26 October 2019
Presented at ACSP Annual Meeting, Greenville SC

“We shall define planning as future-oriented, public decision-making directed toward attaining specific goals.” (Fainstein & Fainstein 1971)

For decades, marxist, feminist, indigenous, and black scholars have offered critical deconstruction of the different expressions of democracy and rationality in planning and the ways they privilege capitalist, patriarchal, settler-colonial, Western interests. They have challenged the desire for justice, order, and efficiency—recognizing that these are hegemonic constructs supported by institutions that have historically and continue to exclude and burden marginalized groups. Far less attention has been focused on targeting and challenging the third defining criteria of planning, its future-orientation. When pursued uncritically, this future-orientation similarly risks reproducing hegemonic forms of oppression and exclusion. One potential dimension through which to consider why and how marginalized groups are excluded from planning is through their alternative temporalities, including the negation of future. What is the future planning plans for and who is the public planning plans for? What power does planning have to shape the public by planning towards a specific future? How do non-conforming and marginalized groups resist the normalizing forces of the future public and of a public future? Continue reading “Future dis-oriented and punk placemaking” →