Davoudi S.

(2018)
Spatial Planning: the Promised Land or roll-out neoliberalism?
In: Michael Gunder, Ali Madanipour and Vanessa Watson (eds.)
The Routledge Handbook of Planning Theory.
New York: Routledge, pp.15-27.

Copyright:

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Routledge Handbook of
Planning Theory on 23/08/2017, available online:
[Link]

Date deposited:

20/02/2017

Embargo release date:

23 February 2019

Newcastle University ePrints - [Link]

Can be cited as: Davoudi, S (2017) Spatial Planning: the Promised Land or roll-out
neoliberalism? In Michael Gunder, Ali Madanipour and Vanessa Watson (eds.) The
Routledge Handbook of Planning Theory, London: Routledge

Spatial Planning: the Promised Land or roll-out neoliberalism?

Simin Davoudi

Introduction

The new millennium marked the revival of strategic spatial planning in many parts of the
world (Albrechts et al., 2003, Sartorio, 2005; Healey, 2007; Davoudi and Strange, 2009;
Friedmann, 2004; Watson, 2002; Gunder, 2010). In defining what spatial planning is and
promoting its virtues, commentators often contrast it with traditional land use planning,
master planning, and/or project-based planning. They argue that spatial planning is a long
range and strategic approach to place-based integration of sectoral policies. Some suggest
that the revival of spatial planning marks a paradigm shift, while others argue that it has
introduced a slippery concept. For the former spatial planning approach is “the Promised
Land”, while for the latter it is a “mirage” (Cullingworth et al. 2015:4). Concerns are also
raised about having “too little or too much” of spatial planning and “the dangers of spatial
planning” particularly when “the question of space and spatial organisation is treated
separately from other considerations, or when it assumes primacy over these” (Parr
2005:120). The terminology itself has been subject to debate, too, and seen as an example of
‘Euro-English’, referring variously to l’amenagement du territoire, Raumordnung,
pianificazione territoriale, and urban and regional planning (Salet and Faludi, 2000).

In this chapter I would argue that firstly, the revival of spatial planning in the 2000s was a
belated response to the growing realisation that place matters. Secondly, it coincided with and
informed by two sets of theoretical developments. One is relational space and deals with the
object of spatial planning and its substantive focus. The other is communicative action and
deals with the normative aspects of spatial planning processes. In practice, while the latter has
influenced the discourses of spatial planning at least at a rhetorical level, the former has been
hardly taken up. Thirdly, I would argue that certain interpretations of spatial planning and its
theoretical underpinnings have led to its alignment with neoliberal policies and practices.

Place matters: The ascendance of spatial planning

The latter part of the 20th century saw a renewed interest in the critical role played by places
and localities in the understanding of social, economic, environmental and cultural relations
and in policy decisions. However, as I have argued elsewhere (Davoudi and Strange, 2009),
this realisation was interpreted differently by different disciplines. Economic geographers
considered the turn to spatiality as the outcome of transition from the Fordist mass production
to the post-Fordist flexible specialisation whereby place adds (or takes away) value to new
cycles and patterns of productions and consumptions. They argued that place-quality could
be an asset for pinning down footloose globalised capital. For political scientists, the trend
epitomised the transition from the universal Keynesian welfare states to the competitive
Hayekian neoliberal states in which places and territories become key sites of localised
service delivery and political contestations. For cultural analysts, the turn to spatiality was a

1
sign of transformation from modernism to post-modernism and the growing diversity of
lifestyles and identities. Here, place-quality becomes an important component of the quality
of everyday life. Ecologists put the emphasis on the significance of locales in responding to
global environmental crises and adapting to climate change. A parallel debate highlighted:
the profound restructuring of the state, the move from government to governance, and the
emergence of multi-level and networked governance. In this perspective, place is seen as a
site for integrating fragmented policy sectors and governance networks and as an organising
device for institutional coordination (Nadin, 2007).

All these highlighted how the shifts in social, political, environmental and institutional
contexts were challenging the traditional sector-based policy making and implementation,
and called for place-based policy formulation. Similar ideas about “the defence of locale, of
their meaning, of their uses” were stressed by scholars such as Manuel Castells who
considered the role of planners as being the making of “new spaces, meaningful places with
connecting capabilities” (Cuthbert 1996:8). By the 2000s, the call on planning to become
‘more spatial’ had become pervasive. In response to the disillusionments with land use,
master and project-based planning, it was argued that the traditional ways of preparing plans
were being replaced with proactive place making (Healey et al. 1997). In Europe, an
important mobilising force was the process that culminated in the publication of the European
Spatial Development Perspective in 1999 (Faludi, 2007). In the UK, the growing attention to
spatiality was reflected in and reinforced by the Royal Town Planning Institute’s change of
corporate identity to: ‘making of place and mediation of space’ and the redefinition of its
“basic discipline” as “spatial planning” (RTPI, 2004: 1).

Thus, by the end of the 20th century spatial planning became a la mode (Parr 2005). However,
the extent to which its ideals and progressive intents manged to change planning practices is
questionable. Indeed, in many parts of the world (including some countries in Europe) master
planning remained the dominant mode (UN-Habitat, 2009; Watson, 2002; Cerreta et al.,
2010). For example, Hajer and Zonneveld (2010:350) argue that in the Netherlands “the old
idea of ‘survey, analysis, plan’ still looms large in the style of planning”. Others caution that
attempts to find evidence that match spatial planning ideals can result in “shifting our gaze
too far from current realities of planning practice” (Newman, 2008:1372). More importantly,
there is a growing concern that spatial planning has become the carrier of neoliberal values, a
point to which I will return.

Theoretical contexts of spatial planning and their critiques

Two sets of theoretical developments provided the intellectual contexts of spatial planning.
One was planning scholars’ belated engagement with the substantive theories of planning and
particularly the theorisation of absolute and relational space. The other was their long
established interest in procedural theories of planning. I will discuss these in turn but before
that, it is important not to conflate the theories about space and place (i.e. the substantive
question of what) with the theories about planning processes (i.e. the procedural question of
how). Also, critiques of these theories should not be confused with the criticisms of the ways
on which spatial planning has been interpreted and implemented in practice, while
acknowledging that aspects of these theories have unintendedly helped the appropriation of
spatial planning into the neoliberal practices.

Relational space and place-bundles

2
A significant theoretical contribution to the spatial turn in planning came from a relational
conceptualisation of space and place which although was new to planners and geographers its
history goes back to modernity and its origin in the Enlightenment project (Agnew 2005). In
the 17th century a radically new worldview emerged which was premised on Cartesian duality
and its attempt to split the concerns about why the world exists from how it works. The latter
became the domain of scientific endeavours which started with discovering the physical
world and expanded into exploring the social world in the 18th century. Indeed, one of the
hallmarks of modernity is its focus on conceptualising space with the help of foundational
contributions from philosophy, physics and geometry and by intellectual giants such as
Descartes, Newton, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Minkowski and Einstein. Geometry and the
work of Euclid, in particular, played a defining role in the conception of space as absolute.
The absolute space enjoyed a long uninterrupted currency and was seen as a leading example
of how a priori intellectual intuition can be the main source of scientific knowledge; an idea
which was strongly supported by Emanuel Kant. Space, defined by the Euclidean dimensions
of “height, depth, size and proximity” (Murdoch 2006:12), was seen as the container of the
objects. The longstanding influence of Euclid’s geometry was due to its incorporation into
Newtonian physics (Scruton 1996:361). Newton portrayed space as an infinite container in
which objects could be positioned at any point. As Agnew (2005: 83) put it, “in the
Newtonian view, space is absolute in the sense that it is an entity in itself, independent of
whatever objects and events occupy it, containing these objects and events, and having
separate powers from them.”

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Euclid’s geometry was challenged on a number of grounds by
scholars such as Riemann, Minkowski, and Lobachewski but, it was not until Einstein’s
space-time theory that space was firmly conceptualised as interdependent with objects and
events, and that space is not an abstract entity out there but is socially and culturally
produced. As Harvey (1996:53 original emphasis) suggests,

“Space and time are neither absolute nor external to processes but are contingent and
contained within them. There are multiple spaces and times (and space-times)
implicated in different physical, biological and social processes. The latter all produce
–to use Lefebvre’s (1974) terminology –their own forms of space and time. Processes
do not operate in but actively construct space and time and in so doing define
distinctive scales for their development.”

What gave the relational space a new salience in the 1970s was the work of Henri Lefebvre
who rejected the structuralist readings of absolute or abstract space and argued that every
society and every mode of production produces its own space. He advocated a multi-
dimensional space (which he called ‘trialectic’) consisting of: conceived spaces of
cartographers, planners and property speculators, perceived spaces of artists’ and writers’
imaginations, and lived spaces of everyday life (Lefebvre, 1974). However, it took nearly
twenty years for Lefebvre’s pioneering ideas about relational space to be translated into
English and, hence, influence the work of geographers such as David Harvey and Ed Soja.
This partly explains why the legacy of Euclid and the Newtonian view of spatiality remained
the dominant geographical imaginary in planning well into the second half of the 20th century
(Davoudi, 2012). Indeed, Friedmann (1993:482) cautions that “the conventional concept of
planning is so deeply linked to the Euclidian mode that it is tempting to argue that if
traditional model has to go, then the very idea of planning must be abandoned”.

3
As mentioned above, geometry played a critical role in the debate about space. A prominent
critic of Euclid was Minkowski and his theory of n-dimensional (as opposed to three
dimensional) geometries. His work was a source of inspiration for Einstein’s theory of
relativity which is often considered as the foundation for the relational view of space.
However, the idea that space is relative, and not absolute, has a longer history and played a
major role in the development of Leibnitz’s philosophy. He suggested that “spatial properties
are relational, and the position of any object is to be given in terms of its relation to any other
objects” (Scruton 1996:362). This implies that space does not exist independent of objects
and events but is constructed from the relations between them. Harvey’s above suggestion
that space is not a container but made of processes and substances is, in some ways, a
reflection on Leibniz philosophy. Furthermore, in rejecting the structuralist understanding of
space, Harvey also asserts that space is not made by underlying structures but by diverse
social, economic, cultural and physical processes which themselves are “made by the
relations established between entities of various kinds” (quoted in Murdoch 2006:19).

One of the important differences between the Newtonian absolute space and the Leibnitzian
relational space is their conceptualisation of place. For the former, space and place are either
synonymous or binaries. For the latter, their relationship is dialectical. They represent
“simultaneity of multiple trajectories” (Massey, 2005: 61). The relational perspective
underpinned the postmodern consciousness of the LA School of geography and particularly
the works of Michael Dear and Ed Soja who exposed the contingent nature of space and place
and their binary oppositions and instead promoted notions of “fluidity, reflexivity,
contingency, connectivity, multiplicity and polyvocality” (Davoudi & Strange, 2009:37).
Doreen Massey, a significant contributor to the rise of relational thinking, suggests that,
“instead of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around them, they can be imagined as
articulated moments in networks of social relations and understanding” (Massey, 1993: 66).
This way of knowing places affirms that people live not “in a framework of geometric
relationships but a world of meaning’ (Hubbard et al., 2004:7). Places are both real and
imagined assemblages of material, events, discourses and practices. Space and place are
socially and culturally produced and their production is infused with power and politics.
Although sense of place and affective experience of being here and now play a significant
role in framing and making places, affective experiences are themselves iteratively created
through social and political processes (Martin, 2003). Relational places are “bundles of
space-time trajectories” that individuals and systems bring together through systemic,
cognitive and emotional processes (Massey 2005: 119). These individually made and multi-
scalar “place-bundles are socially negotiated, constantly changing and contingent” (Pierce et
al, 2011: 58) and are influenced by systemic and multi-scalar changes. Harvey’s description
of place-making and its ephemeral character is apt.

“The process of place formation becomes a process of carving out ‘permanences’

from the flow of processes (that are) creating spaces. But the ‘permanences’ –no
matter how solid they may seem- are not eternal; they are always subject to time as
‘perpetual perishing’’ (Harvey 1996:261).

Drawing on a number of case studies, Pierce et al. (2011:67) affirm Harvey’s temporary
permanences by suggesting that, “all places are relational, and are always produced through
networked politics”. It was this inherently political nature of place formation which was at
best overlooked and at worst ostracized in implementation of spatial planning and hence
formed the basis of its criticisms.

4
Critiques of relational spatiality

Embracing relational space in practice even after the revival of spatial planning has not been
easy. The difficulties are evident from a number of empirical studies. For example, a study of
six spatial strategies produced in British Isles after the revival of spatial planning shows that
“new ideas about relational geography has rarely erased the previous paradigms” (Davoudi,
2009:241). It reveals the difficulties of translating relational space into planning practices
whose spatial imaginary is still dominated by fixities and certainties of absolute space and
bounded place. It concludes that “planners’ conceptual interpretations of the socio-spatial
processes have remained surprisingly similar to the ones formed in the mid-twentieth century
by a positivist view of the world” (Davoudi, 2009:243). Jensen and Richardson (2003) draw
similar conclusions in their analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspectives
(ESDP). Furthermore, a study of regional plans and interviews with planners in Finland also
confirms the mismatch between absolute and relational space in everyday planning practices.
It demonstrates that “despite the current emphasis on networks, flows and connectivity,
planning occurs in many respects in a ‘regional world’ that is perpetually characterized by a
sort of boundedness and a certain degree of fixity” (Paasi & Zimmerbauer, 2016:90). It shows
that “while borders may be porous or even fuzzy in certain cartographic representations as
well as in planning rhetoric, they are often less porous in planning practice that is embedded
in statutory contexts” (ibid).

There are multiple reasons for the persistence of absolute and bounded spatial imaginaries in
planning practices. Some commentators blame planners’ limited engagement with
theorisation of space and place. Others blame the difficulties of disentangling the absolute
from the relational space in planners’ imaginaries. Regarding the former, although social
theorists, sociologists and cultural geographers have engaged with spatial theories since the
middle of the 20th century, planning scholars have been slow and missed a number of
opportunities to do so. One historical opportunity came about in the 1920s when Patrick
Geddes offered to the utopian idealism of the time an underpinning of social philosophy and
a sociological, rather than merely physical, reading of the city. Another was the introduction
of systems theory which led to the so called ‘paradigm shift’ in planning in the 1970s. The
shift had two dimensions: one was the positivist view of space and place and the other was
the perception of planning (and policy making in general) as a rational process. While the
former is about the object of spatial planning and relates to the ‘substantive’ planning theory,
the latter relates to ‘procedural’ planning theory and is about the processes of spatial planning
and the role of planners in it. Although the rational planning process attracted considerable
criticisms from planning theorists (discussed below), the positivist view of spatiality crept
almost uncritically into planning thoughts and practices. This led to decades of theoretical
disengagement with spatial theories and a disjunction in the development of planning
thoughts and practices in which “a predominantly positivist planning content stands alongside
an emerging poststructuralist planning process” (Davoudi, 2009:242). A more recent example
of a missed opportunity in the UK was when “critical thinking about space and place as the
basis for action or intervention” (RTPI, 2004:1) was misinterpreted as re-introducing physical
design into planning rather than a conceptual engagement with relational space. Therefore,
the intellectual and practical challenges of embedding relational space into spatial planning
practices have remained under-developed.

The second line of reasoning for the limited uptake of relational space in daily spatial
planning practices highlights the necessary entanglement of relational and bounded
(territorial) space. While the boundedness is temporary, contingent and always becoming, it

5
nevertheless produces powerful spatial imaginaries and shape the ways in which relations are
understood and acted upon. Cochrane and Ward (2012:7), therefore, argue that,

“Policy making has to be understood as both relational and territorial; as both in

motion and simultaneously fixed, or embedded in place. The conventional distinction
that is often made between the two misses the extent to which each necessarily
defines and is defined by the other”

A similar argument is put forward by Passie and Zimmerbauer (2016:90) who suggest that,

“Despite the new planning lexis accentuating fluidity, fuzziness, and connectivity,
neither the networks of governance nor the planning itself are able to escape the
penumbra of the politico-administrative units. […] Relational and territorial should
therefore be viewed not as entirely commensurable categories, but as sometimes, but
not always, mutual and intertwining, contextual, dynamic, and contested dimensions
in planning practices”.

Communicative and collaborative planning

The second theoretical contribution to the spatial turn in planning came from the
communicative conceptualisation of planning processes. Procedural planning theories have a
long history dating back to the introduction of systems theory into planning in the 1970s and
its subsequent criticisms. Systems theory introduced scientism to the understanding of not
only space and place, but also policy making itself (Taylor, 1998). It conceives of planning as
a rational process of decision making in which technical experts follow a cycle of logical
steps to reach an optimal rational decision. The critics of rational instrumentalism were quick
to highlight the mismatch between how decisions ought to be made with the disjointed,
incremental and partial processes which characterise how decisions are actually made in
practice (Lindblom, 1959). They argue that the ‘messy’ world of planning does not match the
neatly defined and sequential steps of comprehensive rational planning in which planners are
portrayed as value-neutral and objective experts (Davoudi, 2006). In the 1990s, a new wave
of criticisms of rational planning emerged which although was inspired by multiple sources
of philosophical inspirations it shared a common affinity to Jürgen Habermas’
communicative action. Planning theorists drew on Habermasian deliberative democracy and
pragmatist tradition to develop the communicative / collaborative planning theory (CPT)
which by the 2000s dominated planning literature and discourses.

At the heart of CPT is Habermas’ deliberative democratic response to an age old question:
how to reconcile competing agendas, contrasting interests, conflictual objectives and
aspirations of different factions of the governed and the governing in liberal democracies
(Horowitz, 2013)? Habermas’ response is to establish a system of governance whose aim is
to achieve consensus, not through trade-offs and compromises but through convergence of
preferences towards a socially optimal decisions. Such convergence would be achieved
through argumentation and opinion / will formation in the public domain. To make such
deliberation and consensus possible he advocates ‘communicative action’ defined as:
“freedom of access, equal rights to participate, truthfulness on the part of participants,
absence of coercion in adopting positions, and so on” (Habermas, 1993:31). This ‘ideal
speech situation’ would arguably enable participants to work together “in a cooperative
search for truth, where nothing coerces anyone except the force of the better argument”

6
(Habermas, 1990:198). In this rational argumentation process “ear, voice and respect” are
guaranteed for all participants (Dryzek, 1990) who themselves are not “primarily oriented to
their own individual successes”. Instead they “pursue their individual goals under the
condition that they can harmonize their plans of action on the basis of common situation
definitions” (Habermas, 1984: 286). The consensus achieved in this way has ‘a rational’ basis
because the ‘reflexive’ participants are able to “overcome their, at first, subjectively based
views in favour of a rationally motivated agreement” (Habermas, 1987: 315). By minimising
what Habermas (1984) calls ‘communicative distortions’ (such as acts of manipulation or
misinformation), the power of ‘better argument’ prevails and participants are able to “make
sense together” (Forester, 1989:119), create a “shared language” (Healey, 1997), act in a
“shared-power-world” (Bryson and Crosby, 1992) and reach consensus.

Drawing on these ideas, CPT has criticised the instrumental rationality of modernist planning
in which reasoning is based on scientific, empiricist knowledge. Instead, it has promoted
communicative rationality in which reasoning is generated reflexively through intersubjective
argumentation and deliberation. The normative aim is to democratise spatial planning
processes by empowering the discourse communities and values that are excluded from the
decision making around a particular place. The role of a communicative planner is that of a
broker, a mediator, or a ‘critical friend’ who enables the process of consensus building.
Planners are seen as “arbiters of normative standards and guardians of value” (McGurik,
2001:198). Their ultimate aim is to remove power and conflict so that consensual “ways of
thinking, ways of valuing and ways of acting” (Healey, 1997:29) can be created. The
influence of CPT in defining spatial planning is evident in the writings of both its proponents
and critics for whom the essence of spatial planning is its participatory processes. As regard
For example, Albrechts (2006:1152) argues that, “strategic spatial planning is […] a set of
concepts, procedures, and tools” for achieving “desirable outcomes”. It is “as much about
processes, institutional design, and mobilization as about the development of substantive
theories”. The emphasis on process is also evident from a study of Italian strategic spatial
plans, Sartorio (2005:36) concludes that they refer “primarily to the process and that
somehow the spatial dimension […] has disappeared”. Similarly, its critics suggests that,
“the failure to find evidence (of spatial planning) in practice is the outcome of the normative
direction of the work (referring to CPT) and weaknesses in the theoretical underpinnings of
this approach” (Newman, 2008:1372).

Critiques of communicative planning

Critiques of CPT have been diverse focusing on its: theoretical grounding (Huxley, 2000),
idealistic perspective (Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger, 1998; Gunder, 2003), normative
prescriptions (Fraser, 1990), separation of rationality, knowledge and power (Flyvbjerg,
1998; Ploger, 2004), attempts to reason away powers, interests and inequalities (McGurik,
2001; Fox-Rogers and Murphy, 2014), presupposed consensus which risks becoming “an
instrument of discipline and a rather unbearable group pressure” (Foucault, 1986:247),
portrayal of planners as “people of good-will […] blessed with unusual reflexivity and insight
into the constraints on their own and other people’s understandings and actions” (Huxley,
2000:376) and confinement of communicative action domain to opinion formation in
everyday life which is assumed to be outside the system and the state (ibid).

Despite their diversity, these criticisms share an emphasis on theoretical and practical
impossibilities of creating an ideal speech situation in which communicative rationality
prevails and consensus emerges. Adding to these is a more radical critique of Habermas’

7
communicative action by scholars such as Chantal Mouffe and those drawing on Jacques
Lacan. They question not just the possibility of consensus building, but also its desirability.
Mouffe challenges the power-blind model of deliberative democracy and argues that the idea
of “dissolving” power relations “through a rational debate” is not only illusive, it can also
“endanger democratic institutions” (Mouffe, 2000: 17). This means that the problem with
communicative action is not just that it cannot be delivered but that it is harmful to liberal
democracy if it is pursued. Because “every consensus exists as a temporary result of a
provisional hegemony, as a stabilization of power”, and “it always entails some form of
exclusion” (ibid).

Referring to the contested nature of politics and the political, Mouffe (2005:73) questions the
ideal of a consensus-based politics and argues that “there is no consensus without exclusion,
no we without a they, and no politics is possible without the drawing of a frontier''. She,
therefore, advocates a form of ‘agonistic pluralism’ which keeps the democratic contestation
alive and acknowledges “the dimension of undecidedability and the ineradicability of
antagonism, which are constitutive of the political”. In this way, democratic citizenship can
be envisioned by putting “the emphasis on the type of practices not the forms of
argumentation” (Mouffe 2000:21 original emphasis). Thus, a consensus-oriented democracy
risks becoming radically undemocratic because the search for consensus risks the evacuation
of the political, de-politicisation of particulars, elimination of genuine political space for
disagreement and contestation, renouncement or displacement of social conflicts, and
foreclosure of “proper political framing” (Swyngedouw, 2010:2019). To avoid this, critics
argue for the creation of agonistic arenas (Hillier, 2003), for “radical politicisation of
planning”, and for “a reorientation of planning theory from normative to a political basis”
(McGuirk, 2001: 214).

It is worth stressing that although CPT has been influential in defining spatial planning, the
two are not the same. Some recent critiques of spatial planning tend to conflate it with CPT
(e.g. Allmendinger and Haughton, 2011). This not only ignores the contribution of spatial
theories to the revival of spatial planning. It also perpetuates the over-emphasis on procedural
aspects of planning and undermines its substantive aspects. Although, like relational space,
communicative planning uses the poststructuralist language of fluidity, difference and place
specificities, it should not be confused with spatial theories. Because, the former is essentially
a normative prescription about how to do planning, while the latter is a substantive theory
about the object of planning. As Huxley and Yftachel (2000: 334) suggest,

“The communicative planning field […] shares [...] a tendency to see planning as a
mainly procedural field of activity […]. There is the same sense of searching for the
right decision-rules be they rational-comprehensive or rational-communicative,
universal or local”.

In fact, the two theories are so far apart that Harvey was surprised to see that CPT has taken
its inspiration from Habermas because, "Habermas has, in short, no conception of how
spatio-temporalities and 'places' are produced and how that process is integral to the process
of communicative action and of valuation" (Harvey,1996:354).

Neolibralisation of spatial planning

“The saying goes that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Planning
theorists should therefore not ignore critique suggesting that their well-intentioned

8
 reforms are being transformed and perverted by economic-political forces only to end
up making society less rather than more democratic” (Sager, 2005: 7).

The history of planning is not short of examples of “the high-sounding ideals of planning
theory” being “translated to grubby practices on the ground” (Harvey, 1985:184). Spatial
planning ideals appear to have followed such a destiny. There is a growing evidence from
various parts of the world (Cerreta et al, 2010; Allmendinger and Haughton, 2011; Murry and
Neill, 2011; Olesen and Richardson, 2011; Van den Boeck, 2008; Waterhout et al, 2013) that
shows how the progressive ideas which underpinned the revival of spatial planning have been
“hijacked and misused to promote neoliberal models of spatial development” (Olesen, 2014:
289). In attempts to understand why and how spatial planning has become a carrier of
neoliberal agendas, commentators have drawn on the above mentioned critiques of its
theoretical contexts and particularly the CPT. It is argued that neoliberalisation of spatial
planning is manifested in a) the shift in the purposes and values of planning, and b) the de-
politicisation of the planning processes, with the latter enabling the former.

In many western countries spatial planning was a constitutive part of the post-war welfare
state and its social democratic ideals. It was born out of the belief in governments’ right and
duty to intervene in and regulate the free markets and use redistributive measures to seek
efficiency, equity and socio-spatial cohesion. The purpose of planning was, therefore, to
regulate the land and property markets, counteract their negative social and environmental
impacts, and improve the quality of places and people’s lives. These social democratic
intensions, however, were crowded by the formulaic routines, bureaucratic procedures and
the shoehorning of diverse identities into universal prescriptions. In the midst of a widespread
disillusionment with these overpowering tendencies, the revival of spatial planning was
celebrated from across the political spectrum. However, the motivations for change and the
prescriptions for the way forward differed considerably. Those drawing on relational
spatiality and communitive planning were advocating a more creative, imaginative,
transformative and democratic planning, while those with neoliberal mentalities were seeking
further market freedom and toothless planning systems. For them, the purpose of planning is
not to regulate the market and correct its failures and its excessive socio-spatial injustices but
to enable it, to pave the way for it, and to become the delivery mechanism for pro-market
strategies.

Despite their radically different motivations, it appears that the progressive critiques of land
use, regulatory planning have been unintentionally aligned with neoliberal strategies and
unwittingly provided the intellectual grounding for their regressive agendas. As mentioned
above, neoliberalisation of spatial planning has been rolled out in many countries, albeit in
different forms and with different intensity and speed. For example, in Nordic countries a
“hybrid between traditional welfare state spatial planning ideas and growth-oriented
neoliberal strategic planning approaches” is emerging (Olesen, 2014: 289; Ahlqvist and
Moisio, 2014; Andersen and Pløger, 2007; Galland, 2012; Mäntysalo and Saglie, 2010).
However, perhaps nowhere the alignment between the progressive and regressive agendas
was as pronounced as in the UK. Here, the collaborative planning’s emphasis on consensus
mapped conveniently onto government’s ‘joined-up’ approach to policy and ‘Third Way’
approach to politics. The former echoed the definition of spatial planning as an integrative
activity yet, one whose purpose was to enable and deliver market growth. The latter promoted
a form of politics which like communicative action aimed at achieving consensus among
third way
traditionally opposite political perspectives by bringing them under a ‘big tent’ in the centre.
Such alignments were probably helped by the fact that the structuration theory of Anthony

9
Giddens, a key intellectual advocate of the Third Way politics, provided an influential input
into some accounts of CPT (e.g. Healey, 2007). The CPT’s emphasis on consensus,
interpreted as a search for win-win solutions to contested planning problems, has
unintendedly legitimised the de-politicisation of the planning processes. Therefore, “carefully
stage-managed processes with subtly but clearly defined parameters of what is open to
debate” (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2011) have been pursued in the name of consensus
building. Similarly, the ideals of relational space and its representation in the form of ‘fuzzy
maps’ (Davoudi and Strange, 2009:38) have been misused to “blur or camouflage the spatial
politics […] and depoliticise strategic spatial planning” (Olesen, 2014:297).

Conclusion

The early 2000s witnessed the revival of spatial planning which was triggered by a growing
recognition of the significance of place in understanding economic dynamics, environmental
sustainability, social justice, and governance practices and processes. This was informed by
two theoretical perspectives: one related to the object of planning and the other to the
planning process. The former promoted a move from the understanding of space and place as
absolute, bounded, fixed and neutral containers of people and activities towards a relational,
fluid, contingent and socially constructed spatiality infused with power relations. The latter
advocated a move from instrumental to communicative rationality and from exclusive to
inclusive planning processes aimed at consensus seeking through deliberative democratic
dialogues.

Both the theoretical underpinnings and the implementation of spatial planning in practice
have been subject to criticisms. At the theoretical level, in line with a long established trend
in planning theory of focusing predominantly on planning processes, CPT has attracted more
critiques than relational space. The first wave of critiques focused on the practical
impossibility of undistorted communicative rationality and informed consensus formation.
The second wave has drawn on post-political literature to stress the undesirability of
consensus seeking and communication action. Both have raised concerns about the perceived
role of planners as ‘super human’, well-intentioned mediators and facilitators of
deliberations. As regards relational space, Nyseth (2012: 41) summed up the key arguments
by suggesting that, “Too much fluidity, or fluidity going ‘wild’, would mean not only losing
control, but also, in a sense, giving up the ambition of steering, which would certainly give
other forces more room to manoeuver”.

At the level of practice, the ideals of spatial planning have not lived up to their expectation,
and their implementations are increasingly distant from the good intentions of their
theoretical underpinnings. Planners find it difficult to translate the relational space into the
administrative, legal confines of planning practice. The ‘fuzziness’ of relational space has
become a mechanism for de-politicisation of competing and conflictual territorial claims.
Similarly, the desire for collaboration and win-win solution has tended to circumscribe debate
and marginalise the politics of place making. The role of planning has changed from the
regulator of the market to its facilitator. It is more about delivering economic growth and
competiveness than ameliorating social and environmental injustices. In many ways the
consensus seeking collaboration appears to have worked against the idea of relational space
as being socially produced through inherently political processes in which planners are part
of.

10
Finally, in criticising spatial planning practices, we should be careful not to ‘throw the baby
out with the bathwater’. The term ‘spatial’ provided planners a way of breaking free from the
theoretical rigidities of using bounded geographical units and binary concepts such as ‘urban’
and ‘rural’ or ‘local’ and ‘global’. The focus on spatiality has triggered debates about the
production of space and the politics of place making. So, there is nothing wrong with ‘spatial
planning’ per se. Spatiality matters and given that planning is a specifically spatial practice it
is deeply embroiled in the politics of place making. Similarly, communicative action has
provided an opportunity to challenge the idea of planning as an instrumentally rational
process of decision making and advocated inclusive and democratic processes, even though
its emphasis on consensus has been used to foreclose political debates. Therefore, the focus
of the critique of spatial planning should be on its misinterpretations which a) portray it as a
process which disciplines the adversaries towards a consensus and shrink the political space,
and b) attempt to replace its social democratic values and purposes with neoliberal agenda of
facilitating market transactions. It is the co-option of spatial planning into the dominating
neoliberal agendas of economic boosterism and the stripping away of planning’s welfare
values which should be the focus of critique.

References

Agnew, J. (2005) Space: Place, in: Cloke, P. and Johnson, R. (eds.), Spaces of Geographical
Thought, London: Sage

Ahlqvist T and Moisio S (2014) Neoliberalisation in a Nordic state: From cartel polity
towards a corporate policy in Finland. New Political Economy 19(1): 21–55.

Albrechts, L, Healey, P., and Kunzmann, K. (2003) ‘Strategic spatial planning and regional
governance in Europe’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 69 (2): 113-129.

Allmendinger, P. and Tewdwr-Jones, M. (2009) Embracing Change and Difference in

Planning Reform: New Labour’s Role for Planning in Complex Times, Planning, Practice &
Research, 24(1): 71–81

Andersen J and Pløger J (2007) The dualism of urban governance in Denmark. European
Planning Studies 15(10): 1349–1367.

Bryson, J. and Crosby, B. (1992) Leadership for the common good, tackling public problems
in a shared-power world, Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA

Cerreta M, Concilio G and Monno V (eds.) (2010) Making Strategies in Spatial Planning:
Knowledge and Values. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

Cochrane, A. and Ward, K. (2012) Guest editorial: Researching the geographies of policy
mobility: Confronting the methodological challenges. Environment and Planning A, 44:5-12.

Cullingworth, B., Nadin, V., Hart, T., Davoudi, S. et al (15th edition) (2015) Town and
Country Planning in the UK, 15th Edition, London: Routledge

Cuthbert, A. (1996) ‘An interview with Manuel Castells’, Cities, 13(1):3-11

11
Davoudi, S. (2006) Evidence-based Planning: Rhetoric and reality, DISP, 165(2):14-25

Davoudi, S. (2009) Asymmetric development in spatial planning: positivist content and

poststructuralist processes? In Davoudi, S. and Strange, I. (eds.) Conceptions of Space and
Place in Strategic Spatial Planning, London: Routledge, 207-243

Davoudi, S. (2012) The legacy of positivism and the emergence of interpretive tradition in
spatial planning, Regional Studies, 46(4):429-441

Davoudi, S. and Strange I. (2009) Space and place in the twentieth century planning: An
Analytical Framework and an historical review, in Davoudi, S. and Strange, I. (eds.)
Conceptions of Space and Place in Strategic Spatial Planning, London: Routledge, 7-42

Dryzek, J. (1990) Deliberative democracy: Politics, policy and political science, Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge

Faludi, A. (ed.) (2007) Territorial cohesion and European model of society, Cambridge, MA:
The Lincoln Institute for Land Policy

Flyvbjerg, B. (1998) Rationality and power, democracy in practice, University of Chicago

Press: Chicago, IL

Forester, J. (1989) Planning in the public domain, University of California Press: Berkeley,
CA

Friedmann, J. (1993) ‘Toward a non-Euclidean mode of planning’, Journal of the American

Planning Association, 59(4):482-5

Friedmann, J. (2004): Strategic Planning and the Longer Range. Planning Theory and
Practice, 5 (1): 49–67.

Fox-Rogers, L. and Murphy, E. (2014) informal strategies of power in the local planning
system, Planning Theory, 13(3)244-268

Galland, D. (2012) Is regional planning dead or just coping? The transformation of a state
socio-spatial project into growth-oriented strategies. Environment and Planning C:
Government and Policy 30(3): 536–552.

Gunder, M. (2010) Planning as the ideology of (neoliberal) space, Planning Theory,

9(4):298-314

Gunder, M. (2003) Passionate Planning for the Other’s Desire: An Agonistic Response to the
Dark Side of Planning, Progress in Planning 60(3)

Habermas, J. (1984) The theory of communicative action, vol.1 Reason and the
rationalisation of society, Boston: Beacon Press

Habermas, J. (1987) The philosophical discourse of modernity: twelve lectures, MIT Press:
Cambridge Mass.

12
Habermas, J. (1990) Moral consciousness and communicative action, MIT Press: Cambridge
Mass.

Habermas, J. (1993) Justification and application: remarks on discourse ethics, MIT Press:
Cambridge Mass.

Hajer, M. and Zonneveld, W. (2000) Spatial planning in the network society – Rethinking the
principles of planning in the Netherlands. European Planning Studies 8(3): 337–355.

Harvey, D. (1985) The Urbanisation of Capital, London: Blackwell

Harvey, D. (1996) Justice, Nature and Geography of Difference, Oxford: Blackwell.

Healey, P. (1997) Collaborative Planning: shaping places in fragmented societies, London:

Macmillan

Healey, P. (1998) Building institutional capacity through collaborative approaches to urban

planning, Environment and Planning A, 30: 1531-1546

Healey, P. (2007) Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies, towards a relational planning
for our times, London: Routledge

Healey, P., Khakee, A., Motte, A., and Needham, B. (eds.) (1997) Making Strategic Spatial
Plans: Innovation in Europe, London: UCL Press.

Hillier, J. (2003) ‘Agon’izing over consensus: Why Habermasian ideals cannot be ‘real’.
Planning Theory 2(1): 37–59.

Horowitz, L. S. (2013) Toward empathic agonism: conflicting vulnerabilities in urban

wetland governance, Environment and Planning A, 45: 2344 – 2361

Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R. and Valentine, G, (2004) ‘Editors’ introduction’ in P. Hubbard, R.

Kitchin, and G. Valentine (eds.) Key Thinkers on Space and Place, London: Sage, 1-15.

Huxley, M. (2000) The Limits to Communicative Planning, Journal of Planning Education

and Research 19:369-377.

Huxley, M. and Yiftachel, O. (2000) New Paradigm or Old Myopia? Unsettling the
Communicative Turn in Planning Theory, Journal of Planning Education and Research,
19:333-342.

Jensen OB and Richardson T (2003) Being on the map: The new iconographies of power
over European space. International Planning Studies 8(1): 9–34.

Lefebvre, H. (1974 [1991]) The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell (translated from the
original 1974 edition by N. Donaldson-Smith).

Lindblom, C.E (1959) ‘The science of ‘muddling through’’ Public Administration Review,
19:79-88.

13
Mäntysalo R and Saglie IL (2010) Private influence preceding public involvement: Strategies
for legitimizing preliminary partnership arrangements in urban housing planning in Norway
and Finland. Planning Theory & Practice 11(3): 317–338.

Martin, D. (2003) Place-framing as place-making: constituting a neighborhood for organizing

and activism, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93:730-750

Massey, D. (1993) Power-geometries and a progressive sense of place, in J. Bird et al., (eds.)
Mapping the Futures, Routledge: London, 59-69.

Massey, D. (2005) For Space, London: Sage.

McGurirk, P.M. (2011) Situating communicative planning theory: context, power, and
knowledge, Environment and Planning A, 33: 195-217

Mouffe C. (2005) On the Political, London: Routledge

Mouffe, C. (2000) Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism, Political Science Series

72 Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna

Murdoch, J. (2006) Post-structuralist geography, London: Sage.

Murray M. R. and Neill W. J. V. (2011) Strategic spatial planning in Berlin-Brandenburg: A

requiem for balanced development? Planning Practice & Research 26(1): 107–121.

Nadin, W. (2007) The emergence of the spatial planning approach in England, Planning
Practice and Research, 22(1): 43-62

Nyseth, T. (2012) Fluid planning: A meaningless concept or a rational response to

uncertainty in urban planning? In: Burian J (ed.) Advances in Spatial Planning. Rijeka:
InTech, 27–46.

Olesen K and Richardson T (2012) Strategic spatial planning in transition: Contested

rationalities and spatial logics in 21st century Danish spatial planning. European Planning
Studies 20(10): 1689–1706

Olesen, K. (2014), The neoliberalisation of strategic spatial planning, Planning Theory,

13(3):289-303

Parr, J. (2005) Spatial planning: Too little or too much? Scienze Regionali 4(2): 113-129.

Pierce, J., Martin, D. and murphy, J. T. (2011) Relational place-making: the networked
politics of place, Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers, NS 36, 54-70

Pløger J (2004) Strife: Urban planning and agonism. Planning Theory 3(1): 71–92.

Richardson, T. and Jensen O. B. (2003) Linking discourse and space: towards a cultural
sociology of space in analysing spatial policy discourses, Urban Studies, 40(1):7-22

14
RTPI (The Royal Town Planning Institute) (2004) Policy Statement on Initial Planning
Education, London: RTPI.

Sager, T. (2005) Communicative planners as naïve mandarins of the neo-liberal state?

European Journal of Spatial Development, December 2005. Available at:
[Link]

Salet, W. and Faludi, A. (eds.) (2000) The revival of strategic spatial planning, Amsterdam:
Koninklijke, Nedelands Akademie van wetenschappen.

Sartorio, F. S. (2005) Strategic Spatial Planning, disP; The Planning Review, 41:162, 26-40

Scruton, R. (1996) Modern Philosophy: An introduction and survey, London: Mandarin

Swyngedouw, E. (2010) “Apocalypse forever? Post-political pluralism and the spectre of

climate change” Theory, Culture and Society, 27: 213–232

Taylor, N. (1998) Urban Planning Theory since 1945, London: Sage.

Tewdwr-Jones, M. and Allmendinger, P. (1998) Deconstructing communicative rationality, a

critique of Habermasian collaborative planning, Environment and Planning A, 30:1975-1989

UN-Habitat (2009) The UN-Habitat Global Report On Human Settlements 2009: Planning
Sustainable Cities, London: Earthscan

Van den Broeck, P. (2008) The changing position of strategic spatial planning in Flanders. A
socio-political and instrument-based perspective. International Planning Studies 13(3): 261–
283.

Waterhout B., Othengrafen, F. and Sykes, O. (2013) Neo-liberalization processes and spatial
planning in France, Germany, and the Netherlands: An exploration. Planning Research &
Practice 28(1): 141–159.

Watson, V. (2002) Change and continuity in spatial planning, London: Routledge

15