Elusive Promises : : Planning in the Contemporary World / / ed. by Gisa Weszkalnys, Simone Abram.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Abram, Simone,; Baxstrom, Richard,; Bear, Laura,; Boholm, Åsa,; Gledhill, John,; James, Deborah,; Lund, Sarah,; Vike, Halvard,; Weszkalnys, Gisa,
• HerausgeberIn: Abram, Simone,; Weszkalnys, Gisa,
• Place / Publishing House: New York ;, Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Dislocations ; 11
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (196 p.)

Planning in contemporary democratic states is often understood as a range of activities, from housing to urban design, regional development to economic planning. This volume sees planning differently—as the negotiation of possibilities that time offers space. It explores what kind of promise planning offers, how such a promise is made, and what happens to it through time. The authors, all leading anthropologists, examine the time and space, creativity and agency, authority and responsibility, and conflicting desires that plans attempt to control. They show how the many people involved with planning deal with the discrepancies between what is promised and what is done. The comparative essays offer insight into the expected and unexpected outcomes of planning (from visionary utopias to bureaucratic dystopia or something in-between), how the future is envisioned at the outset, and what actual work is done and how it affects people’s lives.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgements -- Elusive Promises: Planning in the Contemporary World. An Introduction -- Chapter One. Utopian Time and Contemporary Time: Temporal Dimensions of Planning and Reform in the Norwegian Welfare State -- Chapter Two. From Within a Community of Planners: Hypercomplexity in Railway Design Work -- Chapter Three. Invaded City: Structuring Urban Landscapes on the Margins of the Possible (Peru’s Southern Highlands) -- Chapter Four. Tenure Reformed: Planning for Redress or Progress in South Africa -- Chapter Five. Redeeming the Promise of Inclusion in the Neo-liberal City: Grassroots Contention in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil -- Chapter Six. Even Governmentality Begins as an Image: Institutional Planning in Kuala Lumpur -- Chapter Seven. Making a River of Gold: Speculative State Planning, Informality and Neo-liberal Governance on the Hooghly -- Notes on Contributors -- Index