The collective empowerment imagined in the government rhetoric of localism bears little resemblance to the market model of aggregative democracy that characterises much of the practice of participation in spatial planning. This paper explores one of the rare statutory strategies to engage collective participation and to mobilise the neighbourhood as an institution of spatial planning. In a study of neighbourhood planning in England it investigates the new political identities that emerged and the conflicts and antagonism that accompanied them. Drawing on the work of philosopher Chantal Mouffe, the paper explores the significance of the political practices that resulted for the state strategy of localism.

Strategies of localism have constituted the community as a metaphor for democracy and empowerment as part of a wider reordering of state institutions and state power. In conflating the smallest scale with increased participation, however, community localism provides a framework through which the power of socio-spatial positioning might be made vulnerable to resistance and change. This paper identifies four spatial practices through which marginalised communities apply the technology of localism to challenge the limitations of their positioning and imprint promises of empowerment and democracy on space. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler the paper theorises these practices as the incursion into the public realm of regulatory norms related to domestic and private spaces, rendering political space familiar and malleable, and suggesting that power and decision-making can be brought within reach. It is argued that these spatial practices of community rehearse a more fundamental transformation of the political ordering of space than that authorised by the state strategies of localism.

This paper explores the production of what counts as authoritative knowledge in neighbourhood planning in England. The aim of the paper is to evidence the process through which the intelligibility of place was established in participatory planning in neighbourhoods and to chart the exclusions and exceptions through which spatial norms were produced. It evidences the moderating effect that logics of economic development had in a policy dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development, and, in contrast, it analyses the new expressions of place intelligibility successfully rendered in neighbourhood planning. The paper concludes that the ability of neighbourhood planners to privilege place over logics of development points to a more inclusive and egalitarian approach to the construction of planning knowledge.

The devolution of governance to communities is an integral aspect of the state strategy of localism but may conflict with a spatial restructuring dedicated to the liberalization of economic growth. In England community opposition to house-building has been cited as one of the key factors in the decline in new housing supply over the last decade. The policy of neighbourhood planning was introduced there in 2011 to overcome this opposition by devolving limited powers to communities to influence development. It was anticipated that giving communities the right to draw up neighbourhood development plans would secure their compliance with a pro-growth agenda and increase the number of sites allocated for housing. This paper explores the impact of neighbourhood planning in England on housing development and analyses its lessons for the state strategy of localism. It argues that neighbourhood planning is emerging as the proponent of sustainability and social purpose in the English housing market, in conflict with the corporate interests of a liberalised housing development market.

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