoming the self-styled lucid thinker of an impossible revolution.

I suggest that there remains scope for new actualisations of planning that might operate from
within, immanent to the system under scrutiny. This would be the realm of the middle, where
destabilisation, fissures and cracks may undermine essentialist structures and where experiments
may transform the mainstream. The choice is not between control or chaos, stasis or emer-
gence, being or becoming, but perhaps a messy in-between: “just enough to extend the crack,
but not enough to deepen it irremediably?” (Deleuze 1990a: 156). This realm of ambiguity
might be where “a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible” (Deleuze and
Parnet 2002: 147).
Is it possible to overcome path-dependencies sufficient to “extend the crack”, however?
Although pure Deleuzean becoming infers transcending the context of historical conditions out
of which something emerges (Žižek 2004), Deleuze recognises that the past (paths followed or
not followed, structures and so on) can have a wide range of effects, triggering continuation of
trajectories or lines of flight. For any emergent perspective, there will be the influence of sedi-
ments of the past: “it’s just the set of more or less negative preconditions that make it possible
to experiment with something beyond history” (Deleuze 1995: 170).

In Conclusion
Becomings belong to [planning].
(Deleuze and Parnet 2002: 2, adapted)

I am acutely aware of the necessary and paradoxical task of concluding a chapter on becomings
which are themselves inconclusive. If becoming is inherently polyvocal and non-reductive, it
defies summary or conclusion. Nevertheless, for this chapter, it is, in Deleuze and Guattari’s
words “time to die” (1987: 200).
One of the key points I attempt to make in this chapter is that change is not linear from
one state to another along some teleological trajectory that can be predicted or predetermined.
Deleuze writes of lines of becoming, which do not join static points, but flow relationally
between them. Lines of becoming are journeys where one does not know the destination, but
where “other worlds are possible” (Escobar 2009). Becoming is more important than being:
becoming different – thinking and acting differently, outside the essentialist box.

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Deleuze and Guattari suggest that minoritarian politics offers a way to resist capture and
appropriation by mainstream hegemonic structures such as the state, sexism, anthropocentrism,
essentialist regulations and so on. They call for a “revolutionary movement (the connection
of flows, the composition of nondenumerable aggregates, the becoming-minoritarian of eve-
rybody/everything)” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 473). Becoming “explodes the ideas about
what we are and what we can be” (Sotirin 2005: 99). Deleuze and Guattari highlight the
absurdities of ready-made solutions and emphasise “the experimental, the ambiguous . . . and
the aleatory nature of becoming and of life itself” (Deuchars 2011: np).
The concept of becoming opens up space to reconceptualise the assemblage of spatial
planning as replete with the radical contingency of emergent possibilities: to value, rather
than deny, its paradoxical nature in-between structures offering certainty and identity and
indeterminate potentialities for living differently. Becoming, for spatial planning, relates to
“experimental intervention in a world that exceeds human powers of attunement, explana-
tion, prediction, mastery, or control” (Connolly 2011: 10). Becoming “moves beyond our
need to know (the truth, what is real, what makes us human), beyond our determination to
control (life, nature, the universe)” (Sotirin 2005: 99). It offers “a series of hopes”; that we
can “negotiate more wisely” (Connolly 2011: 15), to become with the more-than-human
world in which we live. However, there can be no essentialist, ready-made formulae or “best
practice guides” for becoming or for negotiating in complex worlds; communing with chaos.
Becomings pulsate through encounters: wasp/orchid, Ahab/Moby Dick, and so on and so
forth. Thought itself is an encounter with something that forces us to think (Deleuze 1994:
139). Lines of becoming offer us opportunities to think and act differently. Their value lies
in their ability to “move us in a direction of possibilities that had before been beyond our
ken” (May 2003: 151).

Acknowledgements
My thanks to the referees and particularly to John Pløger for his insightful comments and ques-
tions on a previous draft.

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350
 INDEX

abduction 122 Angel, S. 48

Abrahams, G. 332, 338 antagonism: ineradicability of 267–8; violent
absolute space 17–18, 19 181–2
accountability 176 Anthropocene, the 6, 53–66; economics for
accumulation by dispossession 174 60–3; evidence-based planning 57–9
actants 305, 307–8 anthropological functionalism 223
action 34; communicative 20–1, 22, 86, anti-paternalism 97, 98, 99
195–6; direct and insurgent planning apartheid 295–7
279–83; legitimacy of communicative Appadurai, A. 150
planning 97, 98–9 apparatus 197; disciplinary apparatus of planning
actor-network theory (ANT) 10, 302–13; 194, 197–201
critiques and responses 307–10; future Arabization 292–4
directions 310–12; key concepts and dynamics archaeological approach 197
303–6; modes of research and arguing 306–7; archaeology of the present 284
origins and applications 302–3 Aristotle 83, 84
actors 32–3, 226–7, 227–8, 230 Arkaraprasertkul, N. 162
Adams, J. 119 artefacts of planning 310–11
adaptive governance 224–5, 230 articulation 149
administrative reforms 240 assemblage theory 10, 303–4, 326–36; axes in
adversary 267, 268, 269 assemblage theory 329–30; content theories
advocacy planning 277, 279 as actualizations of 333–4; contribution to
Africa 88–9; South Africa see South Africa planning theory 331–3; and traditions of
agency 202–3; counter-hegemonic 176, 282–3; thought in planning theory 326–8; virtual-
as an emergent phenomenon 332–3; structure actual character of assemblages 330–1;
and 253–4, 259 wasp-orchid assemblage 339
agglomeration economies 58 associations 303–4
agon 266–7 Assyrians 293
agonism 9, 182, 183, 214, 264–75; hegemony Athanasiou, A. 152
267–9, 270, 272; as inadmissible 272–3; attraction of the creative class 109
threads on 264–6; war of position 268–9, Auseinandersetzung (setting-apart-of-each-other)
270, 272 267
agonistic pluralism 22, 101–2 austerity policies 107
Allmendinger, P. 113, 185
American Institute of Planners 42–3 Ba’ath Party 292–3
American Planning Association 48 Bäcklund, P. 265
Amsterdam 136, 140 Baeten, G. 184
ancient cities 41 Bang, H. 242

351
 Index

Banville, M.-S. 345–6 Castells, M. 7, 16, 143, 144–5

Barcelona 239 change: institutional 252, 253, 255, 256–7, 258,
Barcelona model 29, 30, 32, 37, 239 25960; non-linear 10, 314–25
Barnett, C. 127 change agents 32
basic institutions 270 chaos theory 315
becoming 10–11, 34–5, 331, 337–50; emergent Chatterjee, P. 146
law 343; nature of 339–40; non-essentialist Chicago 290; Anti-Eviction Campaign 143,
unexpected 338–9; pragmatics 343; 150–1
revolutionary-becoming 345–6; strategic Chicago University 3, 106
spatial planning 344 Chile 106
becoming-animal 341, 342 China 2, 103
becoming-imperceptible 345–6 circular flow of exchange value 59–60
becoming-woman 341–2 citadels 138
becoming-world 342 ‘Cities of the Global South and the Rest of the
becomings-minor 340–1 World’ conference 148
behaviour: social 48–9; and sustainability 63 citizen participation 95–6, 134–5, 185, 187–8,
being 339 276–9
Benjamin, W. 284 citizenship, urban 145–8
Bhalaswa Jahangir Puri colony 157 city beautiful movement 42, 43
Bhan, G. 149–50 city marketing 109
bifurcations 319–21 civil society 146, 317; see also grassroots of
binary constructions 171, 280–1 planning, social movements
biological evolution 223 class interests 131
biophysical systems perspective 54–6 class struggle 183
bioregions 57–9 classical liberalism 70, 72–4, 76–7
black-boxing 305 climate change 50, 62
Black Lives Matter 151 Cloward, R. 148
Blanco, H. 122 Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth (LTG)
Blanco, I. 239 53–4, 63
‘blocks’ of domination 211–12 Coase, R.H. 254
Blocks Together 143, 150 Cochrane, A. 20
Bogue, R. 340 co-evolution 8–9, 221–33, 321; evolutionary
Bollens, S.A. 291 governance theory (EGT) 8–9, 225–30, 231;
Boltanski, L. 126 planning theory 224–5; social theory 223–4
Booher, D.E. 265 collaborative planning 20–2, 86, 277; see also
boundary objects 306 communicative planning
Bourdieu, P. 327, 333 collective orientation 317, 318
Brazil 146–7, 148; City Statute 148 Collective Towns 293–4
Bridge, G. 126–7 colonial space 173–5
Brundtland Commission 138 colonialism 2, 168–9; see also postcolonial
Butler, J. 152 theorizing
butterfly effect 315 colonization of future 283–5
common good 69–70; see also public interest
calculation 306 communicative action 20–1, 22, 86, 195–6
Caldeira, T. 146–7, 148 communicative planning (CP) 6–7, 86, 93–104,
Callon, M. 303, 304, 307 243, 265, 277, 327–8; and citizen participation
Campbell, H. 84, 135 95–6; core ideas and progress of 93–4;
Canada 42, 44, 45, 46 critiques of 21–2, 99–102; debates 99–102;
Cape Town: protests against African migrants and diversity 159–60; legitimising 97–9; and
282, 286; Toilet Wars 281 neoliberalism 112; planner role 21, 96–7, 279;
capital 60 process/outcome debate 134–5; and spatial
capitalism: free market capitalism 277; justice and planning 20–2, 23, 24
the potential for reform under 135–6; varieties communicative rationality 93–4, 317, 322, 328
of capitalism hypothesis 256 Communist Manifesto 190
capitalist state 277 communitarian conceptions of the public
cars 320–1 interest 73
Cartesian doubt 121 community engagement 243

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complexity theory 10, 224–5, 314–25; Davidoff, P. 74

bifurcations and transitions 319–21; and the Davidson, A. 216
planning debate 321–2; settlements as Davoudi, S. 19, 83, 85, 245
non-linear dynamic systems 316–21; time, De Vries, L.A. 340
non-linearity and complexity 315–16 Dean, J. 186
compromise 126 Dear, M. 18
concentric zone theory 159 Death, C. 214
Condorcet jury theorem 98, 99 decolonization 2; of the future 283–5; of
conflict 291; and agonism 9, 264–75; counter- planning theory 175–6
conducts, subjectification and 214; de-development 61
ethnonational and the dark side of planning de-growth movement 62–3
290–7, 299; historical institutionalism 257; DeLanda, M. 10, 329, 330, 331, 333
moralization of political conflict 184; Deleuze, G. 10, 224, 330–1, 333; becoming
neo-pragmatism 124–5; see also agonism 337–47
conflictual consensus 267, 269 Delhi 157, 160–1
consensus: agonism and 266, 267, 270, 272; deliberation 311–12
communicative planning 20–2, 23, 101–2; deliberative democracy 96, 311–12
conflictual 267, 269; postpolitics 112–13, democracy 124, 130, 140; deliberative 96,
181, 184 311–12; as demos 266–7; participatory 279,
constant capital stocks criterion 61 281; representative 278–9; Singapore 139–40
constructivist institutionalism 250, 257 democratization 146–7
contagious diseases 320 dependencies 229–30; path dependencies see path
content 33 dependencies
content-oriented theories 333–4 depoliticization 187; see also postpolitics
contestation 267, 268 description 306–7
context of strategic planning 32–3 designers 229
contingency 221, 222 desire 298–9
controlling growth 44, 45 deterritorialization 330, 339
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms developing countries (global South) 48, 59,
of Discrimination Against Women 157–8, 278
(CEDAW) 158 development 62; vs growth 59–60, 61;
corporatist governance model 240 sustainable 45–6, 138
cosmopolitan pragmatism 125–7 development committees 107
Coulthard, G. 174, 176 development industry 47
counter-conducts 8, 203, 207, 211, 212–17; Dewey, J. 122, 134
conflict, subjectification and 214; planning’s dialogical proceduralism 70, 71–2, 76
214–16 Dierwechter, Y. 49
counter-hegemonic agency 176, 282–3 difference: in postcolonial theorizing 170–1;
creative class 137; attraction of 109 principle 132
crises 317; financial crisis 111 DiMaggio, P.J. 258
critical attitude 216 direct action 279–83; see also social movements
critical gender studies 156 disavowal of equality 182
critical junctures 256–7, 259–60 disciplinary apparatus of planning 194, 197–201;
critical race theory 159 reform 198–201
Crouch, D. 111 discipline 209, 210
crypto-urbanism 162 discourse structuralization 34
cultural work 8, 201; exploring the contribution discursive configurations 230
of 201–4 discursive institutionalism 250, 257
culture: planning culture 197–8; postcolonial dispossession 174
theorizing 171, 172; values and smart growth dissensus 269, 270–2
48–9 dissent, suppression of 112–13
dissipative structures 54–5
DAD (decide-announce-defend) 187 distribution 259–60
dark side of planning 174; countering 8, 207–20; divergentism 70–1, 75–6
Foucault and 208–10; marginalization and diversity 4, 7–8, 130, 140, 155–66; critiques and
oppression 10, 289–301; planning’s counter- dilemmas 161–3; gender 155–8; and justice
conducts 216 136–8; race and ethnicity 158–61

353
 Index

domination 196, 211–12, 283 evidence-based planning 57–9

‘double consciousness’ of black people 158 eviscerating urbanism 150
duration 36–7 evolution: co-evolution see co-evolution; of
Durban 282, 286 planning theory 1, 2–5; societal 316–19
dynamic systems 10, 314–25; bifurcations and evolutionary governance theory (EGT) 8–9,
transitions 319–21; settlements as non-linear 225–30, 231; governance configurations
316–21 226–8; object and subject formation 228–9;
path, inter and goal dependencies 229–30
Eastern Europe 2 explanation 307
ecological crisis 6, 53–66; alternative economic expressivity 329
paradigm 60–3; biophysical systems exteriority, relations of 329
perspective 54–6; cities as dissipative structures
54–5; cities as ecosystems 55–6; evidence- fact–value divide 120–2
based planning 57–9; need for new economic factors of production 60
theory 59–60 Fainstein, N. 99–100
ecological economics 60–3 Fainstein, S.S. 99–100
ecological footprints 56–7, 59, 62, 64 Faludi, A. 3
economic growth see growth Fanon, F. 150, 283
economics 47, 49–50; for the Anthropocene fantasy 298–9
60–3; need for new economic theory 59–60 feminism 136, 155–6
economies of scale 58 field theory 333
ecosphere 55 finance capital 60
ecosystems: cities as 55–6; regional 57–9 financial crisis of 2008 111
Eddington, A.S. 54 Fleming, W. 143
efficiency 130–1, 199–201, 203–4 flexibility 229–30
Einstein, A. 17, 18 flight, lines of 340
emancipation 36 Florida, R. 107, 109, 137
emergent law 343 Flyvbjerg, B. 84, 86–7, 208–9
enclaves 138 Follett, M.P. 119
enduring institutions 256 foreclosed homes 151–2
energy 317–18 Forester, J. 94, 96, 120, 265
enrolment 304 formal institutions 226–7, 227–8
Enterprise Zones 244 Foucault, M. 4, 8, 207–20, 228, 266; counter-
entitlements 78 conducts 203, 207, 211, 212–17; and the dark
entrepreneurial cities 108 side of planning 208–10; ethics 83–4, 89–90;
entropy 55 Foucauldian analytical tools and the discipline
environment, natural 311; see also ecological crisis and practice of planning 8, 194–206; power
environmentalism 4; and equity 138–9 101, 196, 211–12, 224, 270, 272, 309; the
envisioning 34 subject and power 211–12
equality 190; disavowal of 182 Fraser, N. 82
equity 88, 130, 140; environmentalism and free market capitalism 277
138–9 Friedman, M. 106
equity planning 277, 279 Friedmann, J. 18, 35, 94, 119
Esmark, A. 242 functionalism 223
essences 338–9 future, decolonizing the 283–5
essentialization 171
essentialism 338–9; strategic 172 Gaebler, T. 238–9
ethical self-formation 212 Gaete, C. 143
ethics 6, 81–92; normative 81–2, 83–8, 89, Gaffikin, F. 291
161–2; pragmatism and 124; Southern Gans, H.J. 70
epistemologies 88–9 garden city movement 42, 45
ethnicity see race and ethnicity Geddes, P. 19
ethnocracy 292 gender 7–8, 155–8; and planning theory 156–8
Euclidean geometry 17–18 genealogical approach 197
European social democracy 136 geometry 17–18
European Spatial Development Perspective 16, 19 ghettoes 138
European Union 159 Giddens, A. 23, 327

354
 Index

Gidwani, V. 150 hegemony 267–9, 270, 272

Gilroy, P. 152 Heidegger, M. 267
Glasgow 109 heritage VD clinic 341–2
Glendening, P. 45 Heseltine, M. 107
global protest movements 214, 270, 271, 284–5 heterogeneous settings 333
global South (developing countries) 48, 59, heterosexual matrix 156
157–8, 278 Hillier, J. 266, 272–3, 326, 332, 341, 344
goal dependencies 229–30 historical conjuncture 149–50, 151, 153
Goffman, E. 202 historical institutionalism (HI) 250, 251, 251–2,
Goodman, R. 290 253, 255–8; and planning theory 259–60
Gordon, C. 203 Holden, M. 125–6
governance 9, 180–1, 231, 237–49; adaptive Holston, J. 146–7, 148
224–5, 230; as an analytical concept in home liberations 151–2
planning theories 237–8; evolutionary home vicinity ambience 320
governance theory (EGT) 8–9, 225–30, 231; homelands 295, 296
from government to 237, 238–9; legitimacy Homo sapiens 63
of governance networks 241–2; neoliberal Hoover, J. 150–1
185, 187, 239, 242–4; path dependence of hope, politics of 150
governance practices 239–41; in practice housing 48, 137; Singapore 139
244–6; scale of 47–8 Howard, E. 42
governance-beyond-the-state 183–4 human rights 150–2
government: of government 198, 202; shift to humane urbanism 285–6
governance 237, 238–9 Huxley, M. 22, 160
governmental state 211, 212 hybrid spaces 175–6
governmentality 8, 195, 209, 264; counter-
conducts and 213, 215, 216; and ideal speech situation 20–1
subjectification 210, 211–12 identity 170–1
Gramsci, A. 268 imaginary mode 298
grassroots of planning 7, 143–54; human imagination 282–3, 286; and the urgency in
rights 150–2; poor people’s movements decolonizing the future 283–5
148–52, 153; theory of the city 144–5; urban imaginative planning 122
citizenship 145–8 immutable mobiles 306
grassroots movements see social movements impartiality 132–3
Gray, J. 74 implementation 34
green regeneration 111–12 impoverishment of poverty 149–50
greenbelts 44 inadmissible, the 271, 272–3
grey space 161, 175 inclusion 199
growth 62, 137; vs development 59–60, 61; inclusive growth 147
inclusive 147; sustainable economic growth inclusive planning, liberal 276–9
199 incommensurability thesis 75
growth management 5, 41–52; approaches 43–5; incremental institutional change 259–60
future of 49–50; history of 41–3; smart growth incrementalism 133; progressive 122–3
5, 45–9 India 147, 157, 159, 160–1, 163; Delhi 157,
Guattari, F. 10, 337, 339–41, 342, 343, 344, 160–1
345, 347 indigenous peoples 171, 172–3
individualism 5; moral 72, 77
Habermas, J. 4, 20–1, 86, 134, 195, 327 infinity 87
Hacking, I. 201–2 informal institutions 226–7, 227–8
Hall, P. 133, 250, 255–6 informal settlements 149, 160–1, 278
hard planning 244–6 information sharing 317
Harper, T. 120–2 Innes, J. 96, 265
Harvey, D. 17, 18, 105, 135 innovation 317–18; procedural innovations
Haughton, G. 113, 185 311–12
Hayden, D. 156 input legitimacy 242
Hayek, F. 106, 114 institutional change 252, 253, 255, 256–7, 258,
Healey, P. 29, 71, 96, 118–19, 123, 259, 326 259–60
hegemonic planning 10, 289, 298–9 institutional design 255

355
 Index

institutional isomorphism 258 legitimacy: governance networks 241–2;

institutionalism 231, 328; new see new legitimization of communicative planning
institutionalism 97–9; strategic planning 35–6
institutions: basic 270; definitions of 251–2, Leibniz, G.W. 18
253, 254, 255–6, 258; enduring 256; formal Lenoir, G. 151
and informal 226–7, 227–8; institutional leverage planning 243–4
context of strategic planning 32–3; path liberal inclusive planning 276–9
dependence 241 liberalism: classical and public interest 70, 72–4,
instrumental rationality 3, 93, 94 76–7; neoliberalism see neoliberal planning,
insurgent planning (IP) 9–10, 276–88; break with neoliberalism
liberal inclusive planning 276–9; decolonizing limiting growth 44
the future 283–5; invited and invented spaces Limits to Growth (LTG) 53–4, 63
of action 279–83 Lindblom, C. 133
integration 199 lines of becoming 339–40, 346–7
intention 308 Liverpool 107
interdependencies 229–30 local government, urban 147
interessment 304 Loepfe, M. 187
intermediate scales 333 logos 343
intersubjective reasoning 317, 318 London 42, 57, 107; redevelopment of the South
invented spaces 95, 279–83 Bank 184
invited spaces 95, 279–83 Lorenz, E. 315
Iraq 292–4, 299 Luhmann, N. 223–4
Israel 294–5, 299
machining 333, 344
Jacobs, J. 136–7 Mahoney, J. 257
Jonas, A. 107 majority 340–1
Judaization 295 Malmö 111
just city 134, 135, 139–40 managerial cities 108
justice 7, 88, 120, 130–42, 190, 278; diversity managerial governance model 240
and 136–8; environmentalism and equity Mannheim, K. 132–3
138–9; giving priority to 131–2; potential Mäntysalo, R. 35, 265
for reform under capitalism 135–6; process/ many minds, advantage of 97, 98, 99
outcome debate 134–5; role of planning mapping of possibilities 332, 344
132–4; what can be done 139–40 Marcuse, P. 138
justifications 126 marginalization 10, 289–301; ANT and
the marginalized 308–9; cases of 292–7;
Kathputli settlement 160–1 hegemonic planning 10, 289, 298–9; theories
Kekes, J. 74, 75 on the planning of 290–2
Kelly, R. 106 markets: free market capitalism 277; governance
Keynesianism 114 238–9; regulation of 23; and smart growth 47;
knowledge 60; and power 224, 227–8, 230; state and market in neoliberal planning 105
legitimacy of communicative planning 97, Marsh, B. 119
98, 99 Marx, K. 174
Kurds 292–4 Marxism 131, 144, 149
Massey, D. 18
labour 60 master planning 16, 28
Lacan, J. 4, 224, 298 master-signifiers 298, 299
lack 298–9 materiality 329
Ladrillo, El 106 Maturana, H.R. 223
land 60; confiscation in Israel 295; planning and Mbembe, A. 150
the production of colonial space 173–5; public McIntyre, A. 162
ownership 140; urban 54, 56–7 mediators 304, 305
land rights 158 Mees, P. 99
Latour, B. 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 309, 312 Melbourne 341–2
Law, J. 308, 309 meta ethics 82–3, 84, 90, 162; Southern
law: emergent 343; rule of 78 scholarship 88–9
Lefebvre, H. 7, 17, 134, 145 Meth, P. 282

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Meyer, J.W. 258 new urbanism 45, 46

Mies, M. 284 Newtonian view 17–18
migration 163 nomocratic universalism 77–8
Mill, J.S. 64 nomos 343
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 30 non-humans: actants 305, 307–8; becoming-
Minkowski, H. 18 animal 341, 342
minor (minoritarian) politics 342, 347 non-linearity 10, 314–25; bifurcations and
minority 340–1; becomings-minor 340–2 transitions 319–21; complexity and the
Miraftab, F. 151 planning debate 321–2; settlements as
mobilization 304 non-linear dynamic systems 316–21; time,
Moby Dick 341 complexity sciences and 315–16
modernization 293; modernizing agendas 157–8 non-sceptical value-pluralism 74, 76
modus vivendi 74 Nordic countries 23, 243
molar lines 339–40 normative agenda 309–10, 311–12
molecular lines 340 normative ethics 81–2, 161–2; planning’s
monological recognition 173 dominant focus on 83–8, 89
Mont Pelerin Society 106 North, D.C. 254
moral individualism 72, 77 Nozick, R. 72
moralization of political conflict 184
Moroni, S. 255 object formation 228–9
Morrissey, M. 291 object orientation 317, 318
motivation 308 objective meanings 85
Mouffe, C. 21–2; agonism 101–2, 264, 267–70, Occupy movement 270, 271, 284–5
271, 272; postpolitics 181–2, 183, 188 Olmstead, F.L. 119
Murdoch, J. 309 Ontario 46
Murray, C. 107 Oosterlynck, S. 183, 184–5, 187, 189
oppression 10, 289–301; cases of 292–7;
natural environment 311; see also ecological crisis hegemonic planning 10, 289, 298–9; theories
Neighbourhood Planning initiative 243 on the planning of 290–2
neoclassical microeconomics 255 orientalization 169
neoliberal economics 59, 60–1 Osborne, D. 238–9
neoliberal governance 185, 187, 239; in planning Ostrom, E. 254
theory 242–4 Othering 169, 170, 171
neoliberal planning 7, 105–17; crisis and its outcome/process debate 134–5
aftermath 111–12; established tools and output 33–4
policies 109–11; neoliberalization of spatial output legitimacy 242
planning 22–4, 25; normalising 107–9;
pioneering 106–7; postpolitical planning Paasi, A. 19, 20
112–14 Palestinians 294–5
neoliberalism 3, 4–5, 28, 99–100, 131–2 paradigm shift 19
neo-pragmatism see pragmatism Paris 43
neo-radical planning 265 Parnell, S. 88
Netherlands, the 16; Amsterdam 136, 140 Parnet, C. 346
networks: actor-network theory see actor- participation: citizen 95–6, 134–5, 185, 187–8,
network theory (ANT); legitimacy of 276–9; postpolitics and 187–8
governance networks 241–2; social capital participatory democracy 279, 281; see also
networks 97, 98–9 insurgent planning (IP)
New Haven, Connecticut 42 particularization 184–5
new institutionalism (NI) 9, 250–63; core paternalism 98
concepts 251–4; historical institutionalism (HI) path dependencies 229–30, 256; ANT 311; of
250, 251, 251–2, 253, 255–60; rational choice governance practices 239–41
institutionalism 250, 251, 251–2, 253, 254–5; Peirce, C.S. 122
sociological institutionalism 250, 251, 251–2, phronesis 86–7
253, 258–9 performance management 200–1
‘new land’ 345 performativity 230
New Public Management (NPM) 238 personhood 152
new regionalism 45, 47–8 Pickering, A. 308

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Pierre, J. 240 224, 270, 272, 309; and knowledge 224,

Pierson, P. 255 227–8, 230; legitimacy of communicative
Pieterse, E. 88 planning 97, 98, 99; neo-pragmatic planning
Pinochet, General 106 theory 124–5; new institutionalism 252, 253;
Pithouse, R. 149 Othering as a relation of 170; pragmatism and
Piven, F.F. 148 planning theory 120; and rationality 208–9,
place 15–16 209–10; the subject and 211–12
place-bundles 17–19 pragmatics 343, 344
planner role: communicative planning 21, 96–7, pragmatism 4, 7, 118–29, 202; cosmopolitan
279; justice 132–4 125–7; and planning theory 118–23;
planning culture 197–8 postmodern critique 123–5; relational 123;
planning debate 321–2 Unger’s view 125
planning education 163 primitive accumulation 174
planning ethics see ethics private management planning 244
planning styles 243–4 problem solving 122
pluralism 159; agonistic 22, 101–2; inexistence of problematization 198–200, 304
the public interest 71, 71–2, 73–4, 75; value- procedural discourse ethics 86
pluralism 70, 74–5, 76, 77 procedural innovations 311–12
police order 182, 183 procedural planning 16, 19, 20–2, 265
policy evaluation 130–1 procedural principles 99–100
political economy 4 proceduralism, dialogical 70, 71–2, 76
political instability 50 process/outcome debate 134–5
political society 146 progressive incrementalism 122–3
political will 47–8 progressive movement 119
politics: agonism and conflict 267–73; grassroots progressive planners 133
of planning 7, 143–54; of hope 150; progrowth governance model 240
minoritarian 342, 347; political context of projects 29, 30, 34
strategic planning 32–3; of recognition 172–3; promoting growth 43–4
right-wing 163; see also postpolitics property rights 151–2
poor people’s movements 148–52, 153, 282, 286 proximity 87
population dispersal 295 public interest 3, 6, 69–80; fall from grace
Porter, L. 152 of the idea 69–70; ineliminability of the
positive feedback 256, 259–60 concept 78–9; rethinking 75–8; typology of
positivism 19 conceptions 78, 79; views on inexistence of
possessory politics 152 69, 70–5
possibility space 331 public land ownership 140
post-1989 zeitgeist 181 public-private partnerships (PPPs) 106, 107,
postcolonial theorizing 8, 167–79; decolonization 110–11
of planning theory 175–6; ethico-political Purcell, M. 112, 345
commitment of 169–70; identity and purification approach 183
difference in 170–1; production of colonial Purkarthofer, E. 244
space 173–5; representation, resistance and the
politics of recognition 172–3 quasi-sustainability 59, 64
postpolitics 8, 112–14, 180–93; contesting QWERTY keyboard 256
188–9; criticisms 185–6; defining 186–7;
diagnosing the postpolitical condition 181–3; race and ethnicity 7–8, 158–61; conflict,
of planning 183–5; potentials for further marginalization and oppression 290–7, 299;
development 186–9; specifying 187–8 and planning theory 159–61
post-positivism 4 racial segregation 295–7
post-structuralism 4, 222, 231 radical planning 278
poverty: impoverishment of 149–50; poor radical strategic planning 36
people’s movements 148–52, 153, 282, 286; Ramirez de la Cruz, E.E. 48
urban 107 Rancière, J. 113, 181, 182, 183, 270–2
Powell, W. 258 rational choice 3
power 268; ANT 305, 309; communicative rational choice institutionalism (RI) 250, 251,
planning 98, 100–2; dark side of planning 8, 251–2, 253, 254–5
208–9, 209–10; Foucault 101, 196, 211–12, rational planning 19, 20, 133, 327

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rationalistic conception of the public interest 69 Sager, T. 22, 109

rationality: communicative 93–4, 317, 322, 328; Said, E. 169
instrumental 3, 93, 94; and power 208–9, Sandercock, L. 137, 278
209–10; technical 317, 321–2 Santiago 106
Rawls, J. 85–6, 132, 278 sceptical value-pluralism 75, 76
Reagan, R. 107 Scerri, A. 125–6
realist ontology 331 Schön, D. 119
reality effects 230 Scotland 8, 198–201, 203–4
reasonable disagreement 77 Secchi, B. 28
recognition, politics of 172–3 Second World War 42
Reddy, R. 150 segregation 295–7
reformist planning 264–5 selectivity 33
reforms: administrative 240; of planning systems self-organization 231
and practices 198–201 settlements: informal 149, 160–1, 278; as
regimes of truth 8, 194, 197 non-linear dynamic systems 316–21;
regional ecosystems 57–9 relocation settlements 157, 160–1
rehabilitation 160–1 settler-colonialism 172–3, 174
Rein, M. 119 shack settlements 149
relational approaches 328; politicization 183, 189, silences 311
190; relational nature of strategic planning 35 Simmie, J. 70
relational goods 97, 98–9 simulacra 137
relational pragmatism 123 Singapore 7, 139–40
relational space 16, 17–20, 24; critiques of singularities 331
19–20 ‘smart cities’ 127
relations of exteriority 329 smart decline approaches 49
relocation settlements 157, 160–1 smart growth 5, 45–9; challenges to 47–9;
repoliticization 188–9 as a paradigm 45–7
representation 172–3 Snider, K. 124
representative democracy 278–9 ‘so what?’ question 196–7, 202–3
resilience 138 social behaviour 48–9
resistance 172–3; counter-conducts see social capital networks 97, 98–9
counter-conducts social constructivist turn 302–3
resource interdependencies 331 social control 209
resource orientation 317, 318 social democracy 23, 136
reterritorialization 330, 339, 340 social diversity see diversity
revolution 183 social justice see justice
revolutionary-becoming 345–6 Social Justice Coalition (SJC) 281
Rhodes, R.A.W. 240–1, 242 social movements 118–19; global protest
right to the city 7, 144 movements 214, 270, 271, 284–5; grassroots
right-wing politics 163 of planning 7, 143–54; insurgent planning see
rights 7, 78; human 150–2; land 158; property insurgent planning; poor people’s movements
151–2 148–52, 153, 282, 286
rigidity 229–30 social rules 85
risk 48–9 social science planning perspective 3
Rittel, H. 75, 119, 321 social systems theory 223–4
roll-back neoliberalism 107–8 social theory 223–4
roll-out neoliberalism 108 socialism 114
roll-with-it neoliberalism 108 societal evolution 316–19
Rolnik, R. 148 socialist countries 2
Roma communities 161 sociological functionalism 223
Rorty, R. 121, 128 sociological institutionalism (SI) 250, 251, 251–2,
Rose, N. 145–6 253, 258–9
Rosenau, J.N. 238 soft planning 244–6
Rowan, B. 258 Soja, E. 18
Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) 16 South Africa 149, 280–1; Cape Town
rule of law 78 282, 286; Durban 282, 286; marginalization
rules 330, 334; social 85 and oppression 295–7, 299; Natives Land

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Act 1913 296; Natives’ Trust and Land Act symmetry principle 305, 307–8
1936 296; poor people’s protests against systems theory 19, 20; biophysical systems
African migrants 282, 286; Western Cape perspective 54–6; complex dynamic systems
Anti-Eviction Campaign 149, 151 10, 314–25; social systems theory 223–4
Southern epistemologies of ethical actions 88–9
sovereign self 152 tactical urbanism 273
space: absolute 17–18, 19; hybrid spaces 175–6; Tait, M. 135
invited and invented 95, 279–83; planning’s Taylor, R.C.R. 250, 255–6
counter-conducts 215–16; possibility 331; technical rationality 317, 321–2
production of colonial space 173–5; relational temporary space 273
16, 17–20, 24; temporary 273 terrorism 163
spatial justice see justice Thatcher, M. 106, 108
spatial planning 5, 15–27, 132, 225; ascendance thermodynamics, laws of 54–5
of 15–16; cases of marginalization and Thévenot, L. 126
oppression 292–7; complexity and non- three-term approach 183
linearity 10, 314–25; neoliberalization of Tibaijuka, A.K. 30
22–4, 25; postpolitics and 185; theoretical time 315–16
contexts and their critiques 16–22 Toilet Wars 281
spatial purification 160–1 Tometi, O. 151
specific becomings 340–2 Tomlinson Report 296
Spivak, G. 172 townships 296–7
sprawl 43 tracing 332, 344
Springer, S. 105 trade 59
stabilization 308–9 transaction costs 254–5
Star, S.L. 308–9 transactive planning 94
state: capitalist 277; governmental 211, 212; transcendental conceptions of the public
grassroots of planning 144, 145, 146–7, 153; interest 73
and market in neoliberal planning 105; welfare transgression 282–3
2, 23 transitions 319–21
statutory plans 31 translation 304–5
steady-state economy 61–3, 64 transportation 48
Stein, S. 120–2 Traveller communities 161
Stockholm 140 trend planning 243
Stoker, G. 241–2 truth, regimes of 8, 194, 197
strategic essentialism 172 Tuhiwai-Smith, L. 176
strategic navigation 272–3, 344 Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet 103
strategic planning 5, 28–40, 244, 245; becoming Turkmen 293
and 344; history 29–31; logic, aims and
critiques 31; potential critical features 32–6 Uganda 158
strategy 123 UN-Habitat 30
structure: and agency 253–4, 259; ANT 308–9 uncertainty 337, 338–9
subaltern studies 168, 172 UNCLE (unlimited never-ending consultation
subject formation 228–9 leading to exhaustion) 188
subjectification 210; conflict, counter-conducts Unger, R. 125
and 214; governmental 213; power and United Kingdom (UK) 159; ecological
211–12 footprint 56–7, 64; Liverpool 107; London
subjective meanings 85 42, 57, 107, 184; National Ecosystem
sustainable development 45–6, 138 Assessment 56; Neighbourhood Planning
sustainable economic growth 199 243; neoliberal planning 106–7; New Public
Svirsky, M. 280 Management 238; planning styles 243–4;
Swaziland 158 Scotland 8, 198–201, 203–4; spatial planning
Switzerland 187 23–4
Swyngedouw, E. 110, 183, 183–4, 184–5, United States of America (USA) 3, 158–9;
189, 190 Chicago 143, 150–1, 290; Civil Rights
symbolic interactionism 202 Act 159; Civil Rights Movement 159;

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growth management 42, 43, 45; neoliberal virtuality 36–7; virtual-actual nature of
planning 107; poor people’s movements 148, assemblages 330–1
150–1; pragmatism 118, 119; zoning and visions 33, 34
marginalization 290
universalism 77–8 ‘wandering’ planner 273
unlearning 175–6 war of position 268–9, 270, 272
urban citizenship 145–8 Ward, K. 20
Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) wasp-orchid assemblage 339
107, 244 waste, transformed into the human 150–2
Urban Development Projects (UDPs) 106, Watkins, C. 135
109–10 Watson, I. 176
urban gardening 273 Watson, V. 88, 148
urban land 54, 56–7 Webber, M.M. 75
urban regeneration 106–7; green 111–12 Weber, M. 119
urban renewal 42–3 welfare governance model 240
urban social movements see social welfare state 2, 23
movements Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign
urban theory 169–70 149, 151
utilitarianism 73 Western perspectives 171; privileged 168
‘wicked’ problems 321, 338
value–fact divide 120–2 Wilson, J. 183, 190
value-pluralism 70, 74–5, 76, 77 Winnipeg, Canada 42
values: cultural 48–9; diversity and 161–2 Wolf, M. 59
Van der Leeuw, S. 316–18 woman, becoming- 341–2
Van Puymbroeck, N. 183, 187, 189 world, becoming- 342
Van Wezemael, J. 187
Varela, F.J. 223 Yiftachel, O. 22, 160, 174, 210, 292
varieties of capitalism hypothesis 256 Young, I.M. 136, 278
venereal disease (VD) clinic 341–2
viable universalism 77–8 Zimmerbauer, K. 19, 20
Viganó, P. 28 Zionism 294
vigilantes 282 Žižek, S. 8, 181, 182–3
violent antagonism 181–2 zoning 290–1

361