Planning and Knowledge: How New Forms of Technocracy Are Shaping Contemporary Cities

This book uses an international perspective and draws on a wide range of new conceptual and empirical material to examine the sources of conflict and cooperation within the different landscapes of knowledge that are driving contemporary urban change. Based on the premise that historically established systems of regulation and control are being subject to unprecedented pressures, scholars critically reflect on the changing role of planning and governance in sustainable urban development, looking at how a shift in power relations between expert and local cultures in western planning processes has blurred the traditional boundaries between public, private and voluntary sectors.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Conceptual framings of technocracy The rise of a new urban technocracy ~ Federico Savini and Mike Raco Planning, knowledge and technocracy in historical perspective ~ Michael Hebbert Part II: Public planning and bureaucracies in contemporary urban development politics Dealing with tensions: the expertise of boundary spanners in facilitating community initiatives ~ Ward Rauws and Martine de Jong Plurality of expert knowledge: public planners' experience with urban contractulism in Amsterdam ~ Tuna Tasan-Kok & Martijn van den Hurk Local government in the face of crisis: changing public management of urban projects in Amsterdam ~ Thijs Koolmees and Stan Majoor Captured by bureaucracy: street-level professionals mediating past, present and future knowledge ~ Nanke Verloo Part III: Corporate knowledge and the land and property development sector Anticipatory knowledge: how development consultants see the future ~ Rachel Weber Towards an ‘information technocracy’: discourses of London’s post-referendum real estate markets ~ Nicola Livingstone Finance as technocratic agent in urban development ~ Sabine Dörry Planning professionalism in the face of technocracy: ethics, values and practices ~ Susannah Gunn Part IV: private consultants and the delivery of public policy Professional lobbying in urban planning: depoliticization or REpoliticization? ~ Aino Hirvola and Raine Mäntysalo Advocates, advisors and scrutineers: the technocracies of private sector planning in England ~ Gavin Parker, Emma Street and Matthew Wargent Localism and the reconfiguration of planning’s publics in the landscapes of technocrac ~ Sue Brownill The politics of new urban professions: the case of urban development engineers ~ Jonathan Metzger and Sherif Zakhour Part V: New constellations of actors and the management and governance of contemporary cities Smart cities, algorithmic technocracy and new urban technocrats ~ Rob Kitchin, Claudio Coletta, Leighton Evans, Liam Heaphy and Darach Mac Donncha Planning by numbers: affordable housing and viability in England ~ Antonya Layard Transnational design and local implications for planning: project flights and landings ~ Davide Ponzini Researching the best-practice: academic knowledge production, planning and the post-politicisation of environmental politics ~ Samuel Mössner and Catarina Gomes de Matos Conclusions: The technocratic logics of contemporary planning ~ Federico Savini and Mike Raco

About the Author :
Mike Raco is Professor of Urban Governance and Development in the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Federico Savini is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies.

Review :
"Planning and Knowledge is an important contribution to the understanding of contemporary politics and urban development. It highlights the dilemmas of an urban world that appears to be increasingly in the hands of technocrats seeking to depoliticise policy and practice". Rob Imrie, Goldsmiths, University of London