Ideology in practice: the career of sustainability as an ideological concept in strategic urban planning

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for analysing ideology dynamics in strategic urban planning based on post-foundational political theory. Drawing on empirical material of strategic planners discussing their usage of the concept of sustainability it is suggested that although planners generally consider themselves to be pragmatic problemsolvers, it is exactly in their efforts to 'get things done' that they become deeply embroiled in the social dynamics of ideology. The reason for this is that planners are forced to employ ideologically charged concepts to bring together the disparate coalitions of actors that are needed for generating any form of policy traction in fractured governance landscapes. However, the ideological utilization of a concept contributes not only to the reproduction of hegemonic relations but also to a consequent hollowing out of the concept whereby its meaning becomes increasingly diluted, leading to its eventual demise and replacement.

Sustainable, resilient, regenerative? The potential of Melbourne’s peri-urban region

“…However increasingly the sufficiency of sustainably as a transformative approach to urban regions has been questioned. Not only is sustainability policy and practice criticized as hollow, particularly given that planners are often seeking to 'get things done' (Metzger et al, 2021) but also as (perhaps intentionally) ill-defined, or as Gough (2015: 146) notes is "an elusive concept, which is simultaneously difficult to understand theoretically and even more challenging to operationalize and implement in practice. " Likewise the capacity of policy actors, including planners, to create change revelas tensions between science-informed approaches and realities of available opportunities to make change happen in complex city systems (Patterson et al, 2021).…”

Do planning concepts matter? A Lacanian interpretation of the urban village in a British context

“…These keywords attempt to structure our perception of the future urban environment as new identities or primary points in the knowledge of urban planning (Kooij et al, 2014), in the same way that master signifiers work in constituting a value in knowledge. This lays the foundation for planning scholars to adopt Lacanian theory in analysing planning concepts, such as ‘diversity’ (Gunder, 2005b), ‘sustainability’ (Brown, 2016; Davidson, 2010; Gunder, 2006; Metzger et al, 2021), ‘responsibility’ (Gunder, 2016), ‘innovation campus’ (Kooij et al, 2014) and ‘smart growth’ (Gunder and Hillier, 2009). Scholars have absorbed Lacan’s thinking around subjectivities, the unconscious, desire, fantasy and unique new concepts to analyse a series of planning issues from planning education to planning ideology, from planning policymaking to planning applications.…”

“…Although these new ideas of LDA provide powerful hints to deconstruct the conventional planning norms and bring about new ideas, there is still a lack of systematic application of the LDA approach to analyse detailed planning activities. Most case studies only extract specific planning segments for analysis and analyse them with some new thoughts derived from Lacan’s theory, as demonstrated, for example, with the brief analyses of Auckland Regional Council’s planning documents (Gunder, 2005a), the City of Stirling’s planning documents (Hillier and Gunder, 2005), Vancouver’s planning practice on social sustainability (Davidson, 2010), sustainability in Cambridge and Sydney’s strategic urban planning (Metzger et al, 2021). Therefore, this research aims to develop an LDA-based analytical framework to fill this gap and demonstrate how to use this framework in analysing some puzzling phenomena in the UK urban village movement.…”

Designing the regenerative city? A case study of urban actors working to integrate ideas of biodiversity in Copenhagen

“…Approaching a well-established planning and design practice with a new ideology seemingly widely open for interpretation, urban actors must tackle how to integrate this new arena of Regenerative Thinking in their work with the city. An ongoing challenge coined in a study of urban planners integrating the concept of sustainability [18]. Representing a new arena for urban actors, further research on urban biodiversity seems to be of relevance for both science and practice, including studies adding to present knowledge on drivers, barriers, and bridging mechanisms related to urban actors working with ideas of biodiversity [16,19].…”