Towards Radicalized Communicative Rationality: Resident Involvement and Urban Democracy in Rotterdam and Antwerp

Beaumont, Justin; Loopmans, Maarten

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00780.x

Cited by 42 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(29 reference statements)

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“…The community groups and organisations tend to focus on the less tangible effects of cultural festivals (Garcia, 2005). But that kind of involvement in cultural policy-making has often been unsuccessful (Beaumont and Loopmans, 2008;Miles and Paddison, 2005;Lin and Hsing, 2009;Quinn, 2005;Miles, 2005;Sharp et ai, 2005;Bailey et al, 2004;Garcia, 2004a). Many studies have criticised the ways in which key local actors initiate and coordinate cultural festivals as part of culture-led urban regeneration (Quinn, 2005;Yeoh, 2005;Waitt, 2008;Shaw, 2005;Sacco and Blessi, 2009).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 97%

Debates around Cultural Re-imaging and Culture-led Urban Regeneration: The Politics of two Festivals in Gwangju and Glasgow

Shin

Stevens

2014

Asian J Soc Sci

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In this study, we look at the cultural politics surrounding the narratives of cultural festivals in Gwangju, South Korea and Glasgow, Scotland. These two cities illustrate both a general obsession to become world-class, and intervening efforts toward achieving world ranking. Through archives and in-depth interviews with key actors from the Gwangju Biennale and Glasgow’s West End Festival, this study observes how different narratives regarding urban cultural festivals interact. It also takes a closer look at how instrumental narratives behind these events constrain community involvement. Our findings suggest that both cities adopted an instrumental approach to their cultural festivals. In both cases, the instrumental focus of festival organizers curtails community participation, by focusing on professionalism in both the public and private sectors. Community groups challenged the approach at different levels. We argue that cultural festivals are places where different narratives, such as goal-oriented instrumentalism and self-realisation, interact, compete, and negotiate with each other. We also demonstrate that an instrumental approach in the awareness of urban competition drives the direction and meaning of both the cultural festival itself and the community involvement in it.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 97%

Debates around Cultural Re-imaging and Culture-led Urban Regeneration: The Politics of two Festivals in Gwangju and Glasgow

Shin

Stevens

2014

Asian J Soc Sci

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“…For critics of communicative planning, her arguments still count as valid (Selle, 1996;Beaumont & Loopmans, 2008). Over four decades, critical planners have shown how participation is used as a rhetorical exercise.…”

Section: What's Wrong With Participation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Insurgent participation: consensus and contestation in planning the redevelopment of Berlin-Tempelhof airport

Hilbrandt

2016

Urban Geography

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Despite decades of debate, participatory planning continues to be contested.More recently, research has documented a relationship between participation and neoliberalism, in which participation works as a post-political tool -a means to depoliticize planning and legitimize neo-liberal policy-making. This paper argues that such accounts lack attention to the opportunities for opposing neo-liberal planning that may be inherent within participatory processes. In control, or, more generally, a way to depoliticize planning (Gunder, 2010;Miessen, 2010;MacLeod, 2011). While participatory planning approaches can be read as attempts to avert conflict and legitimize pre-defined objectives, I aim to show that these processes do not merely work to produce consensus. Rather, the case of 4 Tempelhof is a useful example to consider the opposite: formal spaces of participation provide opportunities to defy urban planning. In other words, the case of Tempelhof illustrates a process in which an active urban public objects to its inclusion through tokenistic forms of participation, so that these attempts not only fail to produce consensus, depoliticize activists or settle conflict, but also foster moments of conflict.To be clear, my aim is not to downplay cooptation in participatory planning. As the editors of this special issue convincingly show, attempts of control and moments of contention are closely interwoven. However, the exclusive emphasis on de-politization and cooptation that the post-political framework suggests, risks ignoring moments of insurgency that remain possible or are perhaps widened within and through participatory planning. As a consequence of this blind spot, an understanding of the workings of contention within planning-processes remains underdeveloped.Secondly, this paper seeks to understand how civil society actors use participatory space to politicize and challenge institutional planning attempts. I probe the notion of insurgent participation to frame the study of such practices. Insurgent participation aims to foreground the contradiction of participating in while aiming to subvert, contest, or resist contemporary planning regimes. And it seeks to highlight the various modalities of political practice that may work to shape planning through contentious interventions in institutionally designed processes. In the case of Tempelhof, spaces of engagement provided a terrain upon which opposition was organized and performed through a number of complementary elements: In formally organized workshops, forums and information events, participation allowed participants to raise awareness of the proposed development scheme's downsides; public events brought disparate actors together, allowed them to connect specific interests and ally different initiatives; participatory workshops provided opportunities 5 to introduce discussions on contested themes and reframe the scope of the questions that had initially been open to debate; gardening projects installed as interim uses were key to challenging the lack of visio...

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“…Beaumont and Loopmans (2008: 110) trace a path between the expectation of Habermasian communicative rationality and Mouffeian agonistic conflict. They propose a valuable prospective outcome as ‘ radicalized communicative rationality combining the flexibility and openness to conflictive issues of Mouffe's agonistic pluralism with Habermas’ more equal, balanced communicative rationalism .…”

Section: Sustainability Transitions and Public Participation Solutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Participation and Local Sustainability: Questioning a Common Agenda in Urban Governance

Holden

2011

Int J Urban Regional Res

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Abstracti jur_957 312..329In the context of calls for more effective processes to facilitate deliberative democracy in cities, and the connection often asserted between participatory means and sustainability ends in urban governance, this article examines a case of public participation for sustainability indicator selection in Vancouver, Canada. Sustainability indicator systems are often introduced via participatory exercises, but the quality of this participation and its outcomes are questionable. Based upon current debates in deliberative democratic theory, our judgment of the quality of a particular process depends on the level and mode of interaction. Do we expect, along with Healey, that participants build a rational consensus beginning from root values and visions, or do we expect, along with Mouffe, a conflictual consensus among participants working from incommensurably diverse life worlds? An examination of governmentality theory, based on the work of Rydin, adds to this a way of understanding the impact on participation outcomes of what participants learn about their own and others' roles in democratic urban governance as they prepare recommendations specific to local sustainability. This case study analysis reflects on these theoretical debates in terms of the unfolding of a public participation process for sustainability indicator selection. It offers lessons for public process design that is better aligned with the expectations of radicalized communicative rationality and for the specific learning values of engagement for participants, which were at least as strongly related to democratic practice as they were to sustainability per se.

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Towards Radicalized Communicative Rationality: Resident Involvement and Urban Democracy in Rotterdam and Antwerp

Cited by 42 publications

References 29 publications

Debates around Cultural Re-imaging and Culture-led Urban Regeneration: The Politics of two Festivals in Gwangju and Glasgow

Debates around Cultural Re-imaging and Culture-led Urban Regeneration: The Politics of two Festivals in Gwangju and Glasgow

Insurgent participation: consensus and contestation in planning the redevelopment of Berlin-Tempelhof airport

Public Participation and Local Sustainability: Questioning a Common Agenda in Urban Governance

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