The rise of a new urban technocracy

Abstract

This chapter discusses the rise of a new technocracy in urban governance. It further argues that the shift to a new technocracy is leading to the re-fashioning of planning's core objectives and purpose from an earlier focus on the value of input-centred forms of deliberation, place-making, and social justice to an enhanced concern with output-centred agendas premised on expedited development and growth. The rolling out of entrepreneurial planning requires the employment of new governance technologies, such as quantitative systems of managerialism and the implementation of a multiplicity of codifications and models that are used to define urban problems and their solutions. The rise of a new technocracy is also reflected and reproduced by the expansion of increasingly complex landscapes of knowledge production. This co-evolution has been given additional impetus as the presence of more technocratic modes of governance carries advantages for policymakers and governments struggling to maintain their wider legitimacy in contexts of growing crisis.