Doing Planning Differently: Affective Politics and Atmospheric Engineering in Experimental Deliberative Bubbles

Abstract

Procedural planning experiments often attempt to influence how planning actors think through producing physical and social environments that affect how they feel. In this paper such experiments are conceptualized as attempts at generating atmospheric “bubbles” through the engineering of affective atmospheres. Our empirical examples show that purposeful affective engineering is very difficult to achieve–and one cannot expect that their eventual outcomes can be predicted on the basis of the ambitions that underpin them. Therefore, it is crucial to remain attentive to questions concerning the variegated, distributed and often unexpected effects of such endeavors.