Making Urban Politics go away: The Role of Legally Mandated Planning Processes in Occluding City Power

... It often fails to enhance public participation, include disfranchised communities, or create meaningful opportunities for their input, (Carson, 2011;Day, 1997;Juarez & Brown, 2008;Reddel & Woolcock, 2004). While planners and theorists have attempted to address these shortcomings by proposing intensive communication, collaboration, and deliberation processes (Anderson, Cissna, & Clune, 2003;Campbell & Marshall, 1999;Dennis, 2006;Forester, 1999), wealthy, well-connected, and/or well-organized stakeholders [referred herein as "elites"] nonetheless remain able to drive planning outcomes (Maginn, 2007) reinforcing the sense that planning simply serves to legitimate the preferences of powerful stakeholders (Carr, 2014). Additionally, the tendency of individuals to reject uncertainties associated with changes to their environments has made "NIMBYism"the insistence that change happen "not in my back yard"inescapable, impeding essential policies and investments (Barlow, 1995;Devine-Wright, 2009;Lake, 2007). ...

... Notwithstanding the ostensible dominance of the procedural-participatory model, the expert-led approach continues to pervade the planning profession (see, e.g., Ellis, 2005). And while public input based processes remain "best practices" (Slater, 1984), planners simultaneously incorporate those approaches with expert-led practices at a variety levels (Brody et al., 2003) with planners and policy makers able to vary the discretionary authority vested in the public (or even sub-groups of the public) depending on when and how each approach is mobilized (Carr, 2014). By enabling planners to shift discretionary authority between the public, elites, and other stakeholders on an ad-hoc basis, contemporary planning often combines the worst of both approaches, putting the public through intensive processes while disregarding their input when it is not aligned with the interests of more powerful constituencies (Carr, 2012). ...

... By enabling planners to shift discretionary authority between the public, elites, and other stakeholders on an ad-hoc basis, contemporary planning often combines the worst of both approaches, putting the public through intensive processes while disregarding their input when it is not aligned with the interests of more powerful constituencies (Carr, 2012). Moreover, a growing literature affirms planners' longstanding complaints that politicians often undermine even the best designed planning processes (Anderson et al., 2003;Carr, 2014;Cuthill, 2004;Innes & Booher, 2004). ...

... Legal scholars from a range of disciplines point to the pernicious effects of social and political norms interrupt the possibilities for justice through law. Carr (2014) has demonstrated how elite social networks can easily overcome legal mandates for public participation in urban planning to achieve desired land use outcomes. Valverde (2012), too, highlights the role of predominant social norms and individual discretion in enforcing local land use and regulatory regimes underwritten in city legal codes. ...

... Four propositions about the justice potential of the law at the urban scale Even with very strong legal protections of an organisation's spatial prerogatives, however, factors beyond law and the state (e.g. the social reproduction of hegemonic laissez faire land markets, or relations of 'soft' political power located outside of the state) tightly limit the possibility of urban justice through the law. Other critical urban scholars have identified other important moments when the law failed to produce justice in the ways that it nominally promises (Carr, 2014;Carr et al., 2009;DeFilippis and Wyly, 2008). We follow this provocation further by offering four theoretical propositions suggested by our research experiences in Worcester that, if true, would map onto more general limits to the utility of the law in seeking socio-spatial justice in cities. ...