Planning’s ecologies: Democratic planning in the age of planetary crises

Abstract

The idea of planning has reappeared as an object of interest for critical research on post-capitalist organizational futures. This article offers a critical review of the emerging scholarship on planning, with reference to historical and contemporary precursors to democratic planning. Building on this review, the article develops a critical political ecology of planning that situates planning thought and practice within the matrix of the oikos. This encompasses not only the sphere of production and commodity exchange, but also the household of reproductive labor and the planetary household of the natural world. In this way, it is argued that democratic planning is indispensable for generating the forms of collective intelligibility and power needed to heal the metabolic relations of society and nature. By reimagining and reframing planning, the article aims to expand “the archive” of social imaginaries, as part of broader efforts to envision and develop more desirable organizational futures.