SESSION 15

PLANNING FROM THE MARGINS? TOWARDS THE TRANSFORMATIVE PATHWAYS IN PLANNING

Mainstream urban solutions, whether influenced by oppressive agendas such as colonial ideology, the market imperative or even by emancipatory movements contesting these ideologies, tend to be conceptualized and unfold in terms of the prevailing discourses of the West (Robinson, 2002; Sihlongonyane, 2009). While undergoing constant reinterpretation in the major cities of the continent, they are inevitably tainted by the dynamic of imposition and external inspiration. As a result, much of urban solutions remain ill-fitted to the local context and continue to serve elite interests at the expense of the marginalized. In this session, we invite papers to interrogate whether urban interventions from the peripheries, where neither external influences nor resistance to them are key factors shaping local planning practice, can generate genuinely alternative transformative development pathways. We are interested in contributions that examine organically developed 'under the radar' or “off-the-map” approaches in urban peripheries, secondary cities, peripheral locations of larger metropolises, or linguistically marginalised contexts (Müller, 2021). We seek contributions from both Africa and other locations that are pushed or located outside the main planning debate, such as peripheries in Northern and Southern America, Asia, and so-called post-socialist cities in Central Europe and Asia (Gentile, 2018). We are especially interested in the ways these solutions develop beyond dominant contexts, the connectivity between seemingly different cities around the World (Galuszka, 2021), and the ways voices from the margins can influence dominant planning approaches, practices and pedagogies.