“The city” as developmental justification: claimsmaking on the urban through strategic planning

Abstract

Municipal governments produce a seemingly endless supply of urban strategic plans, which purport to define the city by making claims on its future development trajectories. Critics note that this claimsmaking on "the city" renders it conceptually vacuous and overextended. Yet it is essential to question the degree to which speculative policymaking is merely rhetorical. Discursive claimsmaking on the city through strategic planning documents is an important technique in urban politics-a form of targeted simplification that benefits particular stakeholders by defining the city around sites in which they are invested. Bids to host sporting "mega-events" like the Olympic Games are a case in point: event planning corporations routinely make claims on the city, which strategically simplify its forms and processes, often by defining the city in ways that mediate between particular land investment projects and broad visions for citywide development. The implication is that claimsmaking on the city through urban strategic planning is intentionally simplistic and acts as an ideological practice for justifying urban development projects.

Urban infrastructure in the framework of mega-event exceptionalism: Glasgow and the 2014 Commonwealth Games

“…"A crisis of deliberative structures" is caused, as Hayes and Horne put it, where "the stakes of the reputations" and "the primacy of delivery" of the event makes civic deliberation impossible and those who criticize these plans are deemed as unpatriotic and "naysayer" (2011, p. 761). Thus, with the mega-event preparation, it is the discourse mobilized by the key stakeholders that define the need of the city both at the stage of bidding but most importantly during the event-preparation process (Lauermann, 2016;Oliver & Lauermann, 2017). The discourse mobilized by the politicians and the representatives of business in Glasgow demonstrated similar intent.…”

Infrastructure imaginaries: The politics of light rail projects in the age of neoliberalism

“…For Lauermann (2016) spatial strategies and the imaginaries underpinning them represent an act of claimsmaking on the city. Lauermann (2016) argues that claimsmaking constitutes an important technique in urban politics, as spatial strategies promote 'a form of targeted simplification that benefits particular stakeholders by defining the city around sites in which they are invested' (Lauermann, 2016: 77). In this understanding, planners make claims on the city, which strategically simplify its form and processes, often by defining the city in ways that mediate between particular land investment projects and broad visions for citywide development.…”

‘Artefactual anchoring’ of strategic spatial planning as persuasive storytelling

“…In previous studies, storytelling (e.g. Bowman, 2016; Colville et al, 2011; Lauerman, 2016; Olesen, 2017; Van Hulst, 2012) and spatial imaginaries (e.g. Davoudi et al, 2018; Golubchikov, 2010; Westerlink et al, 2013) have been perceived as instrumental in complexity reduction and meaning-making, as well as in framing planning issues, conveying particular ways of conceiving space and providing guidelines for action.…”

“…In their simplified and selective description of the city (across time and space), metaphors and imaginaries afford many readings and meanings (e.g. Davoudi et al, 2018; Hincks et al, 2017; Lauerman, 2016; Throgmorton, 1996). Furthermore, they may interlink adversarial interest groups by enabling arguments for different political views and interests, while providing a ‘lightening conductor’ for joining-up, coalition building, agenda-setting and discourse (re)production (Boudreau, 2007; Davoudi et al, 2018; Vigar et al, 2005; Wetzstein, 2013).…”

“…According to Davoudi et al (2018), ‘their role in power struggles over places and spaces is masked in the processes of de-politicisation, in which dominant imaginaries are essentialized and naturalized’. (p. 98) Indeed, in shaping attention, the imaginaries portray certain investments and development projects as ‘sensible’ and ‘necessary’, while others fall outside their ‘imagination’ (Lauerman, 2016; Throgmorton, 2003).…”