TRACK 01: Planning Theory and Methodologies. Towards "Ethics of Responsibility"

 

Co-chairs: Willem Salet, Enrico Gualini

Spaces for democratic politics and for the governance and regulation of the living environment are increasingly indeterminate: they are either 'fuzzy' or overtly contested, and so are the social and political responsibilities attached to them. Relevant agenda-setting and decision-making take place in multi-level and multi-scalar environments, and related multi-actor arenas are defined by practices and discourses in which the devolution/delegation and the sharing of responsibilities play a significant strategic role. On the one hand, this often threatens to result in dissolution of accountability, in a 'post-political' dispersion of a sense of public responsibility. This might disguise not only the established modes of regulation but also the underlying hegemonic practices and relations of power. On the other hand, several new forms of social mobilization and civic initiative bear the potential of radically questioning the way responsibilities for shaping the ‘common good’ in cities are traditionally defined, assigned and distributed.

Under such conditions, it is more than warranted for planning to critically reconsider itself with regard to this issue of repositioning public responsibility. How does planning theory conceptualize the question of democratic accountability in defining new forms of public responsibility? How does it cope with established routines of public interest while being challenged by new, more radical civic initiatives? The track welcomes papers which critically discuss current challenges to planning related to rethinking the meaning of public responsibility as well as papers which present significant experimental and/or methodological applications for addressing these challenges in practice.