This article engages with recent debates surrounding non-representational theory and the affective turn in the social sciences, arguing that such thinking offers a particularly useful set of concepts for the discipline of planning. This includes a widened notion of agency to the inclusion of more-than-human bodies (i.e. material agency) and a focus on daily practice and the embodied experience of place. Calling upon the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, the author puts forward affective atmospheres as a post-humanist way of studying socio-spatial processes associated with place identity and the spatial imaginaries that animate planning activity. Recognising the coconstitutive nature of research and social worlds, the article offers a performative methodology that situates researchers directly within the material and discursive environments they seek to investigate.

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To be published in City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 17 (5 In this paper we consider the relationship between creative practice, activism, and processes of urban place-making. We argue that cultural activism is not merely capable of constructing meanings about urban space, it also provides the 'prospects for a new progressive political opening' (Scott 2011, 316; see also Long 2013) within the wider context of global capitalism through the cultivation of a shared aesthetics of protest. By a "shared aesthetics of protest" we are referring to two distinct though related meanings. First, in Stokes Croft there is a shared artistic style of protest grounded in a DIY sensibility and a highly varied spirit of artistic experimentation. Second, by shared aesthetics we are also referencing a shared perception by activists of the ways in which Stokes Croft has been excluded from civic or developmental narratives of Bristol or traditionally regarded as a problem for the city council, urban planners and the police. Aesthetics of protest here borrows from the work of Jacques

The language of relational geography now permeates the field and literature of planning, with phrases such as ‘fuzzy boundaries’ and ‘flows and networks’ being commonly used to express the complexity of socio-economic and governance relations. However, recent research suggests the so-called ‘relational turn’ is not only far from complete, but is unable to account for the bounded reality of urban processes. Following from these debates, this article seeks to redirect the study of urban change away from relational and absolute interpretations of space in favour of a more robust consideration and critical reflection on the social production of city-regions. Towards this objective, the author introduces an approach situated within Lefebvre’s The Production of Space to examine strategies of metropolitan regionalism in the Capital District, New York (United States). Interpreting the city-region as a social product reflecting the co-constitutive relationship of conceived, perceived and lived space spatial elements, the paper argues that the silences of lived space within metropolitan regionalism are indicative of a post-political condition where hegemonic vision, discourse and ideology deny a robust urban democracy. It is this ability to engage with the dynamism of social change and the relationships between spaces which makes Lefebvre’s spatial theory immensely valuable for the study of emerging and shifting structures of governance.

Engaging the interest of Western citizens in the complex food connections that shape theirs’ and others’ personal wellbeing around issues such as food security and access is challenging. This article is critical of the food marketplace as the site for informing consumer behaviour and argues instead for arts-based participatory activities to support the performance of ecological citizens in non-commercial spaces. Following the ongoing methodological and conceptual fascination with performance, matter and practice in cultural food studies, we outline what the ecological citizen, formed through food’s agentive potential, does and could do. This is an ecological citizen, defined not in its traditional relation to the state but rather to the world of humans and non-humans whose lives are materially interconnected through nourishment. The article draws on the theories of Berlant, Latour, Bennett and Massumi. Our methodology is a collaborative arts-led research project that explored and juxtaposed diverse food practices with artist Paul Hurley, researchers, community partners, volunteers and participants in Bristol, UK. It centred on a 10-day exhibition where visitors were exposed to a series of interactive explorations with and about food. Our experience leads us to outline two steps for enacting ecological citizenship. The first step is to facilitate sensory experiences that enable the agential qualities of foodstuffs to shape knowledge making. The second is to create a space where people can perform, or relate differently, in unusual manners to food. Through participating in the project and visiting the exhibition, people were invited to respond not only as ‘ethical consumers’ but also as ‘ecological citizens’. This participatory approach to research can contribute to understandings of human-world entanglements.