Insurgent Planning: Situating Radical Planning in the Global South
Abstract
This article revisits the notion of radical planning from the standpoint of the global South. Emerging struggles for citizenship in the global South, seasoned by the complexities of state—citizen relations within colonial and post-colonial regimes, offer an historicized view indispensable to counter-hegemonic planning practices. The article articulates the notion of insurgent planning as radical planning practices that respond to neoliberal specifics of dominance through inclusion — that is, inclusive governance. It characterizes the guiding principles for insurgent planning practices as counter-hegemonic, transgressive and imaginative. The article contributes to two current conversations within planning scholarship: on the implication of grassroots insurgent citizenship for planning, and on (de)colonization of planning theory.
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1.
1. One calculation in 2001 carried out by the Municipal Services Project and the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) marked nearly two million people evicted since 1994 (see McDonald, 2002).
2.
2. My knowledge of AEC practices relies on earlier ethnographic field work conducted in Cape Town during the 2001—06 period (2001, 2003, 2004 and 2006). The more recent struggle of 2007—08 around the N2 project draws on information gathered from the WCAEC website and more specifically from the reports by Chance (2008), Delft Symphony Anti-Eviction Campaign (2008), Manjuvu (2008), WCAE (2007); and field notes by Ken Salo [[email protected]] as the events unfolded December 2007 to February 2008.
3.
3. In 2001, the Campaign formed a Legal Coordinating Committee (LCC) who undertook legal training to be able to represent families facing eviction or service disconnection in magistrate's court. This, the Campaign declares, is to use the courts to maximize citizens' benefit, be it by overturning and delaying eviction and disconnection orders, by frustrating those processes, or simply by documenting citizens' struggle through the formal system (Oldfield and Stokke, 2006).
4.
4. I am grateful to Ken Salo for his insightful commentaries and discussions with me highlighting this point.
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5. I borrow the term `invited spaces of citizenship' from Andrea Cornwall (2002: 50) to develop the notions of invited and invented spaces of citizenship.
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Article first published online: February 1, 2009
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