Manuscript Topics

Collaboration has long been a central tenet of planning theory and practice, grounded in ideals of inclusive stakeholder participation, undistorted communication, and consensus-building through reasoned argument. However, these communicative ideals have faced significant critiques in recent decades. Issues of contested interests, dissenting voices, and polarised power geometries call into question the ability to achieve consensus or have an undistorted discourse. Diverse actors bring divergent knowledge systems, values, beliefs and agendas to the planning process.

This special issue aims to rethink and reframe how we conceptualise collaboration in planning. Rather than adhering to idealised notions, it urges the adoption of a more grounded, post-relational perspective attuned to the complexities of actor constellations and socio-cultural contexts. Moving beyond dualistic perspectives, the focus is on the interplay of tangible factors like formal procedures and intangible factors like ideological orientations in shaping planning cultures and practices of collaboration.

The contributions are expected to cut across different empirical domains and geographic contexts but are united by a shared actor-centred approach. This views planners, residents, politicians and other stakeholders not as passive subjects, but as active agents deliberately making places according to their own intentions, knowledge bases and positionalities within wider power structures. Collectively, the special issue offers a more grounded and nuanced understanding of what authentic collaboration entails in the pluralistic realities of planning practice.

Keywords
Actor-centred approaches; power geometries; planning cultures; post-relational perspectives; planning practice

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