Informal planning in a transactive governmentality

Subtitle:re-reading planning practices through Ghent's community gardens

This article addresses a new mode of planning that involves a collaboration between State, private and community actors in the context of growing urban gardening movements. It questions the view of urban gardening as a manifestation of citizens dissensus towards administrations institutional planning, and the expression of urban counterplanning whose aim is to resist the consequences of a neoliberal governmentality. Although this interpretation of urban gardening is to a certain extent true, it does not completely explain some current developments in socio-spatial planning practices. In order to fill this gap, the article advances a theoretical analysis of the emerging governmentality generated by an intensified relationship between institutional, private and community actors. The theoretical analysis is complemented by the example of representative urban gardening projects in Ghent, a dynamic and inspiring mid-size city in Belgium, providing an ideal context for exploring the transformation of planning practices and their socio-political underpinnings. The article concludes that urban gardening practices exemplify an emerging informal mode of planning supported by a new transactive governmentality, which may lead to a co-creative transformation of public urban space.

Publication year:2017

Keywords:A1 Journal article

BOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:1

CSS-citation score:2

Authors:International

Authors from:Higher Education

Accessibility:Open