Placing the Action in Context: Contrasting Public-centered and Institutional Understandings of Democratic Planning Politics

Abstract

In recent years public-centered understandings of democracy have become important inspirations for scholarly debates concerning the democratization of planning processes. In this article we caution that an exclusively public-centered understanding of planning democracy risks obscuring how public engagements in planning processes always unfold within the context of longer trajectories and broader landscapes of the evolution of democracy. In the article we counterpoint a particularly sophisticated public-centered conceptualization of democracy developed by philosopher Noortje Marres to the more historical-institutional understanding of Pierre Rosanvallon. By applying both analytical frameworks to an empirical case, we show that although Marres’ public-centered approach can productively advance understandings of key dynamics in how public action in planning processes unfolds, its narrow focus on the ‘heat of the action’ in such episodes produces analytical blind spots with regards to the wider prerequisites and ramifications of these events. Therefore we conclude by suggesting that public-centered analyses of democracy in planning processes are at their most helpful when complemented with a more institutional understanding of the contexts within which public engagements in planning unfold.