Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0014
J. Metzger, Sherif Zakhour
{"title":"The politics of new urban professions: the case of urban development engineers","authors":"J. Metzger, Sherif Zakhour","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter provides evidence of a new urban profession of development engineers within public bureaucracies whose position is increasingly detached from the sphere of public policy in which they operate. It reveals that the rise of the professional category of development engineer has led to the institutionalisation of a narrowly conceived and short-termist economic optimisation rationality. This rationality, which is institutionally solidified in legally binding agreements between the city and property developers, comes to set a very rigid frame for any additional considerations regarding, for example, social justice or balanced urban development. To a large extent, this rationality has come to steer urban development considerations in the city of Stockholm. The chapter concludes that while it might be expected that public land ownership would allow public authorities to promote a more ‘progressive’ and mindful urban development, the development engineers who are presently in the proverbial driving seat of the management of public land do not see the pursuit of such goals to be part of their professional responsibility.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129575747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0005
T. Koolmees, S. Majoor
{"title":"Local government in the face of crisis: changing public management of urban projects in Amsterdam","authors":"T. Koolmees, S. Majoor","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the reform of the working processes and organisational structures of the public management bureaucracies in the Amsterdam municipality. It reflects on the mechanisms through which technocratic thinking gets institutionalised within existing public government bodies, and reveals the development of public planning expertise in contemporary urban governance. This chapter particularly questions the changing role of public bureaucracies in the Netherlands, a country where public expertise still plays a central role in urban governance, but is progressively being reformed to accommodate private actors. It shows how the city's internal bureaucratic structure has been reformed and reorganised under processes of austerity and de-regulation to promote quick adjustments to plans and efficient delivery. Leadership and working processes are becoming increasingly focused on ‘flexible implementation’ and the production of entrepreneurial modes of governance.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130457510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0002
M. Hebbert
{"title":"2 Planning, knowledge and technocracy in historical perspective","authors":"M. Hebbert","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the planning histories associated with writings on technocracies. It highlights some of the core distinctions that exist between different schools of thought over the form, character, and roles of technical knowledge in the planning of cities and reflects on the extent to which we are now living in an era within which ‘new’ technocracies can be said to exist and what these might consist of. To make sense of the new technocracy, the chapter thus offers an understanding of the old. It puts the present critique of expert knowledge into historical perspective, looking back to the interplay of planning and technocracy in the century of two world wars, the New Deal, the Welfare State, and the Modern Project. It traces the roots of the technocratic critique to planning up to the mid-1980s.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127965046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0017
D. Ponzini
{"title":"Transnational design and local implications for planning: project flights and landings1","authors":"D. Ponzini","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter reflects on contemporary logics of technical knowledge production, replication, and transmission questioning the operating of international design firms in autocratic countries. It does so in order to argue that today the technocratic logics of policy making have a global profile, because they prosper and diffuse through the transfer of technical expertise across political and cultural contexts. If one looks at planning cultures, rational choice and the hope in all-seeing and science-based decisions were and still are relevant, both in western countries and, especially, in countries that are undergoing strong industrialisation or modernisation pushes. Of course, these are general conceptions and orientations, but now local processes of development are more complicated in practice than in theory. The chapter therefore shows the influential conceptions in practice to understand the way in which planning works in real-world processes, in rapidly transforming cities as well as in the slower western countries.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125068235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0015
Rob Kitchin, Claudio Coletta, L. Evans, Liam Heaphy, Darach Mac Donncha
{"title":"Smart cities, algorithmic technocracy and new urban technocrats","authors":"Rob Kitchin, Claudio Coletta, L. Evans, Liam Heaphy, Darach Mac Donncha","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the technocracy of smart cities and the set of urban technocrats that promote and implement their use. It first sets out the new technocracy at work and the forms of technocratic governance and governmentality it enacts. The chapter then details how this technocracy is supported by a new smart city epistemic community of technocrats that is aligned with a wider set of smart city interest groups to form a powerful ‘advocacy coalition’ that works at different scales. In the final section, the chapter considers the translation of the ideas and practices of this advocacy coalition into the policies and work of city administrations. In particular, it considers the reasons why smart city initiatives and its associated technocracy are yet to become fully mainstreamed and the smart city mission successfully realised in cities across the globe.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"12 10","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114088728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0012
G. Parker, E. Street, Matthew Wargent
{"title":"Advocates, advisors and scrutineers: the technocracies of private sector planning in England","authors":"G. Parker, E. Street, Matthew Wargent","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0012","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter studies the role of private consultants in the reformed English planning system and their impacts on the shaping of local policy priorities and practices. First, the chapter sets out the recent political context that has precipitated the rise of the ‘consultocracy’ across public services and planning in particular. Second, it outlines how the use of consultants has become ‘naturalized’ as part of the multi-change planning environment that now characterises English planning. Third, the chapter introduces interview data concerning Local Plan-making to show the scope of consultant involvement and the importance of uncovering how such knowledge is claimed and deployed. In concluding, this chapter reflects on the feedback loop between the state of ‘perma-reform’ in English planning and the expansion of consultant inputs to the system, and considers what this relationship means for our understanding of planning expertise as a social construction and political tool in a co-produced system.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"54 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131578587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-07-10DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0004
T. Taşan-Kok, M. van den Hurk
{"title":"Plurality of expert knowledge: public planners’ experience with urban contractualism in Amsterdam","authors":"T. Taşan-Kok, M. van den Hurk","doi":"10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447345244.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the Dutch planning experience in understanding how planners, as government actors, learn to deal with contracts in complex partnerships with private sector actors. It does so in order to question the technocratic logics of contemporary public–private partnerships (PPPs) focusing on an institutional context where public governments still retain a major leading role in planning for urban development but increasingly operate by devising financial agreements with the private sector. This chapter specifically looks at the use of ‘contracts’ in urban development. Consensus building in the Netherlands is the key approach in any decision-making process, implemented through the ‘polder model’, which is defined as harmonious patterns of interaction between social partners. The Dutch experience demonstrates very clearly that the ways of deal making, and the mechanism of checks and balances in this process, are very dynamic and reflect the changing dynamics of urban governance. This also means that public planners, very consciously, try to reposition themselves to safeguard the public interest.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114140380","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advocates, advisors and scrutineers:","authors":"G. Parker, E. Street, Matthew Wargent","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvkjb1z8.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvkjb1z8.17","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"66 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122526519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dealing with tensions: the expertise of boundary spanners in facilitating community initiatives","authors":"Ward Rauws, M. D. Jong","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvkjb1z8.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvkjb1z8.8","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter investigates the tension between bureaucratic expertise and situated knowledge in the context of social innovation. It addresses the frictions that emerge internally in public organisations when they attempt to respond to local demands of social innovation, citizen's engagement, and democratic participation. The chapter's contribution to a critique of contemporary technocratic urban management and planning lies in identifying the key axes of internal conflict between public professional expertise and the situated knowledge in urban neighbourhoods. It particularly looks at the actions of ‘boundary spanners’, and their narratives, to examine the role of a new professional profile within public organisations. Boundary spanners work across organisational boundaries, developing a specific expertise which is instituted to connect the internal working of bureaucracies with the external demands and needs of actors in particular urban areas.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122198241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Planning and KnowledgePub Date : 2019-06-01DOI: 10.1332/POLICYPRESS/9781447345244.003.0010
Susannah Gunn
{"title":"Planning professionalism in the face of technocracy: ethics, values and practices","authors":"Susannah Gunn","doi":"10.1332/POLICYPRESS/9781447345244.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1332/POLICYPRESS/9781447345244.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the extent to which today's planners and planning experts fulfil a key role: assisting in the protection of disadvantaged and marginalised groups. While discussing these professional principles, the chapter questions the extent to which contemporary planning expertise is increasingly internalising neoliberal logics of interventions. It starts by presenting examples of how planning is currently being provided in councils to highlight how the planning service has become more commercialised through increasingly technocratic practices. The chapter subsequently reflects on what this means for planning's professional credentials and right to intervene, and concludes that planning is becoming increasingly commodified. However, planning practitioners are not questioning their professionalism or their profession's status. When set against the planning and professional academic literature's concern for altruistic public service provision, this appears to be a narrowing down of planning's and professionalism's understanding of social concern that creates disquiet for those observing the direction of travel.","PeriodicalId":336977,"journal":{"name":"Planning and Knowledge","volume":"151 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115834017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}