Pluriversal planning scholarship: Embracing multiplicity and situated knowledges in community-based approaches

Abstract

In recent years, emerging work from the “southern” and “south/eastern” contexts has widened the theoretical discussion and the geographical focus of the contemporary planning debate. Inspired by Arturo Escobar’s notion of the “Pluriverse,” this article proposes a “pluriversal planning scholarship,” to articulate the theoretical and community-based contributions of an evolving stream of planning research that embraces multiplicity, coexistence, and critical thinking. Through a review of over 300 publications in top planning journals, we suggest that pluriversal scholars engage in creative methodologies to do community-based work. They contribute to extending planning theory by drawing from other fields, such as Black feminism, decolonial thought, and Indigenous studies to highlight the everyday experiences and resistances of residents despite a state that is failing them. Additionally, they actively contribute to community-based work through reciprocal theory development with community members, capacity building, and visibilizing residents’ stories when appropriate.

Keywords

critical planning decoloniality everyday practices insurgent planning pluriverse radical planning

Introduction

“Today, faced with the realities of a world transformed by a changing climate, humans are confronted with the irrefutable need to confront the design disaster that development is, and hence to engage in another type of elimination design, this time of the structures of unsustainability that maintain the dominant ontology of devastation. The collective determination toward transitions, broadly understood, may be seen as a response to the urge for innovation and the creation of new, nonexploitative forms of life, out of the dreams, desires, and struggles of so many groups and peoples worldwide. . . If this were to be the case, they would have to walk hand in hand with those who are protecting and redefining well-being, life projects, territories, local economies, and communities worldwide. These are the harbingers of the transition toward plural ways of making the world (Escobar 2018: 7).”

Arturo Escobar’s (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse elaborates on the role of design and design thinking in building autonomous, yet radically interdependent “local worlds” through a relational ontology. Drawing from local case examples and design principles of indigenous and Afro-descendants in Latin America who emphasize place-making, collaboration, and decoloniality, Escobar (2018) challenges the reader to envision an alternative to modernity where “all worlds need to broach the project of remaking themselves from the critical perspective of their historical location within the modern/colonial world system” (p. 211).

This article draws from Escobar’s articulation of the “Pluriverse” to elaborate on a “pluriversal planning scholarship” (hereafter referred to as PPS) that has resonances with the larger political project that Escobar and others in decolonial and postcolonial scholarship have put forth. Escobar articulates design as “a central domain of thought and action concerned with the meaning and production of socio-natural life” (Escobar, 2018: 139). In this sense, we consider design broadly, and planning as an iterative and dynamic process between knowledge and action in the public domain,¹ with design and planning intrinsically linked in the production of urbanisms.

In planning scholarship, few have explicitly articulated similar understandings of plurality. In 1998, Sandercock (1998a) argued for an epistemology of multiplicity that encompasses diverse ways of knowing in the planning field. Beauregard (2001) reflected on the multiplicities within planning, specifically the profession’s “occupation of multiple worlds” (p. 438), and the need for the profession to engage diverse perspectives and identities. Relatedly, Ananya Roy’s concept of “worlding” refers to “the vast array of global strategies that are being staged at the urban scale around the world” (Roy, 2011: 10) through a practice of inter-referencing other urban models (Roy and Ong, 2011). While in some cases these urban productions are connected to elite aspirations and the creation of world-class cities, in other instances, worlding comes from people’s struggle for their survival and livelihood, as well as their hope (Roy, 2011).

Similarly, in an effort to “de-link” from Western knowledges Winkler (2018) advocates incorporating “resistant texts” as forms of “epistemic disobedience” that articulate “pluri-versal” (p. 589) epistemologies and ontologies, that is to say, “a world that includes many worlds” (p. 589). Most recently, Yiftachel (2016a, 2020) called for decolonizing knowledge production in planning by incorporating a “pluriversal approach” or “Aleph epistemology” to investigate urban dynamics (p. 155). This perspective draws on diverse experiences from “southeastern” locations that operate under different spatial logics of power.

Trained as both designers and planners and working closely with communities in the Latin American and Caribbean contexts, we (the authors) see design and planning as necessarily entangled in the project of “pluriversal forces shaping urban dynamics” (Yiftachel, 2020: 155) and of local worlding. Yet, we find that few scholars have adequately theorized or brought together contributions to elaborate on a pluriversal planning scholarship. In this article, we suggest that PPS has important contributions to offer in terms of methodological choices, theoretical contributions, and community-based relationships given the contemporary socio-political moment.

The recent upsurge in global political demonstrations urges us to re-evaluate the usefulness of current planning theories to address the lived inequities faced by city residents. Underlying the governance regimes that have enabled conditions to get so dire in cities across the world is the persistence of modernity, and the long history of utilizing rational planning to solve “problems” by ordering space and thereby “othering” those who do not conform to the norm in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality or ethnicity. As Escobar (2010: 145) notes, “Planning. . .is inextricably linked to the rise of Western modernity through fundamental processes of domination and control.” For years, critical planning scholars have noted the complicity of planning in enabling, and at times exacerbating, the types of inequities that have visibly surfaced in public demonstrations over the last year. For example, demonstrations have taken place against police brutality and racial and ethnic discrimination in the United States, economic inequality in Chile, land rights in Ecuador, climate-related emergencies in Puerto Rico, and disparities in public health responses all over the world. Central to these protests are questions of citizenship and belonging, such as to whom the city belongs, and what the rights of urban residents are to not simply survive but thrive.

In this article we review current scholarship to ask: What are the methodological choices, theoretical contributions, and community-based relationships and commitments of pluriversal planning scholarship? What are the potentials and limitations of this scholarship?

PPS draws from critical, radical, and insurgent planning traditions (Beard, 2002, 2003; Friedmann, 1987, 2003; Miraftab, 2009, 2017; Roy, 2009a) as well as the more recent turn to “southern” and “southeastern” planning theory (Bhan, 2019; Connell, 2014; Harrison, 2014; Roy, 2009b; Watson, 2012, 2016; Yiftachel, 2006a, 2020). We embrace the concept of the “Pluriverse” because it more directly speaks to situated knowledges (Rose, 1997), relationality, history, and the radical possibilities of planning, while centering civil society. Moreover, pluriversal planning acknowledges multiple centers and multiple sites of knowing, being, and acting that exist outside of the dominant modern/colonial system.

Pluriversal planning scholars highlighted in this article are deeply engaged with communities and contribute to imagining other ontological, epistemological, and axiological realities that look to the past while envisioning futures. In other words, in PPS, specific methodological choices enable scholars to learn from and contribute to the ongoing contemporary challenges that communities are facing while centering the needs and voices of community members who lead the struggle. In doing so, a dialectical relationship is established between theory development and community-based commitments. PPS is situated in time and place, but also represents an opportunity to think, act, and envision transnationally. In doing so, PPS extends the geographies of planning theory (Roy, 2009b) by reconstructing and creating new conceptual categories rather than hegemonic knowledge production that mostly draws from the North.

One of the most important aspects of PPS is that it engages theory and practice from an expansive perspective that does not follow “hierarchically segmented worlds of sectors, disciplines and domains” (Bhan, 2019). We are proposing PPS as a way of tying together a new body of thought in planning that offers modes of practice as well as new concepts to “unsettle” (Barry et al., 2018) traditional planning theory. In that sense and to paraphrase Bhan (2019), pluriversal planning scholars write from places rather than about places to challenge the power/knowledge dynamic engrained in Western thought. Consequently, these scholars refuse false dichotomies of knowledge production promoted by Eurocentric traditions and instead emphasize the co-production of knowledge by different actors. In this way, the community-based relationships that are built through PPS result in theories grounded in place while advancing the relational potentiality of this project to develop solidarities across place and time. In this paper, we highlight these interconnected domains of knowledge production by emphasizing three main spheres that contribute to pluriversal planning: methodological choices, theory-building, and community-based relationships.

In the following section, we explain how we conducted a systematic review of the literature and elaborate on our own positionalities. Next, we elaborate on pluriversal planning scholars’ methodological choices, theoretical contributions, and community-based relationships. Although we elaborate on each in separate sections, we do not see them as separate domains; rather, they connect and influence each other through a dynamic process (Figure 1). First, we elaborate on pluriversal planning scholars’ methodological approaches, which suggest constant innovation and reflexivity to enable situated theory development and tangible community-based relationships. Next, we discuss the theoretical contributions of PPS, focusing on theories that speak to people’s everyday survival techniques, resistances, and actions, as well as their ongoing relationship with land, given various relationships with the state. We limit our discussion about the historical traditions of PPS, such as radical, insurgent, and critical planning since there is a growing body of work that traces this history (Beard, 2003; Huq, 2020; Miraftab, 2017; Rangan et al., 2016). Finally, we highlight the types of community-based relationships that scholars engage in, many of which are inspired by radical pedagogical practices, experiential learning principles, and community-based ethics. These approaches involve service to and/or partnerships with communities and are often an important aspect of scholars’ pedagogy and service-learning. The article concludes with our reflections about the opportunities, challenges, and future directions that PPS poses for the planning field, particularly in an era of global crisis and social unrest. We suggest that PPS offers important takeaways for the broader field of planning to bridge the gaps between theory and practice and between pedagogy, policy, and the professional domains. However, pluriversal planning scholars still need to make more evident the specifics of community engagement so others can learn about the tensions and nuances of how these processes happen in the field. Additionally, we find that many pluriversal planning scholars still rely on macro-theories explanations that emerged in north/western contexts, although scholars are increasingly learning from and acknowledging situated and identity-based theorizing.

Figure 1.

Pluriversal planning scholarship.

Process and context

This article was inspired by our long-term ethnographic engagement with local communities in the Dominican Republic and Chile. Vasudevan works with a community-based environmental organization, utilizing feminist ethnography, arts-based methods, and oral histories to articulate the socio-spatial mobilities of young people and their families in informal settlements in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Novoa E. works with grassroots organizations in preservation planning in Chile, combining ethnography, participatory and arts-based methods to assist marginalized communities’ in making visible their memories and endangered places to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. In our attempts to understand and explain what we saw and learned from the communities we are working with, we found that existing sub-fields of planning inadequately address the multiplicity and situatedness of lived experience, and specifically fail to articulate the connections between theory, methodology, and contributions to the community.

We entered into the works highlighted in this article by systematically reviewing the top 50 English-language planning journals since 1973, when Grabow and Heskin wrote “Foundations for a Radical Concept of Planning,” the first explicit conceptualization of a radical planning paradigm. Through a keyword search² we identified nine seminal authors to begin our review and a larger group of planning scholars who published on these topics. The “seminal authors” have published extensively on radical, insurgent, or critical planning theories and methodologies, with a clear historical arc in their work. The “seminal authors” include Victoria Beard, John Friedmann, Faranak Miraftab, Libby Porter, Katherine Rankin, Ananya Roy, Vanessa Watson, Leonie Sandercock, and Oren Yiftachel. Over the span of 2 years, we read, annotated, and synthesized each article and its contributions.

In 2019, we also hosted a pre-organized roundtable at the 2019 Association of the Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Conference in Greenville, South Carolina with Allison Laskey, Faranak Miraftab, Leonie Sandercock, and Novoa E.. Vasudevan moderated the session. The purpose of the session was to reconsider some of the definitions, contributions, and limitations of this scholarship, specifically as it is relevant for the current moment. In 2020, we similarly hosted a roundtable focusing on the feminist futures of planning, with Sendy Guerrier Alcidonis, Bri Gauger, Miraftab, and Elizabeth Sweet. Both sessions and scholars contributed to our ongoing understanding of pluriversal planning scholarship.

We realized early on in our review that several critical planning scholars did not necessarily use the terms “radical” or “insurgent,” but engage in what we initially termed “southern scholarship.” However, our terminology evolved over the course of 2 years; rather than a term (southern) that signals a geopolitical/ideological/conceptual location derived from an Other (northern), we have come to refer to this work as “pluriversal planning” because it more adequately speaks to a vision of multiplicity, co-existence, and relationality that enables us to envision planning beyond the spatial and temporal confines of modernity.

PPS includes the work of those we call seminal authors, as well as those who draw from them to continue to extend this scholarship into contemporary contexts. As a result, this review includes a total of 40 scholars and nearly 300 journal articles. Rather than focus on any one author’s contributions, we synthesize the major contributions in this article. We cannot assume to know everything about the projects presented, but to the extent that it is written, we are highlighting scholars who work in very different contexts, and whose research and practice explicitly focuses on dismantling planning modes that exclude. Furthermore, the literature touches on many essential aspects in urban planning such as equity, justice, social inclusion, the role of the planner, the political nature of planning, the social production of urban space, as well as the legitimization of the field itself.

Methodological choices

Pluriversal planning scholars tend to deploy methodological techniques that acknowledge the epistemological and ontological variations in lived experiences. These scholars often draw from other disciplines that have a longer history of learning from and reflecting the experiences of particular marginalized groups. Moreover, these methodologies acknowledge power dynamics between researcher and participant(s); recognize that commonly utilized methods are often extractive rather than useful for participants as well as researchers; and aim to represent the experiences of participants through their own voice.

First, pluriversal planning scholars are increasingly engaged in critical ethnography or extended case study methods (Laskey and Nicholls, 2019; Miraftab 2011; Rankin, 2010) which have proven useful for situated inquiry, and increasingly critical reflexivity (Porter et al., 2015). Through their ethnographic research, some work directly with community members, engaging in participatory research and ongoing dialogue with communities to co-produce knowledge and impact prevailing planning approaches (Porter, 2006b; Rankin, 2010; Winkler, 2015).

Second, articulating the “ethnographic present” (after Holston, 2009) cannot be done without simultaneously confronting history. Scholars draw from Sandercock’s (1998b) concept of “insurgent historiography” to deploy methods that historicize planning and tell the stories of its effects on the communities they are working with (Beard, 2005; Miraftab, 2016; Novoa, 2018; Porter, 2010; Roberts, 2020; Sandercock, 2003; Thomas, 2004). Beard (2005) uses oral histories to understand how social transformation occurs within restrictive political environments where overt challenges to dominant power configurations are not possible. Thomas (2004) reflects on the potential of oral histories to inform contemporary neighborhood planning processes. Through her work in Detroit, Michigan, she argues that while complementary to traditional qualitative planning techniques, oral history can be particularly useful to engage in a dialogue with marginalized groups as a means to gather their wisdom and participation.

Third, given the problematic histories of map-making and representation, yet its centrality in planning processes, pluriversal scholars engage in alternative modes of map-making historical to present everyday experiences and participants’ relationship to the land. Sletto’s (2013) project with the Yukpa’s people in Sierra de Perija, Venezuela is one example of counter-cartographies that aim to document situated knowledges for the purpose of cultural preservation, highlighting environmental racism and the advancement of territorial rights. Others utilize cognitive mapping, body mapping techniques, and arts-based methods to foreground visceral experiences of typically marginalized city dwellers, such as children, adolescents, and women (Escalante and Valdivia, 2015; Fenster 2009; Porter et al., 2020; Sweet and Escalante, 2015; Vasudevan, 2020). Sweet and Ortiz-Escalante’s (2015) work in New York City, Mexico City, and Barcelona centers the body as a relevant geographical space that holds visceral experiences, such as fear, while dismantling the public-private divide prevalent in planning. Similarly, in what she calls “embodied methods,” Vasudevan uses a combination of anonymous GPS tracking, mapping analysis, and body-mapping to co-generate understandings of young’s people relationships to place and their future imaginaries.

Finally, pluriversal scholars often develop and combine innovative methods that work in planning for and with communities. Harjo (2019) draws from Mvskoke narratives and experiences to create a map for community building that leverages indigenous planning tools. Sandercock and Atilli (2014) explore the use of film as action research and “therapeutic planning” as a catalyst for change in the context of a history of indigenous people’s segregation in Canada. Often pluriversal planning scholars create new methods to respond to projects aimed at healing, reclaiming community, and envisioning what a community can be-what Harjo defines as “futurity” or the act of living out the futures we wish for in a present moment (Harjo, 2019: 26).

These methodological approaches allow theories to emerge out of situated experiences. The methods described are multiple and varied and often scholars combine them. At their core, they are based on supporting the communities that they work with and enabling a reciprocity of learning, theorizing, and sharing between researcher and participant(s) which we discuss further in the following sections.

Theoretical contributions

PPS extends the traditional conceptualization of planning theory and practice by re-centering peoples and geographies typically sidelined in planning. Through contextual and situated explanations, PPS scholars reflect on communities’ resistance, subversion, and creativity as a response to modes of planning that have failed them. Many pluriversal planning scholars look to the ways in which marginalized groups have theorized about their own lives as inspiration for planning thought.

Friedmann’s (1987) seminal Planning in the Public Domain and his theorization of radical planning broadened the possibilities of planning theory early on. Friedmann raised important questions about the role of the state, the changing nature of civil society, and inequality’s burdensome effects on certain populations.³ His work expanded planning’s realm of inquiry by decentering the field from the expert knowledge of professional planners working for the state to the experiential knowledge of ordinary people as planners who were working beyond the arenas of state-sanctioned and formal planning (Friedmann, 1993). Some scholars have critiqued Friedmann’s position, and specifically his heavy reliance on western, male scholars (Beard, 2003; Moser, 1993), but others have taken his scholarship and built on it to address many of these concerns (Miraftab, 2009; Sandercock, 1998a).

Pluriversal planning scholars actively contribute to unpacking the alternative histories and practices of individuals and organized groups in city-making. PPS draws from a wide range of theoretical traditions including macro theories and emergent lines of thought. The academic space that these scholars are creating enables conversations across contexts that extend and/or refine theories that are grounded in particular settings.

From a traditional Marxist perspective, pluriversal planning scholars theorize how planning is an instrument that produces and reproduces urbanization through and in the service of capitalism, perpetuating class stratification and inequalities in cities (Roy, 2006). Gramsci’s critique of hegemony has been particularly useful for planning theorists to articulate how power functions in the Global South under neoliberal frameworks (Miraftab, 2009; Purcell, 2009; Roy, 2003, 2009a). Highlighting the inadequacy of communicative planning theories to transform existing power relations in a “neoliberalizing” world, Purcell (2009) advocates for a “counter-hegemonic struggle.” For Miraftab (2009) and Roy (2009a) hegemony itself produces contradictions where insurgent, or counter-hegemonic, practices can emerge.

Post-structural theory has also influenced some scholars. For example, Foucault’s theorization of knowledge production as an expression of power and control has influenced scholars who investigate how planning produces and reinforces social hierarchies through space (Alsayyad and Roy, 2006; Porter, 2006a, 2010; Yiftachel, 1998). His theory of governmentality motivated the conceptualization of planning as a set of management techniques that allow the state to emerge and act over bodies, identities and spatial rationalities (Porter, 2010: 108). Lefebvre, who drew inspiration from both Marx and the postmodern turn, continues to inspire the ways in which some pluriversal planning scholars articulate socio-spatial production in specific contexts (Jabareen, 2017; Porter, 2010; Yiftachel and Huxley, 2000).

Although these macro theories have been important in developing PPS, in this section we focus on discussing how pluriversal planning scholars are increasingly drawing on other emergent lines of thinking that speak to the present-day social, political and cultural crises. This is an important turn in planning, as it signals a shift from historically Eurocentric origins of philosophical thought in planning theory. In what follows, we synthesize these theoretical contributions that speak to the ways in which communities relate and react to present-day logics of neoliberal globalization, climate change, capitalism, and other emerging issues. This section is divided into three categories: “interdisciplinarity” speaks to theories from other related social science disciplines that have inspired PPS; “action” highlights theories grounded in people’s everyday actions, survival tactics, and resistances; and “land” articulates theories developed about people’s relationships to land, territory, and place.

Interdisciplinarity

Scholars are increasingly drawing from diverse disciplines that focus on “identity regimes” (Yiftachel, 2020), including but not limited to geography, anthropology, Black studies, Indigenous studies, women and gender studies, queer studies, disability studies, and Latinx and Caribbean studies.

As early as 1992, Sandercock and Forsyth called for a focus on gender in planning theory, and more recently gender and sexuality studies have provided critical contributions to PPS. Roy (2001) uses the work of postructural feminist scholars such as Nancy Fraser, Judith Butler, and Donna Haraway to draw attention to both differences and structures of domination, as well as to unsettle ontological and epistemological certainties about positions and subjectivities in gender constructions (Roy, 2003: 19). Miraftab, whose influences include Hart (2002) and Doreen Massey, examines the intersection between informality, poverty and gender as well the exclusion of women in the construction and exercise of citizenship in the city (Miraftab, 2004, 2016). Sweet (2015) draws from intersectionality theory to offer the concept of “kitchen table planners” or those who strategically navigate the public and private spaces in their daily struggle. Bringing in scholarship from queer studies and transgender studies, Doan (2007, 2010) suggests that cities are not only gendered but spatially reproduce gender binaries. Recently, Atalay and Doan (2020) wrote about the space-making strategies of Beyoglu, Turkey’s lesbian community. Scholars also feminist reflexivity from geography and postcolonial feminism to reflect on the researchers’ role and positionality within the study projects (Porter et al., 2012).

Critical development studies, Indigenous studies, Black studies and postcolonial and decolonial studies critically highlight the persistence of coloniality in the everyday urban experience, specifically interrogating the relationship between identity, planning and policy-making, and land rights. Porter and Barry (2015) argue that new planning theories based on inclusion, such as communicative planning, radical planning, and insurgent planning often fail to critically examine the genealogy of planning as colonial and oppressive. Drawing from critical development studies, Rankin (2010: 222) advocates for planning to better articulate its entanglements with capitalism and empire as a means to envision and build “strategic, translocal alliances.” Relatedly, scholars both highlight the relationship between race and space in the everyday work of planners (Brand and Miller, 2020), as well as imagined and alternative spatial imaginaries not based on a white, colonial spatial imaginary (Bates et al., 2018).

Several scholars (Connell, 2014; Harrison, 2014) highlight southern and postcolonial perspectives as important centers of knowledge production, challenging planning and related disciplines to learn from non-dominant representations. Reflecting on the colonial roots of planning, Ugarte (2014) suggests that decolonizing the discipline necessitates “profound changes in understandings, assumptions, and entrenched ideas that perpetuate colonial approaches to planning theory, practice, research, and education” (p. 408). Jacobs (2018) connects Black feminist thought with radical planning to offer a new framework to understand the social, racial and class inequities in disaster research. Porter’s work draws from critical Indigenous scholarship, settler-colonial studies, and geography to demonstrate the contemporary workings of settler-colonial urbanization in former British colonies (Porter, 2010, Porter et al., 2020). She unveils how planning reproduces unequal power relations by subordinating Indigenous knowledge to traditional and scientific knowledge, and how planning as a cultural practice privileges particular peoples, life views, space and time over other perspectives (Porter, 2006a, 2015, 2018). Dorries and Harjo (2020) highlight Indigenous women’s resistance to state-sanctioned settler colonial violence, and Harjo (2019) explains how Mvskoke people’s experiences, practices, and ways of knowing have generated a Mvskoke futurity that “refuse elimination at the hands of settler colonialism” (p. 5).

Action

Inspired by the radical tradition that acknowledges the everyday actions of residents and local communities as forms of planning, many pluriversal scholars center their analysis on the direct and indirect actions of residents as mechanisms of inclusion in cities.

Sandercock (1998b, 1999) extended Friedmann’s theorization of radical planning to reflect diverse experiences of North American cities. Building on Holston’s (1995) “insurgent citizenship” and Young’s (1990) “politics of difference”, Sandercock (1998b) conceptualized “insurgent planning historiography” and “insurgent planning” to unveil histories and practices of resistance to modernist liberal planning paradigm and liberal understandings of citizenship. Sandercock expanded the domain of planning by acknowledging that planning has always existed outside of, and in opposition to the state, and that a more democratic and culturally inclusive planning should draw from many different ways of knowing and acting (Sandercock, 2000: 26).

An important epistemological and ontological shift in planning theory as action-oriented is Miraftab’s (2009) repositioning of Sandercock’s insurgent planning in a global context, and specifically in neoliberal capitalist settings. While influenced by radical planning, insurgent planning departs from it by shifting “the understanding of justice from a liberal Rawlsian notion of justice as fairness to a Youngian notion of justice based on recognition of difference and its politics” (Miraftab, 2017: 279). According to Miraftab, “inclusive planning” and the politics of liberal citizenship often serve as an alibi for advancing forms of neocolonial oppression and domination through expanding regimes of neoliberal urban governance (Miraftab, 2009).

Within this context, insurgent planning de-centers the subject of the research from focusing on professional planners and their professionalized practice to a set of practices known as planning that includes a wide range of actors (Miraftab, 2017). As Huq (2020) explains, the politics of insurgent planning go beyond the realm of civil society as conceptualized by earlier traditions of radical planning that still rely on forms of residents’ actions and social organization tolerated by dominant groups. Instead, insurgent practices make their claims by using the authorized language of rights and inclusion and by advancing “temporary, fluid, context-specific” (Huq, 2020: 9) as well as strategic practices.

Over the last decade, pluriversal scholars have built on Miraftab’s insurgent planning framework by developing, extending, and rejecting parts of the theory based on the context they are working in (García-Lamarca, 2017; Koensler, 2013; Laskey and Nicholls, 2019; Meir, 2005; Meth, 2010; Novoa, 2018; Rangan et al., 2016; Shrestha and Aranya, 2015; Sletto, 2012, 2020; Sweet and Chakars, 2010). Reflecting on how Indigenous feminists’ approaches look beyond the state to respond and resist settler colonial violence, Dorries and Harjo (2020) suggest that an insurgent planning framework is useful in expanding concepts of participation in planning. Through her research in South Africa, Meth (2010) examines insurgent practices that do not always lead to transformative outcomes and can even be counterproductive to what insurgent planners are attempting to do. Novoa E., who works with preservation grassroots organizations in Chile, develops the notion of insurgent heritage to theorize about the relationship between memory, place, and an ethics of care in shaping urban insurgent actions. In her work in Catalonia, García-Lamarca (2017) applies an insurgent framework to understand how communities facing eviction make temporary gains to work toward long-term solutions.

For others working with residents, or “citizen planners” (Beard, 2012) in informal settlements, favelas, and townships across southern contexts, the insurgent planning framework does not adequately describe the continuum of actions that residents might engage in toward social transformation. For example, Bayat’s (2000: 536) concept of “quiet encroachment of the ordinary” reflects on how subordinated groups respond to larger social processes that affect their life, such as NGO–based development work and structural adjustment programs, through “non-collective but prolonged direct action by individuals and families to acquire basic necessities of their lives in a quiet and unassuming illegal fashion.” Unlike insurgent planning, these encroachments are often characterized by life-long struggles with the goal of pursuing redistribution of social goods and opportunities, but are not actions intended to cause broader political transformations like social movements.

Hackenbroch and Hossain (2012) extend Bayat’s work to articulate the ways in which social hierarchies within the informal settlement that they work with in Dhaka, Bangaladesh determine the types of quiet encroachments that take place as residents make claims to public space and to water supply. Relatedly, from her work in Indonesia and Malaysia, Beard (2002) develops the concept of “covert planning” which builds on Scott’s “everyday resistances,” Kerkvliet’s “everyday politics,” and “avoidance protests” which took place in Indonesia during precolonial and colonial times. Reflecting on non-liberal, non-democratic, or politically repressive societies, Beard suggests that as opposed to overt actions characteristic of radical and insurgent planning which are explicitly focused on broader structural change, “covert planning” is understood as more subtle and nuanced strategies that move toward social transformation.

Land

Related to the ways in which residents oppose the state in a variety of contexts, pluriversal scholars often engage with the questions of land claims, land rights, and socio-spatial production, specifically as increasing urbanization serves to exclude the poor (Watson, 2009).

The first body of work where these questions are often asked is through concepts of informality. Informality, brought into the conversation by shifting the lens to “southern” contexts, was propositioned as “often the mode of production of the 21st century metropolitan space” (Roy, 2009b: 826). Whereas informality studies can be traced back to the 1970s as a response to the rapid influx of labor into cities in the 1950s and 1960s (Alsayyad, 2004), the expansion of planning theory to learn from “global south” cases has progressed planning theorizing on informality as well, specifically by foregrounding the relationship between space and power (Yiftachel, 2009). Drawing largely from postcolonial and post-structural approaches (Varley, 2013), these scholars note how planning is complicit in neoliberal governance processes and projects (Bayat, 2000; Kudva, 2009; Liggett, 2009; Porter, 2018; Roy, 2009b, 2011), and recognize an opportunity here to elevate conversations around “land use” to talking about property explicitly (Roy, 2005).

Planning scholarship grounded in postcolonial studies critiques the formal-informal binary put forth previously and instead theorizes informality as a gradient, or continuum, of urbanization, between legality and illegality in the eyes of the state (Roy, 2005; Varley, 2013). By connecting informality to insurgent planning literature, a body of scholars continue to theorize on the everyday survival tactics (after de Certeau) of “informals” (Rakowski as cited in Kudva, 2009: 1615), surfacing questions about the hypocrisy of liberal democracies. De Souza (2006: 340) draws on examples from urban social movements in Latin America, in particular favela activism, to develop the concept of “de-statization” that de-emphasizes the role of the state and state agencies, and notes that “the state is structurally “committed” to the reproduction of the status quo (in other words, to oppression)”.

For example, Roy (2009a) articulates urban planning in India “as a management of resources, particularly land, through dynamic processes of informality” (8), where deregulation has resulted in the variable mode of urbanization described above. This definition forefronts the role of the state in relation to informal spaces, where the state differentially holds such spaces “in suspension” deciding when and how to engage with them (Roy, 2005), and where the state itself is an informalized entity (Roy, 2009b). Importantly, it also highlights the fact that insurgence, in and of itself, does not create a just city (Roy, 2009a). Varley (2013) similarly advocates for a heterogeneous understanding of informality in Latin America, positing that the “favela-isation” of the continent has continued to perpetuate dualisms that fail to address the nuance of everyday claims-making to land.

Drawing from political theory and from Lefebvre’s conceptions of socio-spatial production, Yiftachel (1998) analyses what he calls the “dark side of planning,” that is how planning perpetuates relations of power marked by ethnicity, religion, and location constraints. He suggests (Yiftachel, 2004) that planning is linked to the logic of the modern nation-state to control the production of space within its boundaries that serves two purposes: to organize and facilitate capital accumulation within a capital world economy and to reproduce ethnonational collective identities. Yiftachel’s (2006b, 2009) work on “gray spaces” highlights how informality transforms urban and citizenship regimes by positioning land, populations, developments, and transactions between the bright side of planning translated in formality and legality, and its dark side of destruction, eviction, and dispossession. In the context of Israel’s partial liberalization, he has also coined the notion of “creeping apartheid” (Yiftachel, 2004, 2016b) to suggest the increasing emergence of ethnic, geographic, and economic boundaries between groups that compete for recognition and resources.

Others similarly draw from Lefebvre to theorize socio-spatial production. In the case of Beirut, Lebanon, Fawaz (2009) describes how informal settlements make claims to land despite a neoliberal context that functions to exclude them from the city. Extending “right to the city” discourses, she argues that the spatial organization, the social networks, and the management of housing in informal settlements presents an alternative local mode of control without ever being completely apart from state and market authorities. Jabareen (2017), whose work focuses on Palestinians in Jerusalem, problematizes “right to the city” discourses as assuming a liberal-democratic framework where rights are solely provided by the state; rather, he suggests that in the face of being denied legal/formal rights, social groups engage in “rights of necessity” or informal rights, which are invoked by the collective precisely as a means of survival when their formal rights are ignored. Jabareen (2017: 8) conceptualizes the “right to space production” as the terrain where people negotiate informal and formal rights. It includes conceiving and envisioning space, participating in procedural planning, and appropriating or intervene in practices and strategies.

Porter and Barry (2015) investigate the nature of recognition and land claims in the context of British settler states. They draw from Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone” to highlight land-use planning as a key contested site where Western and Indigenous ideals are contested, negotiated, and manipulated in post-colonial settings. Further, Porter (2006, 2010) argues that planning without deconstructing its own cultural position can render the “inclusion” of Indigenous people in land management decisions a new form of colonial oppression. Fenster (2018) extends the concept of “contact zones” and “fragmented settler colonialism” to describe micro-geographies in Jerusalem. Learning from the Mapuche nation in Chile, Ugarte et al. (2017: 2) theorize urbanization and Indigenous dispossession through historical struggles against territorial dispossession. The authors argue that internal colonization is inseparable from processes of urbanization and that today we are witnessing another phase of Mapuche displacement “shaped by a polarized conception of urban, non-urban, and Indigenous spaces” and Western world views.

The theoretical contributions of pluriversal planning scholars are varied, but at their roots, they embrace context, history, and place in their development. Moreover, they draw from interdisciplinarity to focus on people’s everyday survival tactics, resistances, and claims-making to land in the context of repressive or absent state planning agents.

Community-based relationships and commitments

In this section, we reflect on how pluriversal planning scholars establish meaningful relationships and prioritize commitments with communities in their work. As argued earlier, pluriversal planning research shifts its focus from serving mainly professional and academic audiences to contributing to specific goals and processes at a community level. In other words, the methodological choices not only enable theoretical propositions that are situated in time and place, but also enable scholars to meaningfully contribute to ongoing community work.

Because neoliberal dynamics and western thought have predominantly guided knowledge production in planning for so long, it is important to acknowledge that pluriversal scholars also prompt us to reflect on our roles as planners and on the complex positions that we occupy in our anti-colonial, anti-racist efforts. For example, through our oft-shifting roles from insider to outsider, researcher to collaborator, facilitator to activist, we pose the danger of becoming engaged in projects only to re-inscribe privileged positions (Porter et al., 2012). Winkler (2018) illustrates the importance of critical reflexivity when she documents how communities in the informal settlements of Europa and Barcelona, Cape Town, South Africa, rejected the findings and proposals that she, together with other planners, developed after extensive research and engagement. She explains how planners’ western interpretations of the problem under study generated an epistemic conundrum that prevented them from finding solutions that met communities’ needs and aspirations.

In this sense, PPS involves consciously acknowledging the assumptions and preconceptions that we bring into research as well as continually reflecting on our positionality and practice in the field. This reflexive process draws our attention to the fact that, even in our attempts to develop anti-colonial and anti-racist interventions, we may still inhabit Eurocentrism. Thus, PPS calls for reflexivity and collaborative learning that can allow us to better navigate the uneasy and often ambiguous positions we occupy as researchers, as well as better identify the “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2007) operating in our work for the benefit of communities.

Although existing scholarship points to the importance of activist and engaged research, we found that often the specific nuances and tensions of researcher-community collaborations remain under-articulated in published works. This is likely a result of certain types of information and data being overvalued in academic spaces, “while different ways of knowing, being, and acting continue to be dismissed as “invalid” or “unscientific” (Winkler, 2018: 3). To learn the specifics of how scholars are involved with community struggles, we had to turn to social media and online platforms rather than traditional academic journals. We found that Porter continues to be active in indigenous struggles in Australia, while Sandercock supports indigenous nations in Canada. Similarly, Yiftachel lives and works in southern Israel/Palestine, representing indigenous communities and facilitating counter-planning. Watson has worked with townships in South Africa, while Bhan is actively leading anti-eviction and pro-LGTBQ+ struggles in Delhi, and Roy is involved in fighting “racial banishment” in Los Angeles. Undoubtedly other scholars are also actively involved in community-based organizing, yet few write about and reflect on this aspect of their work explicitly in journal articles.

Despite the dearth of explanations on how scholars navigate community-based research, we elaborate on three evident contributions of PPS to community-based struggles and outcomes we identified that structure this section: “learning” refers to the process through which planning scholars are informed by and share their theoretical and discursive propositions with communities; “capacity” highlights scholars’ ability to assist with near-term tasks of communities and organizations; and “communication” refers to the ways in which scholars can share the stories and make visible the work of communities and residents.

Learning

Some scholars who directly work with communities share conceptual tools that residents and community members appropriate, rework, and use to both construct alternative meanings of citizenship and rights, and to resist or contest unequal power dynamics. In this position, scholars engage in a reciprocal relationship that entails shared learning and a co-constitutive process of theory development. Through what Sletto and Nygren (2015) term “critical knowledge encounters,” new and reciprocal conceptual frames are created to challenge categorical ways of thinking associated with Western thought and neoliberal governance that can bring forth both deliberative social change and alternative shared futures. These knowledge encounters also inform grassroots organizations’ discourses and arguments that residents can then utilize. For example, as part of her ethnographic project in an ex-coal mining town in Chile, Novoa E. has presented her research and theorizations several times to the community. Rather than constituting a “giving back” process to the community, it is a means of co-producing knowledge with community members that helps their organization to better understand the geography of violence beyond traditional recognizable forms, thus strengthening Mesa’s political discourses in their struggle to gain urban rights. Similarly, Andrea Roberts’ (2020) work on the Texas Freedom Colonies Project counters “authentic heritage discourses” that “disremember” (p. 111) Black agency, resistance and subversion in Texas’s public history. By documenting and mapping stories, embodied narratives, and archival documents, her work radically re-imagines the implications of placemaking and preservation for planning through the perspective of the first Black Texan-placemakers and their descendants. In 2015, Roberts co-designed a symposium with a grassroots practitioner as part of a larger festival, where she presented her scholarly work alongside freedom colony descendants who presented their independent historical research (Roberts and Kelly, 2019).

Capacity

Second, pluriversal planning scholars build relations with communities by occupying roles at an organizational level, assisting in creating networks of solidarity between grassroots and civil society organizations, and helping to strategize and ensure the sustainability of community-based practices. Pluriversal planning scholars engage in multiple and varied roles, including that of facilitator, trainer, advisor, or simply someone who complete assigned tasks. For example, Sletto and Nygren (2015: 13) helped to organize community discussions and mapping projects with residents in the informal settlement of Villahermosa, Gaviota Sur, Ciudad de Mexico as a means to help residents visualize “the social geography of vulnerability as lived experiences of everyday uncertainties, and prompted them to reconceptualize the meanings of responsibility under conditions of neoliberal governance.” Nygren also trained federal and state-level government authorities, city officials, private consultants and NGOs to develop more meaningful participatory projects.

PPS also serves communities by developing outward-in contributions in forms of service to communities. The role of the planning scholar here is to utilize their knowledge of technical information or data. Services include translating policy documents or technical knowledge to accessible language, drafting documents, organizing meetings and workshops specifically for plan-making or participatory work. Additionally, this work can include supporting the community in developing demands and petitions, and also developing specific planning projects with the communities to help them improve their material living conditions (Porter, 2006; Sandercock, 2000; Yiftachel, 2016b). At ACSP 2019, Laskey reflected on the multiple roles, from editing petitions to drafting documents, that she had taken on in the resident group, Charlevoix Village Association (CVA) in Detroit to help support and bolster their insurgent activities. Similarly, Vasudevan served as a facilitator so that Fundsazurza, a community-based environmental organization she works with, could present their strategic plan and needs to the local government planning department.

Communication

Scholars also make visible the work and ongoing struggles of communities through multiple platforms. Here the role of the planner is to strategically (and with consent) engage different types of media platforms that communicate the stories and actions of the communities they are working with. Sometimes communities are already using these platforms, but often times the organization lacks access to them or are unfamiliar with them. Helping to publicize communities’ work can diversify the spaces that their work reaches, and potentially build transnational dialogues and coalitions.

First, pluriversal scholars use their privileged position as researchers to write about the living experiences of marginalized communities and planning’s complicity in deepening inequalities. This is not only important in terms of recognition and inclusion of diverse ways of knowing in the planning field, but also bridges the gap between communities and practitioners by prompting others to consider grassroots knowledges as valid forms of planning practice and history. Often, the stories are shared with other scholars as well as policy makers to influence planning policy and practice. For example, Lung-Aman, whose research focuses on equitable suburban policies and planning, is currently a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and she frequently writes about her work for popular media outlets.⁴ Second, multimedia and creative projects offer alternative means to communicate stories and experiences to diverse audiences. For example, to examine immigrant integration and sense of belonging in the city of Vancouver, Sandercock and Atilli (2010) developed a digital ethnography project. The resulting film was then shared in various cities through half-day workshops, reaching local organizations, non-profit and faith-based organizations involved with immigrant and refugee issues across Canada. Bates (Bates et al., 2018) describes a multisite and multimedia exhibition and event series, “This is a Black Spatial Imaginary,” that resulted from her collaborative community-based research with Black artists and scholars reflecting on disruptive planning interventions in Portland that embody a “white spatial imaginary.” They note (p. 256), “Art practice and spatial intervention is one mode for developing new visions of our history, present, and possibility.”

How engagement with communities and activism looks is different for pluriversal planning scholars, yet most scholars at least articulated a commitment to reciprocity with communities and residents. Still, less was published on the process of establishing those relationships and commitments. Providing more practical material for those who would like to unsettle planning practices while contributing to a community level is an important step forward (Jacobs, 2018). Moreover, empirical research from around the world helps to enhance and extend theoretical categories, but it can also constitute rich tools for pedagogy and for students to learn how to contribute at a community level.

Discussion

The current global insurgency against years of neoliberal and increasingly repressive governance systems are undermining even the most basic rights of residents, with climate and public health crises exacerbating most situations. In Lebanon, Haiti, Egypt, Chile, Dominican Republic, France, Hong Kong, Colombia, India, Bolivia, Palestine, and the United States people are taking over public streets, public spaces, and transportation centers in anti-government protests, demanding better access to basic services such as clean water, livable wages, adequate living conditions, and anti-racist and anti-corrupt policies. As we think through the current situation, we recall Holston’s words:

The ethnographic present is something to be acted upon by historical investigation because we realize that the past always leaks through, disturbing the present and breaking it up into heterogeneous elements that are recomposed and transformed. In the case at hand, as history haunts the present, it provides possible sites for the destabilization of the older paradigm of citizenship. (Holston, 2009: 18)

In this article, we suggest that pluriversal planning scholarship, or PPS, responds to some of these disconnects between theory and practice. Recalling Escobar (2018) we understand the potential of the pluriverse to be in its ability to hold multiple worlds that simultaneously have already existed and are beyond what we can imagine. The pluriversal task of theorization is dynamic, with methodological choices, theoretical contributions, and community-based commitments informing each other:

PPS embraces multiplicity and acknowledges the co-existence of diverse planning logics in the production of urban space. It blends pasts, presents, and futures to actively imagine worlds outside of the modern/colonial system.

PPS is situated in place and refrains from masking the epistemic location from where planning theory is produced. In contrast to north/western philosophical traditions, PPS refuses universal claims and assumes that knowledge production is always partial, relational, and grounded on difference.

PPS is creative and is research that enables people to challenge prevailing structures of power. Scholars’ methodologies respond to communities’ ways of being and knowing, and involves the active recovery of knowledge and experiences that have been silenced, erased, or otherwise excluded in planning.

For planning theory and praxis, PPS not only revises the geographies we are learning from, but also revisits our methodologies to more directly contribute to the communities we work with. When we sought feedback early on for the premise of this article, Vanessa Watson suggested that we refer to Bhan’s (2019) “Notes on a Southern urban practice” (Watson, 2019, personal communication). In it, Bhan (2019) outlines multiple “disconnects” between theory and practice in planning, asking “How can a new body of thought give us ways of moving and modes of practice (p. 3)?” As evidenced in the paper, these contributions can range from useful discursive and/or theoretical articulations that communities can adopt or expand on, to capacity building and the completion of urgent tasks. For the planning scholar engaged with communities, this means an expanded and flexible role as a result of constant reflexivity. In a teaching context, solidarity can be taught through relational case-building that recognizes history and situatedness.

Pluriversal planning scholarship does not come without challenges. In terms of theory, we find that many pluriversal planning scholars continue to rely on “grand theories” that they then extend and re-articulate in the contexts they are working in. Many of these theories are derived from north/western spaces, potentially reproducing the very oppression scholars are critiquing. The reliance on north/western scholarship is not surprising given planning’s history of learning from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and political theory to critique the state apparatus. However, we are hopeful that the increasing focus by pluriversal planning scholars on interdisciplinarity and on learning from identity-based and historically situated experiences provides a useful lens into how planning theory can be rewritten and reimagined. Additionally, this focus allows for a de-emphasis of “northern” and “southern,” enabling a different type of conversation, learning, and reciprocity to take place.

Second, in many of the manuscripts we reviewed we struggled to find explicit discussion about some of the ‘hidden’ aspects of community-based commitments; rather, the questions were geared toward theoretical or pedagogical contributions. Rarely discussed were scholars’ ethical questions ‘in the field’; reflections around positionality and privilege; or the decisions that scholars had to make in terms of community involvement. We imagine that this is a reflection of the fact that many of the top academic planning journals place an emphasis on “objectivity” over process-related articles. Encouraging explicit articles about community-based contributions, or articles that reflect on community responses to theory, would suggest a different prioritization for planning scholarship based on the ability to highlight and learn from mistakes. It would also suggest a re-orientation of planners’ commitment to communities rather than rigid “answers” to planning issues. Moreover, it would help more effectively link theory and praxis, while providing scholars with examples of how methodologies, theories, and community contributions are entangled. An emphasis on community-based commitments would also ensure that a pluriversal planning project does not “become yet one more academic endeavor” (Escobar, 2017: 216). Relatedly, as scholars working in Latin America and the Caribbean, we noted that a continued favoring of western and English-speaking journals makes the process of learning from other spaces even more difficult.

Even given these challenges, however, this article suggests that PPS provides a relational framework that recognizes the importance of place-based history and lived experience, while enabling scholars to draw important linkages with other scholars and communities across place and time. We believe that the potential of PPS lies in the ability to imagine and build transnational solidarities by acknowledging historical specificities and imagining radical and connected futures beyond the modern/colonial system. The ‘bubbling up’ of resistances in the quest for everyday survival is where we believe opportunities for learning and coalition-building lie. By critically de-centering western, hegemonic theories and methodologies that have been complicit in oppressive plan and policy-making, pluriversal planning scholars extend theory-building to learn from the very communities who are refusing to stay silent. Moreover, pluriversal planning scholarship provides an opportunity to better learn from and work with communities on their terms, necessitating a critical shift in power dynamics between the scholar/planner and communities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank several people for their contributions to this article. Faranak Miraftab, Leonie Sandercock, Elizabeth Sweet, Bri Gauger, and Sendy Guerrier Alcidonis participated in roundtables that we organized over the last two years at the annual ACSP conference. They provided valuable insights and important questions to this discussion. We also want to thank Allison Laskey for her contributions to early discussions of this paper. We are most grateful to Bjorn Sletto who introduced us to radical and insurgent planning theory early on in our doctoral studies. His guidance on our work has been crucial. To the communities we work with in our research in Chile and the Dominican Republic, thank you for our ongoing collaboration and inspiration. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the thoughtful comments of three anonymous reviewers and the journal editors that strengthened the original manuscript and highlighted ways we can move this project forward.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Raksha Vasudevan

Magdalena Novoa E.

Notes

Author biography

Raksha Vasudevan is the Bruce S. Goldberg Postdoctoral Fellow in Youth Wellbeing at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her ethnographic work lies at the intersection of youth geographies, spatial justice, and arts-based research to interrogate how young people stake claim to city spaces.

Magdalena Novoa E. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her engaged scholarship focuses on the intersections of historic preservation and social justice, the politics of cultural heritage and memory, grassroots organizing, and alternative planning approaches in the Americas.

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