Provincializing planning: Reflections on spatial ordering and imperial power

Abstract

This paper takes the development of the British town planning movement as its starting point to explore a series of challenges for the discipline’s historiography. The emergence of the professional field involved the circulation of ideas beyond the metropolitan core to colonial territories with spatial interventions that were deemed both physically and morally beneficial. The paper explores the role played by the discipline in developing spatialized forms of ethnic and racial differentiation within colonial territories. I conclude that British planning has largely ignored its own historiography, including the colonial legacy, enabling the discipline to assert its role as a socially progressive profession.

Historical Development of Urban Planning Theory: Review and Comparison of Theories in Urban Planning

“…Drawbacks of rational planning pushed the theories that struggled to work with participation from citizens in plan making process -participatory planning that offers a ladder of citizen participation levels and aspires for citizen control [67], [68]. This theory contributed to urban planning philosophies by asserting the need for community participation while it is equally important to note that this theory can again serve as a lip-service to the elites if the power of decision-making is not equally distributed among citizens.…”

What might decoloniality look like in praxis?

“…Matunga’s concerns are echoed by Yasminah Beebeejaun (2021: 1) who demonstrates ‘the deliberate distancing of empire’ found in contemporary planning education in the United Kingdom. This deliberate distancing of empire is arguably also found in communicative, collaborative, radical, and insurgent planning theories despite their inclusionary and counter-hegemonic assertions, because these theories often fail to critically examine the genealogy of planning as oppressive from a non-occidental standpoint (Porter and Barry, 2015; Huq, 2020; Vasudevan and Novoa, 2022).…”

Race, Gender, and Positionality in Urban Planning Research

“…Planning scholarship and practice has historically acted to exclude women’s ethnic and racial minorities forms of knowledge from the discipline (Sandercock, 1998; 2003; Spain, 2001). These critiques emphasize not only the historical framing of the discipline but the persistent under-representation of ethnic and racial minority perspectives within the field and a continuing lack of engagement with diversity and inclusion (see Beebeejaun, 2021; Garcia et al, 2021; Greenlee et al, 2018; Gale & Thomas, 2020; Thomas, 2008).…”