Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning - Cities, Policies, and Politics (Hardcover, 2012)

The premise of this volume is that the concepts of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation have largely been overlooked in planning theory as well as in the analysis of planning practice, despite the common deployment of these terms in the social sciences. Combining a number of specially commissioned chapters with insights from papers presented to a recent conference session of the Association of American Geographers in Boston, the book is dedicated to filling this significant lacuna in the study of planning.

What the case studies explored in these chapters from Africa, Asia, North America and Europe have in common is that they all reveal the uneasy coexistence of planning, defined as state intervention for the betterment of our built and natural environment, and neoliberalism, whose belief in the superiority of market mechanisms at organizing land use dictates a concomitant belief in the inferiority of its opposite, state intervention. Planning may, if anything, be seen as an obstacle to neoliberalism, an inconvenience destined to be rolled back or even annihilated through neoliberal practice. Combining neoliberal and planning in one phrase, then, seems awkward at best, and at worst an outright oxymoron. The very existence or epistemological possibility of neoliberal planning may appear to be a total surrender of state planning to market forces, or in other words, the simple acceptance that the management of buildings, transport infrastructure, parks, conservation areas etc. "beyond" the profit principle has reached its limits in the 21st century. In this case, planning practice is relegated to the position of a mere facilitator of market forces, be it moderate or authoritarian.

In spite of these contradictions and outright impossibilities, planners operate within, contribute to, resist or seek to mitigate an increasingly neoliberal mode of producing spaces and places, one that has resulted in the revival of profit-driven changes in land use. This book describes, analyzes and elucidates the incongruity between serving private, profit-driven interests and the planning system 's purported goal of improving the built environment shared by the public. It does so through case studies covering an array of planning issues in a range of national contexts. The authors lay bare precisely how spatial planning functions in a culture of market triumphalism, and how planners respond to the overriding profit principle in land allocation. Yet the book also provides exemplars of public-spirited, not-for-profit developments.