Planning-Related Protest as a Key to Understanding Urban Particularities

Planning-related protest is a “normal” and strategic form of political participation that manifests cause-related conflict and criticises dominant norms, situations, and institutions. It goes beyond the participation offered by the (local) state while claiming action by the state and other powerful actors. Given the multitude of such protests as well as the usually local and, therefore, often small-scale causes and claims articulated, we consider these actions by citizens as everyday practices. On the other hand, protest and movement theory has focused on structural aspects like resource mobilisation and opportunity structures. We, therefore, suggest that planning protest is one of the keys to understanding the particular, place-specific characteristics that make every city unique. Protest data mining as a newly developed method to identify planning protests in local databases, digital newspaper archives, and petition platforms in a standardised approach has produced datasets of hundreds of protests that allow for comparisons between cities. The exemplary analysis of this data allows us to discuss the structural dimension of everyday action.