Planning Against the Political: Democratic Deficits in European Territorial Governance

This book brings together a number of highly innovative and thought provoking contributions from European researchers in territorial governance-related fields such as human geography, planning studies, sociology, and management studies. The contributions share the ambition of highlighting troubling contemporary tendencies where spatial planning and territorial governance can be seen to circumscribe or subvert ‘due democratic practice’ and the democratic ethos. The book also functions as an introduction to some of the central strands of contemporary political philosophy, discussing their relevance for the wider field of planning studies and the development of new planning practices.

Jonathan Metzger is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. He has a broad social scientific background and concrete experiences from working as a planning practitioner on the regional and transnational levels. His research interests include spatial theory, the ethnography of planning practice and more-than-human perspectives on urban planning and regional development.

Philip Allmendinger is Fellow of Clare College and Head of Department / Professor of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, UK. He has published extensively in the areas of property and planning, planning theory, policy and practice, land and property regulation, housing and local government.

Stijn Oosterlynck is Associate Professor in Urban Sociology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is the chair of the Research Centre on Inequality, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City (OASeS) and of the Antwerp Urban Studies Institute. His research focuses on the political sociology of urban development and planning and local social innovation and welfare state restructuring.