Travelling Ideas, Power and Place: The Cases of Urban Villages and Business Improvement Districts

Abstract

A multitude of concepts and ideas have shaped practices in professions such as planning, urban design and urban management. Now, however, the speed and intensity with which these ideas travel seems historically unprecedented. This paper explores how some of these ideas are formed and circulated, often with unpredictable consequences. In order to understand the circulation and impact of these ideas this paper constructs an analytical framework which views these concepts within wider networks of social agents and institutions. Using insights from actor-network theory and discourse analysis we propose a framework that focuses our understanding of how ideas are translated into new spatial settings. The examples of the urban village and the business improvement district will be used to explicate the analytical framework. In concluding, the paper assesses the utility of the analytic framework in explaining the travel of planning ideas.

The domestication of planning ideas – the case of Shared Space

“…However, the concept has also been subjected to discursive processes of conceptual translation. Various scholars (Franklin & Tait, 2002;Healey, 2012;Lennon, 2015;Tait & Jensen, 2007;van Duinen, 2015) have investigated the limitations of the translation of planning and design ideas and drawing on their theorizations, this study argues that such processes can change an idea to the extent of it losing its core meaning.…”

“…In this sense, such ideas span (Healey, 2012;Tait & Jensen, 2007) across not only geographical domains but also the realm of multidisciplinary professions and established viewpoints. However, during this process of translation into transferrable and universally applicable concepts, such ideas are likely to become distorted and the form of spatial objects, planning instruments, governance processes, analytical tools and theories, all aiming to directly or indirectly influence planning practices.…”

“…However, Healey addresses this as a general concern to prompt practitioners to be critical and reflective when handling ideas and does adopt an in-depth approach to these processes of translation. Tait and Jensen present the concept of traveling ideas (Tait & Jensen, 2007) as a theoretical approach that aims to 'provide a framework of how planners' ideas are disseminated and to understand their ability to insert them in diverse places and spaces' (p. 108). They draw on actor-network theory and discourses on analytical concepts to theorize the mobilization and translation of planning ideas such that they are embedded in new contexts.…”

“…In other words, transferring planning ideas to other locations warrants 'de-contextualization' and then, 're-contextualizaion' (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996, p. 26). Tait and Jensen's (2007) theorization partly builds on Csarniawska and Joerges' concepts, who term these processes as 'disembedding' and 'reembedding' of ideas, thereby avoiding the theoretically problematic claim that ideas can be without a context. These approaches are useful in highlighting that translation helps define the process and dynamics behind the dissemination of ideas.…”

Travelling models of participation: Global ideas and local translations of water management in Namibia

“…To understand how local water management is transformed we use the concept of travelling models as a theoretical guide (Tait and Jensen 2007;Rottenburg 2009;Peck and Theodore 2010;Parnreiter 2011;Peck 2011;Steur 2011;Behrends et al 2014;Weisser et al 2014). A travelling model is defined as an abstraction of the social world (model) that is transferred, often through a political process, from one cultural context to another.…”