Decolonizing Planning: Power and Knowledge in the Informal City

This pioneering book challenges dominant technocratic approaches to planning, focusing on the transformative potential of innovative, alternative, and community-centered initiatives. It outlines planning processes founded on endogenous knowledge, ontologies, and social relations that point towards decolonizing urban pedagogy and practice.

With contributions from scholars and their community partners working in marginalized societies across the globe, the book presents diverse approaches to planning from transnational and transdisciplinary perspectives. Chapters draw on detailed case studies to examine a wide range of methodologies and praxes, including planning derived from Indigenous epistemologies and the role of grassroots planners. They cut across traditional categories, modes of planning, and regional divisions, rethinking dominant paradigms and highlighting the value of decolonial thinking in the field.

Students and scholars in planning, urban geography, development studies and urban design will greatly benefit from the cutting-edge insights presented in this book. It is also a useful resource for planning practitioners, as well as professionals in international development agencies and NGOs working with low-income communities, particularly in the Global South.

Edited by Bjørn Sletto, Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at Austin, USA, Tanja Winkler, School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, University of Cape Town, South Africa and Efadul Huq, Program in Environmental Science and Policy, Smith College, USA