The Point is Still to Change it

Abstract

In a 2011 Editorial for Planning Theory and Practice titled ‘The Point is to Change It’, Libby Porter treated readers to a passionate call to reveal planning’s politics. Evoking Marx, Porter argued that while “Planners act every day”, and “quite often change things as a consequence” these changes may come without direct and explicit engagement with the “political content” of planning. Going further, Porter contends that planners are “disturbingly unable to judge the politics of change’s outcomes” (p. 477) leading in many ways to planning “systematically evacuating itself of the political” (p. 479). Ten years on, and in these uncertain times, Porter’s call continues to resonate. In a recent editorial, Mark Scott (2020) posited how the pandemic is revealing the social and spatial unevenness of pre-Covid planning and Covid responses. Nearly 18 months on, the structural inequalities are deepening and the winners from the pandemic are in clearer view. Tech giants will likely prevail as our lives take on new digital forms, curated through the rise of virtual landscapes enabled by platform technology. Alongside big tech may be the large global infrastructure consortiums heeding calls from governments to stimulate local and regional economies. No doubt that jobs will be created in the construction of this infrastructure, as well as through the expansion of the gig economy. Low quality work will likely replace some of the jobs lost during the pandemic recession, a trend visible in the place I write from, Melbourne/Naarm, Australia, exacerbating casualisation already at historic levels across some sectors. Underpinning these structural forces, the uneven access to public and open space, quality public transport, care-based services, housing and well-designed neighbourhoods, will continue to raise questions about whether a pre-Covid normal is even worth returning (Scott, 2020, p. 344). Crisis periods like the one we are in can bring on sober reflections, as well as seed change. For planning, reflecting on what has been and what could be can invite new questions. In responding to Porter’s call, one could ask, what is the potential to transform planning to better engage with the politics of its content? (see Campbell, 2021). Efforts to answer this question will need to be prudent. Critically analysing what these times reveal about the political content of planning’s work could be underpinned by what this moment is demanding from us. For practitioners, theorists, researchers and educators alike, how we move forward will require a kind of hopeful intentionality that is perhaps more overtly political as it contends with past failings and present contexts. Crisis can spur such hopeful ruminations. For instance, Rebecca Solnit (2020) wrote about how the pandemic was revealing moments of hope at every turn; connections and solidarities forging within and across communities seeking to manage the immediate effects of Covid-19. Such moments of hope can be the precursor to something much larger. Perhaps even a transformation? Heather Campbell (2021) explored this question in her recent editorial highlighting how incredibly difficult transformation can be to achieve. From the “stifling paradigms” to the institutional arrangements designed to work against inter-professional and inter-disciplinary learning, Campbell (2021, p. 6) contends that addressing these challenges are the very “bread-and-butter” of the work required to seed future transformations. PLANNING THEORY & PRACTICE 2021, VOL. 22, NO. 4, 511–515 https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2021.1962054