Localism and the reconfiguration of planning’s publics in the landscapes of technocracy

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of planning's publics within the emergent technocratic landscapes of planning. It does so by drawing on ongoing research into the localism agenda in England and in particular on neighbourhood planning. Neighbourhood planning was introduced in 2011 as a ‘community right’ to draw up a statutory land-use plan. The chapter explores the extent to which technical and ‘expert’ knowledge and the power of public and private planners is being challenged or displaced by the knowledge, emotions, and actions of citizen planners. As such, the chapter shows that technocratisation is a more varied and complex process than previously thought and that these seeming spaces of de-regulation are not immune to forms of re-regulation which seek to re-create local knowledge to align with technocratic language and purposes.