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Insisting on not being addressed in that way: Ideology, subjection and agency in the context of spatial planning Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Sabrina Schröder, Markus Leibenath
As planning systems in many countries have faced growing pressure over recent years, this has turned the spotlight on ethical aspects of planning, in particular the roles and identities of planners. Here the notions of ideology and subjection have served as important theoretical resources. However, these lines of thought have rarely been integrated, meaning that most studies on ideology have remained
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Activist Co-production for the Right to Occupy, Hold Ground, and Upgrade Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, María Arquero de Alarcón, Abigail Friendly, Benedito Roberto Barbosa, Marilene Ribeiro de Souza, Sheila Cristiane Santos Nobre
This article theorises a multi-year participatory action research engagement focusing on young land occupations and consolidated favelas in São Paulo’s south periphery, providing an arsenal of tools for activist-scholars. Building on Paulo Freire's legacy, we call on academia to embrace activist co-production, learn from and support informal dwellers’ everyday urbanisms, and join social movements’
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Finding common ground on the threshold: An experiment in critical urban learning Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Francesca Cognetti, Beatrice De Carli
The paper delves into the role of academic institutions in urban commoning, which involves the sharing and collaborative management of common resources. It specifically examines the impact of Practices of Urban Inclusion, an experimental learning programme, in fostering new forms of collaboration across places and institutions. This programme was co-designed and co-run by a network of four architecture
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Bomba planning and the pursuit of a just recovery Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2024-01-12 Ariam L Torres-Cordero
In the face of disasters, disadvantaged populations often rely on the recovery opportunities and pathways provided by grassroots movements. These pathways are built through informal planning practices and meanings that are often illegible for planning scholars and practitioners, and thus rarely reach disaster scholarship in ways that stimulate theory building. This article uses insurgent planning as
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The temporal governance of planning in England: Planning reform, Uchronia and ‘proper time’ Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Mark Dobson, Gavin Parker
Attention to the multiple temporalities of planning has gained recent and further traction in the planning literature, and time is clearly implicated in how power and resources are combined in the governance of the built and natural environment. Time, and specifically the management of clock time, shapes planning practice. Moreover successive reform agendas in England have drawn heavily on temporal
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Contextualizing Collaborative Planning: Addressing Water Resilience in the Urban Poor Settlements of Ranchi Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Anjali Karol Mohan
The research embarks from the standpoint that unequal geographies of service delivery in the Southern city evidence differentiating practices embedded within dominant rational planning practices. I...
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Thinking Sideways: A Plea for “Weak Theory” Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Babak Manouchehrifar
This essay examines the implications of interdisciplinary debates on the power of “weak theory” for planning practice. Focusing on the North American planning context, I argue that the concept of “...
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Heating up the sauna: Analogue model unraveling the creativity of public participation Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-03-29 Elina Alatalo, Helena Leino, Markus Laine, Veera Turku
One of the main criticisms of participatory planning is its tendency to produce mediocre outcomes due to the compromises made in the search for consensus. As a remedy, there have been recent propos...
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What might decoloniality look like in praxis? Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Tanja Winkler
Decoloniality—which encompasses conceptual frameworks of grounded normativity, grounded relationality, re-earthing, and meta ethical enquiries—yields radically different opportunities for planning ...
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What can urban policies and planning really learn from John Rawls? A multi-strata view of institutional action and a canvas conception of the just city Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-03-13 Stefano Moroni
One of the most influential theories of justice in planning theory and practice has been, without doubt, that of John Rawls. The very idea of the just city is indebted to Rawls’s view. However, the...
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Planning and Crisis, Planning in Crisis Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-01-03 Mona Fawaz
How does a profession that prides itself on standing for the common good and working through action –not mere analysis or gesturing- demonstrate its effectiveness in a city devastated by intractabl...
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From fish to land grabbing - a note on the transition of the concept of “common property” in property rights research under two traditions Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2023-01-02 Lawrence W C Lai
This essay begins with a trialogue on the definitions of “common property” and introduces two “traditions” of interpreting property rights. The older, traced to Gordon (1954) and propagated by Cheu...
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Actors, arenas and aims:A conceptual framework for public participation Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Katrin Hofer, David Kaufmann
This paper systematises knowledge of public participation by bringing together existing concepts and theories from planning literature to conceptualise the 3A3-framework of participation. The frame...
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Planning by Exception: The Regulation of Nairobi’s Margins Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-11-10 Sophie Schramm, Amiel Bize
Nairobi’s planning regime is characterized by two conditions of exception: on the one hand, exceptions from regulation, that is, planning offices granting exceptions from planning rules and, on the...
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The Social Deal: Urban regeneration as an opportunity for In-Place Social Mobility Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-10-19 Daphna Levine, Meirav Aharon-Gutman
Urban regeneration and its implications for issues such as housing, gentrification, and homeownership have been researched by numerous theorists, practitioners, and policy makers. However, this art...
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After Hardin Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-10-13
Inaccurate histories beget faulty explanatory theories which, in turn, engender faulty guiding theories for practice. This research addresses such faults with a focus on Garret Hardin’s 1968 Scienc...
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The empire of the narrative: Plan making through the prism of classical and postclassical narratologies Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-09-16 Laurent Matthey, Julie Ambal, Simon Gaberell, Elena Cogato Lanza
This article theorizes the “narrative turn” in urban planning studies, using Gérard Genette’s work to differentiate first- and second-degree narratives. Genette defines the latter as paratexts that...
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Problematising use conformity in spatial regulation: Religious diversity and mosques out of place in Northeast Italy Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Daniela Morpurgo
This paper returns to a classic of planning and questions the inhibiting role that an approach to spatial regulation based on the requirement of use conformance has on the unfolding of (religious) ...
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Planning as polycentric: Institutionalist lessons for communicative and collaborative planning in Global South contexts Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-07-20 Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah
This article puts the ‘communicative turn’ in planning into conversation with polycentric governance to offer three lessons for communicative and collaborative planning. These lessons probe the nex...
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Storytelling otherwise: Decolonising storytelling in planning Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-07-20 Catalina Ortiz
This article argues that the role of storytelling in planning needs to be rethought learning from the decolonial turn in social sciences. I ask how to decolonise storytelling in planning theory and...
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Between virtue and profession: Theorising the rise of professionalised public participation practitioners Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-06-09 Janice Barry, Crystal Legacy
Participatory planning practice is changing in response to the rise of specially trained public participation practitioners who intersect with but are also distinct from planners. These practitione...
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Ordinary neighbourhoods Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-05-30 Raffael Beier
Emphasising implicit assumptions behind our ways of seeing ‘slums’, this essay calls for a radical understanding of ‘ordinary neighbourhoods’. Borrowing from Robinson’s ‘ordinary cities’ concept, i...
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The making of good public plans Phronesis, Phronetic Planning Research and Assemblage Thinking Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-05-16 Helen Briassoulis
Planning for the common good requires the exercise of phronesis and a fitting ontology of planning situations. This paper critically appraises Flyvbjerg’s Phronetic Planning Research approach throu...
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Normalising spatial vulnerability in the era of climate crisis? Private property, informality, and post-disaster planning in peri-urban east Attica/Greece Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Loukas Triantis
This paper focuses on the peri-urban space of east Attica and aims to theorise the politics of recovery planning following the wildfire of 23 July 2018, showing the crucial interrelations between v...
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Beyond soft planning: Towards a Soft turn in planning theory and practice? Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-04-24 Cristina Cavaco, João Mourato, João Pedro Costa, João Ferrão
Over the last decade, soft planning has become an increasingly visible concept in planning literature. Since the term soft spaces was firstly coined, soft planning has been used to describe a growing number of practices that occur at the margins of statutory planning systems. However, as soft planning-related literature proliferates, so does the diversity of approaches and planning practices it encompasses
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Book review: Pragmatic Spatial Planning: Practical Theory for Professionals by Charles Hoch Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-04-17 Gary Bridge
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The trajectory of the right to the city in Recife, Brazil: From belonging towards inclusion Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-04-15 Sven da Silva, Pieter de Vries
In 1967, Henri Lefebvre developed the Right to the City (RTC) as ‘a cry and demand’ for ‘a transformed and renewed right to urban life’. In Brazil, the RTC was institutionalised in the City Statute in 2001. We examine the trajectory of the RTC in Recife, Brazil, through the lens of Alain Badiou’s set-theoretical ontology of inconsistency, which argues that there is a fundamental disjunction between
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Co-production and the issue of urban up-scaling and governance change in the global south: The case of Uganda Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-04-14 Gilbert Siame, Vanessa Watson
Co-production has emerged as a prominent strategy for producing urban spaces, delivering urban services and improving governance in poor but rapidly growing cities of the South. In the field of planning, it has been put forward as a more appropriate approach to what has generally been termed ‘public participation’: a term with its roots in the concept of collaborative planning emerging largely from
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Are radical and insurgent planning (truly) at odds with a nonviolent conception of liberal planning? Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-03-30 Claudia Basta
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Beyond a liberal reading of insurgent in transformative planning practices Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Efadul Huq
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Hardin’s legacy as a need for a ‘commoning turn’ in planning Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Sokratis Seitanidis, Giorgos Gritzas
Hardin’s legacy in planning is highly relevant to current concerns, as planners shape the management of resources in the face of climate change and urbanization. Through a broad literature review of planning articles citing Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ we find out that Hardin’s suggestions are rejected by planning theory, yet have been implemented in planning practice. However, the rejection of
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A critical realist theory of ideology: Promoting planning as a vanguard of societal transformation Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-02-22 Jin Xue
This article explores the potential values of a critical realist theory of ideology on the analysis of planning issues. In particular, it argues its usefulness in promoting planning as a vanguard of societal transformation. The critical realist theory of ideology revitalizes the epistemological inquiry of beliefs, which enables an evaluation of the social, economic and environmental impacts of the
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Editorial: Academic professional journals and professional practice Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-01-18 Angelique Chettiparamb
In my last editorial (Chettiparamb, 2021), I tried to briefly reflect on the relationship of planning theory and the planning discipline. In this editorial, I reflect upon the relationship between academic journals and professional practice more generally, while relating to various formats of publication that academic professional journals in general, and Planning Theory in particular, engage with
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On planning, planning theories, and practices: A critical reflection Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2022-01-04 Ernest R. Alexander
The futility of defining planning suggests that there is no planning as a recognizable practice. Sociology of knowledge definitions imply three kinds of planning practices: (1) Generic “planning”—what people do when they are planning; (2) Knowledge-centered “something” (e.g., spatial) planning; and (3) Real planning practiced in specific contexts, from metro-regional planning for Jakarta to transportation
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Book Review: Encounters in Planning Thought: 16 Autobiographical Essays from Key Thinkers in Spatial Planning Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-12-20 JA Throgmorton
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A new framework for imagining the climate commons? The case of a Green New Deal in the US Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-11-24 Holly Caggiano, Laura F. Landau
The Green New Deal is arguably the most ambitious climate policy platform to gain legislative traction in the U.S. to date. A pioneering policy framework in its holistic consideration of climate change, social justice, and economic reform, the resolution would have vast implications for commons governance regimes if enacted. Planning theorists have long debated how to manage the global commons, and
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The framing of power in communicative planning theory: Analysing the work of John Forester, Patsy Healey and Judith Innes Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-11-08 Martin Westin
In this paper, I analyse the framing of power in streams of communicative planning influenced by American pragmatism, sociological institutionalism and alternative dispute resolution. While scholars have heavily debated Habermasian communicative planning theory, the broader conception of power across these linked, but distinct, streams of the theory remains to be explicated. Through analysis of 40
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Book Review: Planners in Politics: Do they Make a Difference? Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-10-21 Christopher Maidment
Planners in Politics, edited by Louis Albrechts, presents the personal stories of 10 academic planners turned ‘executive politicians’; politicians with responsibility for leading a portfolio, operating in a diversity of national contexts, at different scales and having arrived in their political positions either by appointment or election (or both). Albrechts states that the book’s aim is to allow
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Do planning concepts matter? A Lacanian interpretation of the urban village in a British context Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-09-07 Chuan Wang
Numerous novel planning concepts have been developed in pursuit of better urban environments, while many are notoriously difficult to define. Lacan’s master signifier is widely employed to criticise these vague, fashionable concepts but lacks a specific examination tool. To fill this gap, this article develops an analytical framework based on Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA) to decipher the complex
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Provincializing planning: Reflections on spatial ordering and imperial power Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-08-25 Yasminah Beebeejaun
This paper takes the development of the British town planning movement as its starting point to explore a series of challenges for the discipline’s historiography. The emergence of the professional field involved the circulation of ideas beyond the metropolitan core to colonial territories with spatial interventions that were deemed both physically and morally beneficial. The paper explores the role
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Moving beyond informality-of-need and informality-of-desire: Insights from a southern (European) perspective Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-08-18 Francesco Chiodelli
In a recently published paper on Planning Theory, entitled ‘Asking “Third World questions” of First World informality: Using Southern theory to parse needs from desires in an analysis of informal urbanism of the global North’, Ryan Thomas Devlin develops inspiring reasoning about informal urbanism in the so-called ‘global North’. The author argues convincingly that the majority of academic literature
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Commoning or being commoned? Institutions, politics, and the role of the state in collective housing policy in Bangkok, Thailand Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-08-06 Hayden Shelby
This article theorizes the potential roles of the state in the urban commons through an analysis of a slum upgrading program in Thailand that employs collective forms of land tenure. In examining the transformation of the program from a grassroots movement to a “best practice” policy, the article demonstrates how the state has expanded from mere enabler of the commons to active promoter. In the process
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For the War Yet to Come, Planning Beirut’s Frontiers Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-07-20 Mona Fawaz
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Model-theory interaction in urban planning: A critical review Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-07-02 Farshad Nourian, Meisam Alipour, Peter Ache
More than half a century has passed since the first use of models in urban planning. Most urban planners have agreed on using models either to simplify complicated systems or to make simulations of such systems in order to predict their future. There is, however, disagreement on how far such simplifications and simulations have worked toward the planners’ goals and objectives. In this paper, through
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The Construction of Legality in Everyday Practices of Planning Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-06-03 Willem Salet
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Theorizing communal trauma: Examining the relationship between race, spatial imaginaries, and planning in the U.S. South Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-05-04 Jocelyn Poe
While planning theory has long acknowledged the profession’s role in producing racialized spatial realities, few have explored how place-based trauma shapes places and affects spatial processes and lived experiences. To fill this gap, I employ my experience as a practicing planner working primarily in Black communities in Jackson, Mississippi, to conceptualize communal trauma as a place-based theory
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Planning out abjection? The role of the planning profession in post-apartheid South Africa Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-04-29 Phil Jones, Lauren Andres, Stuart Denoon-Stevens, Lorena Melgaco Silva Marques
For Kristeva (1982) the abject not only caused visceral disgust but posed a threat to the established order of society. The abject is a product of particular times and places but limited attention has been given to understanding the process of transitioning away from abject status. We address this gap here through an examination of the planning profession in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper examines
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‘Landscape of exception’: Power inequalities and ethical planning challenges in the landscape transformation of south-eastern Sicily Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-04-06 Francesco Lo Piccolo, Vincenzo Todaro
In some marginal contexts of Southern Italy, in light of specific economic, political and social conditions, certain relationships between ‘strong powers’ and ‘weak powers’ produce a suspension of norms/rights that is, paradoxically, ‘normalised’. This creates a particular spatial variation of Agamben’s (2005) state of exception concept: the ‘landscape of exception’. With respect to the possible conditions
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Race, Faith and Planning in Britain Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-04-08 Mohammad A. Qadeer
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Pluriversal planning scholarship: Embracing multiplicity and situated knowledges in community-based approaches Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Raksha Vasudevan, Magdalena Novoa E.
In recent years, emerging work from the “southern” and “south/eastern” contexts has widened the theoretical discussion and the geographical focus of the contemporary planning debate. Inspired by Arturo Escobar’s notion of the “Pluriverse,” this article proposes a “pluriversal planning scholarship,” to articulate the theoretical and community-based contributions of an evolving stream of planning research
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Rationality revisited: Politicisation through planning rationality against the rationality of power Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Esin Özdemir
In this article, I readdress the issue of rationality, which has been so far considered in western liberal democracies and in planning theory as procedural, and more recently as post-political in the post-foundational approach, aiming to show how it can gain a substantive and politicising character. I first discuss the problems and limits of the treatment of rational thinking as well as rational consensus-seeking
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When vagueness is a strategic resource for planning actors Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-02-24 Thomas Buhler
This paper focuses on the use of vague discourse in planning. Early contributions identified vagueness as a ‘problem’ to be solved so as to avoid potential misunderstandings and conflicts. This paper adopts the complementary point of view whereby vagueness can also be a ‘resource’, that is, a strategy used by actors in adverse circumstances. A systematic analysis of the texts and illustrations of 36
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Advanced Introduction to Planning Theory Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-02-24 ER Alexander
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Ontological diversity in urban self-organization: Complexity, critical realism and post-structuralism Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-02-23 Beitske Boonstra, Ward Rauws
As urban self-organization grows into a key concept in spatial planning—explaining spontaneous spatial transformations—the understandings and applications of the concept divert. This article turns to the ontological dimension of urban self-organization and scrutinizes how a critical realist and a post-structuralist ontology inspire theoretical practices, analytical tendencies, empirical readings, and
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Why public participation isn’t a tool for democratizing planning. A comment Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-02-16 Nurit Alfasi
The trigger for this comment is Zakhour’s (2020) paper published in Planning Theory earlier this year. Zakhour searches for ways to grant democratic legitimacy through practicing public participation in planning. His subject, linking public participation in planning with democracy and particularly with the democratization of planning, is a central theme in planning discourse, one that is burdened with
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The democratization of planning would be helped by a democratization of theory Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-02-10 Sherif Zakhour
In her comment to my paper (Zakhour, 2020b), Nurit Alfasi takes issues with a tendency in planning discourse to view public participation in planning as a vehicle for democratization. Her concern proceeds from a twofold argument: first, that there are considerable obstacles towards achieving genuine and meaningful participation in planning. Second, one such obstacle—if not the foremost—is the fact
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What difference does ‘difference’ make? Identity, difference and the multicultural city Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2021-01-05 Sanaz Alian, Stephen Wood
This paper draws on the work of Jean Baudrillard to critique the manner in which notions of ‘identity’ and ‘difference’ are employed in understandings of the multicultural city. It begins with an overview of ways in which ethnicity is construed in the planning literature on multicultural cities. This is followed by discussion of Baudrillard’s contention that the basic terms of engagement with multiculturalism
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A Lacanian understanding of urban development plans under the neoliberal discourse Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2020-12-25 Elham Bahmanteymouri
Urban development and land release policies in the city fringes are criticised because they often fail to achieve their objectives such as providing affordable housing for low to moderate-income groups as well as provision of infrastructure and transportation. From a Marxian point of view, urban development plans fail because of the inherent contradictions of capital, and consequently, maximisation
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Creative or instrumental planners? Agency and structure in their institutional and political economy context Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2020-12-15 Pierre Filion
The paper casts light on structural factors limiting and shaping the actions of planners. In doing so it attempts to compensate for the emphasis planning theory places on the agency dimension of planners at the expense of the structural limitations they encounter. The paper draws from Giddens’s structuration theory, which depicts how the imbrication of agency and structure within institutional contexts
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Editorial: Planning theory and the planning discipline Planning Theory (IF 3.627) Pub Date : 2020-12-10 Angelique Chettiparamb
The current challenging times give us occasion to pause and consider. In particular, the extent to which our personal well-being and the well-being of our loved ones may be built upon ecosystems that are fundamentally social and environmental in nature has been highlighted by many, including those in the planning profession (Ihnji, 2020).