Planning amid crisis and austerity: in, against and beyond the contemporary conjuncture

Abstract

This article introduces the special issue 'Planning amid crisis and austerity: in, against and beyond the contemporary juncture'. It starts by acknowledging two limits of the existing body of literature on the planning/crisis/austerity nexus: on the one hand, the excessive reliance on cases at the 'core' of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, with impacts on the understanding of austerity as a response to economic crises; and, on the other, the limited attention given to the impacts of austerity on planning, and their implications for planning practice and research. Based on the contributions in the special issue, the article reflects on some lessons learned: first, the need for a more nuanced understanding of the multiple geographies and temporalities of crisis and austerity; second, the problematic standing of planning practice and research in the face of crisis and austerity; and, third, the potential and limitations of (local) responses and grassroots mobilizations in shaping alternatives. KEYWORDSSpatial planning; austerity politics; geographies of crisis; anti-austerity movements; planning research Crisis and austerity in, against and beyond the contemporary conjuncture Crisis denoted the turning point of a disease, a critical phase in which life or death was at stake and called for an irrevocable decision. (Roitman 2014, 15) Crises are moments of potential change, but the nature of their resolution is not given. It may be that society moves on to another version of the same thing … or to a somewhat transformed version … or relations can be radically transformed. (Hall and Massey 2010, 57) Despite being an old idea with a very rich history, austerity has captured global public attention as the dominant political response to the 2007-2008 economic crises, turning the failures of financial capitalism into an acute crisis of the state (Hall and Massey 2010). By opportunistically imposing new forms of discipline on public service provision, particularly in economically peripheral locations like Southern Europe and already weak welfare systems like the United States, austerity programmes served to intensify prevailing neoliberal orthodoxies about the proper role of the state and the market in society (Hadjimichalis 2011;Blyth 2013).More than ten years on from the collapse of the Wall Street banks, and long after most mainstream commentators have consigned the economic crisis to history, austerity retains its political grip on states across the global north (Annunziata and Mattiucci 2017; Davies 2017). However, there is growing evidence that the 'cruel optimism' (Berlant 2011) underpinning the promise of austerity, that short-term pain is the only path to future prosperity, has been exposed and rings increasingly hollow. Various discontents with the dominant order are now finding political expression through the rise of new forms of politics, whether the multiplication of protests or the rise of populist

The “Souths” of the “Wests”. Southern critique and comparative housing studies in Southern Europe and USA

“…More recently, in times of crisis and austerity, bailouts and other forms of financial support have been attached to stringent conditionalisms used to impose further neoliberalization and welfare retrenchment (Hadjimichalis, 2011;Tulumello, Cotella & Othengrafen, 2020). The similarities of these trends to typical neoliberal adjustment programs in the Global South are so striking to justify the deployment of Clastre's boomerang metaphor (Tulumello, 2020;Tulumello, Saija & Inch, 2020). This, in conclusion, brings us back to Souza's argument (2019) for a relational, spatial, and above all multi-scalar, use of metaphors like "core/periphery" and "north/south".…”

Design Governance, Austerity and the Public Interest: Planning and the Delivery of ‘Well-Designed Places’ in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland

“…Austerity measures introduced by the Coalition Government from 2010 and subsequent Conservative Governments from 2015, restructured and downsized local government in the UK (Hastings et al, 2017;Lowndes & Gardner, 2016). Although public sector austerity has been widely deployed in response to the financial crisis (Ponzini, 2016;Tulumello et al, 2020), it has manifested varyingly according to existing political relations, path-dependencies and cultures of governance and regulation (Savini & Raco, 2019). Many European nations and cities have better resisted austerity than in the US (Goldsmith, 2020;Lobao et al, 2018), for instance, where practices of austerity have been core to a longer-standing urban political economy (Hastings et al, 2017;Peck, 2012).…”