Suchergebnisse

This reflection discusses my response to William Walton's research paper in this issue of the journal. In it I explore how a timely invitation to take part in the open review process prompted thoughts about my ongoing involvement in the politics of planning in Scotland. Drawing on experience of campaigning for a fair and inclusive planning system, I briefly reflect on why the post-political has proven such an attractive theoretical lens for recent attempts to understand urban planning under neoliberalism. Suggesting that it seems to capture something important about ongoing attempts to reshape planning ideas and practices in Scotland, I go on to consider how Walton's paper brings to light important concerns about the loss of democratic accountability. Overall, I try to explore how the repression of energies required to sustain a post-political settlement may nonetheless provide a resource for acting in and against the dominance of market rationalities. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This reflection discusses my response to William Walton's research paper in this issue of the journal. In it I explore how a timely invitation to take part in the open review process prompted thoughts about my ongoing involvement in the politics of planning in Scotland. Drawing on experience of campaigning for a fair and inclusive planning system, I briefly reflect on why the post-political has proven such an attractive theoretical lens for recent attempts to understand urban planning under neoliberalism. Suggesting that it seems to capture something important about ongoing attempts to reshape planning ideas and practices in Scotland, I go on to consider how Walton's paper brings to light important concerns about the loss of democratic accountability. Overall, I try to explore how the repression of energies required to sustain a post-political settlement may nonetheless provide a resource for acting in and against the dominance of market rationalities.

In this paper I explore how the culture of land-use planning in Scotland has been targeted as an object of modernising reform, exploring how 'culture change' initiatives played a prominent role in stabilising a new settlement around 'open for business' planning between 2006 and 2012, con- taining potential tensions between diverse goals to make planning more efficient, inclusive and integrative. This highlights the potentially significant role of governance cultures in containing ten- sions and securing consent to processes of state restructuring. I therefore argue that greater empirical attentiveness to the cultural micro-politics of state restructuring can improve under- standing of complex, contemporary dynamics of change, and the contested role of the neoliberal hegemonic project in reshaping urban governance. I conclude by arguing that the continued power of neoliberal critiques of the inefficiency of land-use planning indicate a need to acknowl- edge and engage contemporary cultural battles over the purposes of planning and urban governance. ; Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Research Trust Grant No. 433 ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

What is required of the citizen to make planning more democratic? In this article, I argue this previously overlooked question illuminates key challenges for democratising planning in theory and practice. Distinguishing between deliberative and agonistic conceptions of communicative planning, I review the qualities these theories demand of citizens. Through examples from Scotland, I then contrast this with the roles citizens are currently invited to perform within a growth-orientated planning culture, drawing attention to techniques that use constructions of 'good' and 'bad' citizenship to manage conflict generated by development. I conclude by suggesting that while 'ordinary' citizens' experiences draw attention to the strengths and weaknesses of deliberative and agonistic accounts, they also highlight hidden costs associated with participation that present significant challenges for the project of shaping a more democratic form of planning.

The traditional relationship between politics and policy making has been challenged in recent years, highlighting how policy itself can generate political action. This raises questions about how conflict produced or mediated through the policy process is managed, particularly within what has been described as a 'postpolitical settlement' where fundamental politicoideological issues are liable to be 'displaced' rather than opened up for debate. I argue that such displacement generates its own distinctive politicomanagerial logic. Drawing on the discourses and practices of planning reform in England, I suggest that ongoing systemic reform might be understood as a product of a politics of displacement that seeks to cover over the causes of the antagonism generated by the logic of urban development. Tracing this logic through the policy process, I further suggest that displacement has a range of underexamined effects on local democracy and the legitimacy of local government.

This article explores the value of Stuart Hall's approach to conjunctural analysis for examining the complex relations between ideology and planning. By 'thinking conjuncturally', we explore planning as a site where multiple social, economic and political forces coalesce; ideology is one of these forces whose role and influence must be tracked alongside others. To illustrate this, we draw on recent and ongoing planning reforms in England and their relationship with housing development. Highlighting the faltering role of a particular ideological formation in 'suturing together contradictory lines of argument and emotional investments' around housing and planning, this article draws attention to planning as a space where ideological struggle takes place within the frame of a broader, contingent cultural hegemony. This struggle may help to reaffirm that hegemony, but it can also open space for alternative visions to be articulated, with potential to transform dominant logics of planning, and reveal routes to practical and progressive action.

This Special Issue starts from the premise that the concept of ideology holds significant analytical potential for planning but that this potential can only be realised if ideology is brought to the fore of analysis. By naming ideology and rendering it visible, we hope to bring it out from the shadows and into the open to examine its value and what it can tell us about the politics of contemporary planning. The articles in this Special Issue therefore seek to contribute to established academic debates by exploring some of the ways ideology can be deployed as a tool in the analysis of planning problems. This article introduces the Special Issue by exploring the various accounts in the articles of (1) what ideology is; (2) what its effects are; (3) where ideology may be identified and (4) what different theories of ideology can tell us about planning. There inevitably remain many un-answered questions, paths not taken and debates left unaddressed. We hope other scholars will be inspired (or provoked) to address these omissions in the future.

This article introduces the special issue 'Planning amid crisis and austerity: in, against and beyond the contemporary juncture'. It starts by acknowledging two limits of the existing body of literature on the planning/crisis/austerity nexus: on the one hand, the excessive reliance on cases at the 'core' of the financial crisis of 2007-8, with impacts on the understanding of austerity as a response to economic crises; and, on the other, the limited attention given to the impacts of austerity on planning, and their implications for planning practice and research. Based on the contributions in the special issue, the article reflects on some lessons learned: first, the need for a more nuanced understanding of the multiple geographies and temporalities of crisis and austerity; second, the problematic standing of planning practice and research in the face of crisis and austerity; and, third, the potential and limitations of (local) responses and grassroots mobilisations in shaping alternatives. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

In 2014 the UK government announced plans to reduce opposition to housing development by making a direct payment to households in England.1This was part of a wider experiment with behavioural economics and financial inducements in planning policy. In this paper, we explore this proposal, named 'Development Benefits', arguing it offers important insights into how the governing rationality of neoliberalism attempts to govern both planning and opposition to development by replacing political debate with a depoliticised economic rationality. Drawing on householder and key player responses to the Development Benefits proposal we highlight significant levels of principled objection to the replacement of traditional forms of planning reason with financial logics. The paper therefore contributes to understandings of planning as a site of ongoing resistance to neoliberal rationalities. We conclude by questioning whether Development Benefits represent a particular strand of 'late neoliberal' governmentality, exploring the potential for an alternative planning rationality to contest the narrow marketisation of planning ideas and practices.

Introduction Background to this Workshop This Workshop is organised as part of an EU-funded Network (COST Action)1: INTREPID – whose objective is to inspire change in how we understand knowledge and build leadership for interdisciplinarity http://www.intrepid-cost.eu/. INTREPID addresses 3 challenges: • Challenge 1 – Understand Change: Reflecting and Learning • Challenge 2 – Critical Mass: Building Networks and Cooperation • Challenge 3 – Enable Change: Enabling interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. It has been exploring the discourse and practice of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity (ID and TD)2 in research policy, programming and funding in the EU and its member states, and has been looking specifically into the obstacles to, and enablers of, ID and TD in urbanrelated research. This Network is funded for four years. We are now entering the last two and, one of the next tasks is to reflect on "The Future of Academia and Universities: as if ID and TD mattered" (INTREPID Futures Initiative). The idea is to make a contribution over the next two years, towards shaping the space and terms of knowledge production in a way that enables more sustainable urban futures. Thus, we will engage with the future of academia and universities from the perspective of urban studies and urban-related research. Aim of the London Workshop This London Workshop is meant to advance the agenda of "Universities and Knowledge for Sustainable Urban Futures: as if ID and TD mattered", by helping us to define the scope of our contribution, and of the activities we might fund for 2017-2019. Intention statement: 'To contribute to the shaping of tomorrow's universities & their urban curricula: as if inter and transdisciplinary ways of knowing actually mattered'. For this purpose, the Workshop was a one-day gathering of experts and practitioners with diverse experience and disciplinary backgrounds. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The Caravana pelo Direito à Habitação travelled across Portugal together with local groups and associations to collect information on and give visibility to housing needs, while aiming to create new networks and influence the national political agenda. This conversation brings together seven scholar-activists that participated in the Caravana, who reflect upon the Caravana and contemporary struggles on the right to housing in Portugal. The conversation sheds light on some contentious issues that are presented through a selection of relevant excerpts, which cover personal identities as scholar-activists; contexts shaping contemporary housing struggles; and the relation of the Caravana to the the politics of housing in Portugal. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion