Passionate planning for the others' desire: an agonistic response to the dark side of planning

• Published in: Progress in Planning 2003-10, Vol.60 (3), p.235-319
• Main Author: Gunder, Michael
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0305-9006; 1873-4510
• DOI: 10.1016/S0305-9006(02)00115-0

This monogram suggests that while planning seeks ertainty and the avoidance of conflict in its practices, this is at best an unrealisable fantasy, an unfulfillable desire for security in modernity, and one that has considerable cost. The work examines current planning practice from the perspective of Foucault's governmentality, Flyvbjerg's and Bourdieu's conceptualisations of practical reason and Lacan's psychoanalytical theory. Planning is argued to be driven, at least in New Zealand, by a desire to seek institutional performativity and efficiency. The discipline attempts to achieve this by seeking compromise and the avoidance of conflict with dominant actors, while minimising, the resistance of the docile majority. Habermasian derived communicative planning theory is specifically examined in this context and found wanting. The essay prescribes one possible agonistic and passionate response for an alternative communicative planning practice, drawing on Arendt and Foucault. It then illustrates the similarity, and value of, Foucauldian genealogical theory and aspects of Lacan's psychoanalytical theory for fostering understanding within this proposed polemical response, particularly, as the application of these methods have the ability to expose pernicious elements of planning related practices, rhetoric and actions. The monogram will conclude with a discussion of ‘planning for the Others’ desire’ rather than the persistent fantasy of ‘planning for certainty’ in a finite and capricious world.