Toward a New Conversation: Agonism and the Emancipatory Limits of Planning Practice

Abstract

The role of politics in planning practice is an enduring normative question in the history of planning thought. Over the course of the past twenty years, a debate has been developing that is centred on political conflict and the ethics of overcoming it in the planning process. In an effort to reimagine planning ethics along the lines of agonistic pluralism, this research seeks to identify and draw out the implications of the emancipatory potential of planning practice. By conducting a discourse analysis on the interview transcripts of practicing planners in Winnipeg, Manitoba, this research shows how the normative commitments of mainstream planning practice actualize the immanent potential for antagonism and conflict. I argue that the means of establishing an agonistic ethics must occur as part of a planning-disciplinary wide conversation about reimagining the constitution of planning activity.