Do planning concepts matter? A Lacanian interpretation of the urban village in a British context

Abstract

Numerous novel planning concepts have been developed in pursuit of better urban environments, while many are notoriously difficult to define. Lacan’s master signifier is widely employed to criticise these vague, fashionable concepts but lacks a specific examination tool. To fill this gap, this article develops an analytical framework based on Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA) to decipher the complex social relations in the process of applying new concepts to planning policymaking and practice. A comprehensive review of the UK urban village movement is used to demonstrate how this framework provides a deeper analysis, arguing that urban villages are understood differently depending on individual social positions, which, to some extent, determine their actions towards planning practice.

Keywords

planning concept Jacques Lacan Lacanian discourse analysis master signifier four discourses urban village British planning planning policymaking planning practice

Introduction

In the age of information, planners, designers, politicians, journalists and the general public are proposing an increasing number of new concepts, such as ‘sustainable development’, ‘smart growth’ and ‘resilient cities’ to express their thoughts on the future of urban environments (De Jong et al., 2015; Hatuka et al., 2018). However, because of the fecundity of new planning concepts, urban scholars and planners have often unsuccessfully understood and reused new concepts, and subsequently, the academic contribution and practical implementation of these popular concepts have been critically evaluated (e.g. Hollands, 2008; Jabareen, 2013; Khan and Zaman, 2018). Among them, Lacanian-based investigations have been widely conducted to critically review several planning concepts (Gunder and Hillier, 2009). With the link between Lacan’s master signifiers and planning concepts, this research approach uses Lacan’s critical social theory to probe language, desire and the shaping of social reality in academic and practice discourse pertaining to specific planning concepts.

Nevertheless, most Lacanian explorations in the planning discipline are relatively theoretical as most of the contents focus on the interpretation of Lacan’s recondite theory and its relevance to planning theory. Empirical analyses of urban policy or planning practice are found sparsely in lengthy theoretical debates (Gunder and Wang, 2019). The lack of concrete empirical examinations makes this approach difficult to apply to detailed analyses of planning policymaking and practice. Therefore, this research aims to fill the research gap by further developing a new, solid, analytic framework based on Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA) and demonstrates its application in the UK urban village movement. This research expects to reveal ‘the hidden and unintended consequences of social actions’ in reality, which, as Jacobs (1999: 210) believed, is the ultimate aim of discourse analysis in urban planning.

This research chose the UK urban village movement, rather than the aforementioned currently popular concepts, as the case study for two principal reasons. First, the urban village concept has had a large influence on planning policy and practice in the UK, and it is supported by national planning policies, abundant debates have been published on the topic, and numerous urban projects have been developed across the country. Well-archived documents on these projects provide an opportunity to comprehensively review the attitudes and actions of different social positions towards this concept. Second, the urban village was a controversial concept that was only active from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s in the UK context.¹ This means that this research can investigate a complete life circle of a planning concept filled with various desires from a great diversity of stakeholders. This research does not intend to extend the discussion about urban villages in theory and practice or justify the achievements from its use in urban development in the UK, as many excellent reviews have been conducted (e.g. Biddulph, 2003; Thompson-Fawcett, 2000). Rather, this research reveals how people in different social positions understood, reused and reacted to the then-popular planning concept – urban village – and how people in different social positions interacted with others during the implementation of this concept.

In the following section, this article briefly introduces Jacques Lacan and the link between master signifiers and planning concepts as the entry point of Lacanian theory. It navigates its focus on LDA as the context of its application in planning research. Subsequently, this research elucidates Lacan’s four discourses and its schemata, with brief explanations of their use for planning research. These three theoretical strands synthesise into a three-step analytical framework, which is the major contribution of this research. For a better understanding of its application, the next sections demonstrate how to use this framework to analyse the UK urban village movement and reveal that different social positions built their unique interpretations of this planning concept. The final section reconnects the initial question on the importance of planning concepts for the development of planning knowledge and argues that this new framework has the potential to provide a detailed insight into many popular but ambiguous planning concepts in policymaking and practice.

Lacan, master signifier and planning concepts

Jacques Lacan was a prominent French psychoanalyst and philosopher who extended Freud’s theory and changed the institutional face of psychoanalysis (Fink, 2004; Roudinesco, 1993). He was also controversial due to his unconventional publication style and wide divergence from other psychoanalysis and philosophy theories (Macey, 1988). The transcripts of his yearly seminars in Paris between 1953 and 1979 have been edited, published and gradually translated into English, as the key and primary resources of Lacanian theory (Lacan, 1968, 1993, 1998, 1999, 2006, 2007). Lacan’s thoughts are widely applied to fields outside of psychoanalysis, particularly in the critique of ideology in the political, social and cultural spheres, through further interpretations of Lacanian followers (Bracher, 1988, 1993; Glynos, 2001; Laclau, 1996, 2006, 2006; Stavrakakis, 1999; Žižek, 1989, 2002, 2006).

Emphasising the unconscious and agency of the letters (Clarke, 2015), Lacan’s theory offers an insight into the process of how ideology shapes social reality (Glynos, 2001). Lacan’s innovation on symbolic subjectivity has more contributions to social theory than to its original discipline – psychoanalysis (Dean, 2000: 2). For Lacan, part of the desire from the subject that cannot be put into the Symbolic remains in the Real,² which cannot be verbalised. The endless loop between the Symbolic, Real and Imaginary opens up a new perspective to interrogate the actors’ behaviours and their influence in planning discourse.

The unconscious, subjective and illogical side of urban planning is usually neglected for the planners’ pursuit of rationality (Allmendinger and Gunder, 2005; Sandercock, 2004; Throgmorton, 2003). The complex context of planning activities involves many unconscious and irrational thoughts and decisions, rather than the planning profession’s claim of rationality. The nature of planning is the society’s fundamental desire for harmony and security in ‘better’ future cities, which can never be fulfilled in reality (Gunder and Hillier, 2009). Planners’ desires of the future urban environment are concentrated in the popular planning concepts and analogous with one of Lacan’s key concepts – the master signifier.

Derived from Saussure’s division of signifiers and signified (Saussure, 1960), Lacan’s master signifiers (S1, as labelled by Lacan) are the ‘point[s] of departure for the definition of discourse that we will emphasize at the first step’ (Lacan, 2007: 13). S1 are the nodal points to gather and organise different types of knowledge with a loose but necessary structure (Lacan, 1993). They are also the first signifiers, or the ‘primary symbols’ of ‘border signifiers’ in Freud’s theory (Verhaeghe, 1995). ‘Primary’ and ‘knowledge-related’ are the two key attributes of S1. Master signifiers make a discourse readable through imposing a powerfully positive or negative value on a subject-identified signifier, unite different narratives to compete, conflict and mingle under the same name, and signify ‘a totality which is literally impossible’ when the antagonistic forces cannot reach a full consensus concerning their own identities (Laclau, 2006: 107).

In both theory and practice, urban planning faces an explosion of new concepts, which are the subjective identities that aim to create an impact on the knowledge and beliefs of the planning profession (e.g. Granqvist et al., 2019; Gunder and Hillier, 2009; Kooij et al., 2014). These keywords attempt to structure our perception of the future urban environment as new identities or primary points in the knowledge of urban planning (Kooij et al., 2014), in the same way that master signifiers work in constituting a value in knowledge. This lays the foundation for planning scholars to adopt Lacanian theory in analysing planning concepts, such as ‘diversity’ (Gunder, 2005b), ‘sustainability’ (Brown, 2016; Davidson, 2010; Gunder, 2006; Metzger et al., 2021), ‘responsibility’ (Gunder, 2016), ‘innovation campus’ (Kooij et al., 2014) and ‘smart growth’ (Gunder and Hillier, 2009). Scholars have absorbed Lacan’s thinking around subjectivities, the unconscious, desire, fantasy and unique new concepts to analyse a series of planning issues from planning education to planning ideology, from planning policymaking to planning applications.

Lacanian discourse analysis in planning research

Discourse analysis has influenced the planning discipline since the ‘linguistic turn’³ when scholars began to have a growing interest in the role of discourse in planning (Hastings, 1999: 8–9; Jensen, 1997: 4; Lees, 2004). As with the difficulties of defining the boundaries of ‘discourse’, it is hard to reach a consensual approach of discourse analysis in planning, which varies depending on the content that planning scholars choose to analyse and the discourse theories that they adopt and develop (Feindt and Oels, 2005; Jacobs, 2006; Lees, 2004).

Drawing on Lacan’s psychoanalytical and philosophical and theory, Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA) is an emerging approach, stressing ‘the radical contingency and structural undecidability of discursive structure’ (Glynos et al., 2009: 8). Lacan (2007: 12–13) regarded discourse as ‘a necessary structure’… ‘beyond speech’ and ‘subsists in certain fundamental relations which would literally not be able to be maintained without language’. For Lacan, the function of language is to evoke, rather than inform, to seek a response from the other. Therefore, this approach can extract something that is implied but not explicitly stated by the Symbolic (Hook, 2013).

Lacan’s discourse theory assists planning scholars in analysing both individual and societal desires for the future urban environment and analyse the complex social relationships behind planning policymaking and practice. A series of Michael Gunder and Jean Hillier’s early articles laid the foundation for the discourse part of Lacanian theory for planning research with introductions of Lacan’s four discourses and its relevant ideas to planning research (Gunder, 2003, 2005a; Gunder and Hillier, 2009; Hillier and Gunder, 2003, 2005). It inspired more scholars to expand this strand: Kooij et al. (2014) elaborated the functions of the master signifier in discourse to probe the ‘innovation campus’ in Dutch planning discourse; Ulloa (2019) analysed Lacanian four discourses to examine the relationship among planning theory, research and practice; and Bullock (2014) employed four discourses and the mirror stage to analyse the public debates on Singapore’s urban development of the two integrated resorts.

Although these new ideas of LDA provide powerful hints to deconstruct the conventional planning norms and bring about new ideas, there is still a lack of systematic application of the LDA approach to analyse detailed planning activities. Most case studies only extract specific planning segments for analysis and analyse them with some new thoughts derived from Lacan’s theory, as demonstrated, for example, with the brief analyses of Auckland Regional Council’s planning documents (Gunder, 2005a), the City of Stirling’s planning documents (Hillier and Gunder, 2005), Vancouver’s planning practice on social sustainability (Davidson, 2010), sustainability in Cambridge and Sydney’s strategic urban planning (Metzger et al., 2021). Therefore, this research aims to develop an LDA-based analytical framework to fill this gap and demonstrate how to use this framework in analysing some puzzling phenomena in the UK urban village movement.

Four discourses and its schemata

Lacan’s four discourses are the core part of LDA (Hook, 2013; Malone and Roberts, 2010; Neill, 2013; Parker, 2005). It emphasises the subjectivities in discourse and consequently reveals the social effects of these subjectivities (Bracher, 1993). Particularly, its schemata is an attempt to identify and analyse the fundamental factors ‘through which language exercises both formative and transformative power in human affairs’ in the four diagrams (Bracher, 1994: 45). Based on a close reading of Lacan’s original work and Lacanian scholars’ detailed interpretations on the four discourses (Bracher, 1988, 1994; Fink, 1998; Lacan, 1998, 2006, 2007; Verhaeghe, 1995), this section first elucidates the schemata of the four discourses and the schemata variables. Based on the schemata, the four discourses and their links with planning research are described as the theoretical foundation for the analytical framework in the next section.

In the schematic structure of the four discourses (Figure 1), there are four fixed positions in the diagram, namely agent, other, production and truth (Lacan, 2006). The agent position is the starting, dominant point of each discourse. The other position refers to the one called to act through the discourse. The top two positions are usually the obvious part of the speaker and the receiver of the discourse and the arrow ‘→’ indicates the direction of the conveyed information. By contrast, the bottom two that are separated by horizontal lines are the latent factors that are unconscious to the speaker and the receiver: the truth position is the hidden motivation that underlies and supports the dominant position of the agent, while the position production is the real effect produced after the other digests and reacts to the discourse.

Figure 1.

Schematic structure of the four discourses.

In an ideal communication context, the production of the discourse receiver ought to provide feedback to the speaker as a new motivation for the next discourse. However, due to the gap between the Symbolic and the Real, communication through language is inherently unable to keep this ideal loop in the discourse (Gunder, 2004; Verhaeghe, 1995). Therefore, the supposed feedback process is largely blocked, as the ‘/←’ sign indicates in the diagram.

Four variables are placed in the four positions: master signifier (S1), knowledge (S2), divided subject ($) and the unattainable object of desire (a). The previous section explained the master signifiers and their application in analysing planning concepts; this part will elucidate the three other variables in these schemata as the foundation of understanding Lacan’ four discourses (see the summary in Table 1). While master signifiers (S1) are the first signifiers or the Freudian ‘border signifiers’ or ‘primary symbols’, S2 represents the rest of the signifiers, the chain or the network of signifiers (Verhaeghe, 1995). As the articulation system of knowledge and beliefs, S2 is necessary to establish identities for the subject (Bracher, 1988; Verhaeghe, 1995). The invisible links between master signifiers (S1) make up the network of the subject’s pleasure and pain, likes and dislikes, and allies and enemies and thus constitute the subject’s sense of itself (Bracher, 1988). Therefore, knowledge (S2) is what brings life to a halt at a certain limit on the path to jouissance,⁴ the nature of enjoyment (Lacan, 2007: 18). In planning research, S2 is the knowledge generated and attached to planning concepts. S2 is the gap area between different planning concepts, telling us what these concepts truly attempt to mean, in which way the ideas behind these concepts can be implemented and in what way knowledge can contribute to fostering progressive urban futures.

Table 1.

Interpretations of the four variables from Lacan’s Theory to planning discourse.

Lacan’s theory		Planning discourse
Master signifier	S1	Planning concepts
Remaining signifiers: The articulation system, including knowledge, belief and religion	S2	Law, regulations, standards, guidance, etc. to debate/advocate implement planning concepts
Divided/alienated subject: The gap between S1 and S2	$	Different understandings of planning concepts among individuals/groups
Plus-de-jouir: The unattainable object of desire; the cause of desire	a	Disappointed, or having extra pleasure with current knowledge around certain planning concepts/having a desire to change or seek substitution

When a person speaks (or acts, in the case of non-utterance), they become a subject of language. The subject is embedded in language and structured ‘through its encounter with language’ (Malone and Roberts, 2010). Therefore, the divided/alienated/split subject ($) is ‘what in the first instance does not quietly place itself as identical with itself’ (Lacan, 2007: 103). When S1 intervenes in the already constituted field of the other signifiers, the divided subject ($) emerges (Lacan, 2007: 15). For Lacan, the subject is inherently divided between the conscious (symbolic articulation) and the subject’s own unconscious drives and desires (Gunder, 2003). Lacan’s concept of $ can provide critical insights into probing the social and political dimension of discourse (Gunder, 2003; Stavrakakis, 1999), particularly on the illogical and irrational aspects of planning activities. Individuals or social groups interpret planning concepts in different ways based on their own existing knowledge (S2). The subjective gaps in different interpretations trigger the emergence of $.

Objet petit a (a) is the object of desire that we seek in the other. These desires in motion are the drives that we cannot attain but keep circling around (Lacan, 1998). Objet petit a is ‘simultaneously left out of and produced’ through the process when the intervention of S1 in S2 establishes the subject’s identity (Lacan, 2007: 15). Lacan elucidates this concept as plus-de-jouir, which derives from Marx’s concept of surplus-value. Plus-de-jouir, which literally means a surplus of enjoyment, is the cause of desire (Verhaeghe, 1995). It is the jouissance beyond the necessary jouissance that is pursued on the route to searching for the designated jouissance. When we try to implement the urban policies under a big, fashionable planning concept, there is always a plenitude of opinions for desired urban futures: ecologically sustainable, economically prosperous, socially harmonious, politically fair, administratively efficient and environmentally well preserved. When we cannot be satisfied with the initial desires, we try to use others as substitutes. This process generates a way of approaching objet petit a with disappointment or extra pleasure.

These four variables follow a clockwise loop of S1-S2-$-a in the schematic structure. While the four positions stay in the fixed structure mentioned above, the movement of the four variable chain changes the discourse type (Figure 2). Verhaeghe (1995) argues that the schematic structure is the most important but also the most difficult part in Lacan’s four discourses theory. These diagrams are an attempt to ‘identify and analyse the crucial factors through which language exercises power in human affairs’ (Bracher, 1988: 32). Each discourse is associated with a specific type of social effect (Bracher, 1988):

• Master’s discourse: indoctrination that is ruled by master signifiers.

• University discourse: legitimation or rationalisation of the master’s will.

• Analyst’s discourse: deliberate subversion of the prevailing master’s discourse.

• Hysteric’s discourse: desire for the exact opposite of the university discourse.

Figure 2.

Diagrams of the four discourses.

The master’s discourse moulds the receiver’s ego-ideal (Gunder and Hillier, 2009), and master signifiers are unquestionable in the master’s discourse. Lacan used philosophy and politics as two examples to elucidate the master’s discourse, which ‘already has its letters of credit’ in the philosophical tradition and the realm of politics (Lacan, 2007: 87). S2, knowledge, is in the other position (of the receiver) as the master imposes its non-justified, dogmatic, arbitrary power into knowledge via master signifiers (Fink, 1998). The S2’s position of others implies that knowledge has to sustain a master’s will of their own illusion within the master’s discourse (Verhaeghe, 1995). It commands the receivers to ‘learn and organise their belief’ and repress other knowledge, desires and fantasies that go against the master’s (Bracher, 1994: 121). According to the schemata, the master’s discourse is driven by the divided subject between the conscious and the unconscious ($). The master attempts to unify the divided subject with master signifiers (S1). Although master signifiers are imposed on the existing knowledge system of the receiver, the abstract concept of S1 cannot completely persuade the receiver to adopt ideas that are attached to the master signifier into their own knowledge system. As for the production, ‘those governed in obeying the master forgo jouissance as the loss of enjoyment or frustration, not to mention [the] loss of spontaneity and creativity, produced by their obedience and conformity to the demands of the master’ (Gunder and Hillier, 2009: 104). The production is not to the master’s will but to the obedience of following whatever the master signifier orders. For planning, the master’s discourse is typically made by authorised bodies such as government officials, political elites and influential scholars to spread their personal beliefs. However, when urban researchers and planners cannot explicitly resist powerful master signifiers but do not completely agree with the original ideas, they can produce their own understandings to cater to this unquestionable symbol.

The university discourse seeks to legitimise the master’s will by imposing systemic knowledge (S2) onto the one seeking the unattainable object of desire (a). The agent of the university discourse is S2, an articulate system, which can be knowledge, laws or regulations. This discourse aims to rationalise or legitimise the abstract and arbitrary signifiers and make them into a supplement to S2 (Fink, 1995: 132). The receiver is a, the unattainable object of desire, as the university discourse imposes knowledge to the unattainable object of the other’s desire, which is the surplus of others’ jouissance. Therefore, the university discourse suggests that objectivities that seem rational and logical, such as the classical requirements of science, are merely illusive (Verhaeghe, 2001: 31). The master signifier (S1) is the command to ‘keep on knowing’ what this sign is (Lacan, 2007: 105). It is impossible, as Lacan observes, not to obey the command of master signifiers because humans ‘always continue to know more’ (Lacan, 2007: 105). The dissemination (publication, workshops and initiatives) of technical standards, design handbooks and planning policy is a typical form of the university discourse in planning.

The analyst’s discourse is opposed to the will of the master, ‘engaging in a continuous flight from meaning and closure’ (Bracher, 1988: 46). The agent of this discourse, the analyst, ‘interrogates the subject in his/her own division’ (Fink, 1998: 37). The receivers of this discourse are $, the divided subjects who are confused about the existing knowledge. Derived from Lacan’s background of psychoanalysis, the analyst in this discourse attempts to draw out the fundamental truth from the conversations with the analysand⁵ (Gunder and Wang, 2019). Therefore, this discourse discovers the world of the analysand through their self-enlightenment process and attempts to reveal the true desires of the divided subject being analysed. This discourse is not limited to individuals in psychoanalysis but also connects to the entire society, causing a revolution of the relations to the master’s discourse (Lacan, 2007) and producing a new signifier against the existing ones. The new master signifier is usually ‘less exclusive, restrictive and conflictual’, but reveals the values, ideals, conscious desires and identifications that society asks for (Bracher, 1988: 47–48). The interpretation of the objet petit a is sustained by S2, which is the analyst’s implicit knowledge and has yet to be subjectified (Fink, 1998). Therefore, the analyst’s discourse offers ‘the only ultimate effective means of countering the social tyranny exercised through language’ (Bracher, 1988: 45). In planning, this discourse might be the critical research that attempts to counter the controlling individuals/groups in the discourse around certain planning concepts to point out the illusion in mainstream discourse.

The hysteric’s discourse is the discourse of resistance, protest and complaint. It is dominated by a unique mode of jouissance, the divided subject (Bracher, 1988: 45), indicating that the initiator in this discourse is dissatisfied with the existing situation. The agent of this discourse – the hysteric speaker – seeks a response from the master, behind the master signifier (S1), to offer ‘a secure meaning that will overcome anxiety and give a sense of meaningful, and respectable identity’ (Bracher, 1993: 53). The receiver of the discourse is a master signifier, which is a form that aims to satisfy all the desires of the divided subject(s). This agent-other relationship indicates that this discourse questions the validity of master signifiers, producing a system of knowledge/beliefs (S2) around the master signifiers to stabilise the hysterical subject (Bracher, 1988: 45). Lacan associates this discourse with real scientific activities, arguing that the university discourse is a mere encyclopaedic endeavour that attempts to rationalise (Fink, 1998), while the hysteric’s discourse produces serious knowledge, after critically questioning the master signifiers (S1) (Fink, 1998; Verhaeghe, 1995). For planning research, this discourse raises questions ‘against the ideological environment’ (Hillier, 2003: 159) by questioning the existing master signifiers: ‘so what?’ or ‘but what about?’ (Hillier and Gunder, 2003).

Analytical framework

Based on the detailed elucidation of the master signifier, four discourses and the schemata of four discourses in the previous sections, this research synthesises and develops a detailed three-step framework to analyse the discourse pertaining to a specific planning concept: (1) defining key master signifiers; (2) detecting other three variables from discourse data; and (3) revealing findings by filling the schemata.

The first step in this analytic framework is to define key master signifier(s). Planning discourse never lacks master signifiers as the discourse of future visions usually contains a cluster of concepts that aims to grasp the nodal position in shaping future urban environment. The searching of master signifiers in this analytical framework focuses on the planning concept under investigation and its relevant master signifiers (e.g. comparative ones or counter ones). Positioning the planning concept as the master signifier (S1) provides an entry point to probe complex social effects in the schemata of the four discourses.

The second step is to tease out discourse data and detect other explicit variables. This step scrutinises relevant planning discourse (i.e. planning documents, speeches and publications) about the selected master signifier(s). From a close reading of these materials in different social positions, this step attempts to detect as many variables as possible in the schemata of four discourses. Please note that although the truth and production positions are always unconscious for the speaker and the receiver in Lacanian terms, this third-party archival analysis can uncover some variables in the truth or production positions from synthesising different discourse data.

The last but most important step is to reveal findings by filling the schemata. This step speculates the discourse type based on the data collected and organised in the second step and fills the unknown variables based on the explicit variables. These revealed, hidden variables are the research findings in this analysis. On most occasions, the variables in the top two (agent and other) positions are explicit, while variables at the bottom (truth and production) are latent or hidden. However, in special cases, variables in the production or truth positions are the more ostensible factors to find and determine the type of discourse (see detailed examples in the later case study). This analytical process reveals the real motivation, the consequence and/or the targeted audience of the social effect behind a type of discourse.

Figure 3.

Master’s discourse – institutions’ reactions to a command.

Figure 4.

University discourse – applying the knowledge packages of the urban village to practice.

Figure 5.

Analyst’s discourse – modernists’ criticism on urban villages.

Figure 6.

Hysteric’s discourse – rational evaluations of the urban village.

Although this LDA-based analytical framework is the key purpose and major contribution of this research, its abstractness makes it not easily accessible for comprehending and further reusing. It is a common problem for Lacanian planning research as the introduction part illustrated. To avoid this, the next sections employ the UK urban village movement as a case to demonstrate how this approach uncovers complex social relations in planning policymaking and practice, as an example to use this innovative analytical framework in detail.

Urban village as a master signifier in the UK urban village movement

The urban village emerged during the British planning discourse of the late 1980s when Prince Charles proposed the ‘urban village’ as a new model for community development. In 1990, he called on the Urban Village Group (UVG) – a group of developers, house builders, architects, planners and environmentalists – to further develop his notion into the language of planning and design. Urban villages became a popular concept in British urban practice during the 1990s, on account of Prince Charles’s support and the UVG’s promotion. After lobbying, this concept was eventually included in the UK government’s core planning policies as a concept to denote mixed-use development (DoE, 1997) and sustainable development (DTLR, 2001). More than 50 urban development projects claimed to be ‘urban village projects’ across the UK (Biddulph et al., 2003). As Biddulph (2000: 65) stated in his review, during the peak period of the urban village discourse:

Urban villages seem to be everywhere in the UK. We no longer build only housing or estates. Now we claim to build urban villages.

After nearly 15 years of use, the urban village was no longer widely advocated as the loose nature of this planning concept led to numerous tensions between stakeholders (Biddulph et al., 2002b). Planners, developers and scholars gradually turned their attentions to new concepts on community development, such as ‘millennium village’ and ‘new urbanism’. In 2005, the release of the new national planning policy that did not include any urban village content was considered the official end of the urban village concept in the UK (ODPM, 2005).

In the UK urban village movement, the urban village is a master signifier on account of its crucial role in navigating the urban village discourse. This concept is the primary signifier in narratives concerning urban villages and aims to create knowledge of a new form of community development in the planning discipline. Planners, designers and policymakers imposed their desires onto the urban village and attempted to persuade academics, professional bodies and even society to believe in their ideas and further realise their dreams of urban practice. As a master signifier, urban villages effectively invoked the discussion about future urban communities in the UK. The ‘button tie’ pins narratives – networks of signifiers – to both the individual subject and wider society (Stavrakakis, 1999). In the UK context, the urban village concept provides an arena to argue, communicate, clear up or structure conceptualisations for future urban communities.

Discourse data collection and social positions

In the policymaking process and urban practice around the urban village in the UK, there were various strands of discourses attempting to define, follow and reuse the urban village concept and channel the discourse of urban village. The situation of urban villages in the UK is more complex than the brief introduction in the previous section as many people involved in this movement came from various social positions: ‘[T]he impact of a generic planning concept or spatial planning concept requires the cooperation of many actors’ (Kooij et al., 2014: 87). Rather than deliver facts from the planning professionals to the public, planning policy formulation and urban practice are involved in shaping the public’s identity, as various actors added their opinion and took action towards planning activities, such as planning applications and regulatory compliance (Gunder, 2003).

To better understand the discourse data, this analysis categorises people involved in the UK urban village movement into six key social positions according to their perspectives (summarised in Table 2). The first is the primary and most influential promoter of the urban village – Prince Charles. Second, the UVG – a group of planners, architects, urbanists, estates developers and house builders – is the crucial organisation promoting urban villages. During its existence between 1990 and 2003, this organisation held a series of conferences/seminars on urban villages, published relevant books and reports, and lobbied the UK government. Another important social position is the UK government, which endorsed urban villages in its national and regional planning guidance in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Real estate developers are another key social position in the movement as most investments in urban village projects were from the private sector. Only 4 of 55 urban village projects had a greater input of public money than private investments (Biddulph et al., 2003). Therefore, real estate developers’ interests were a key reason urban village projects were booming in the UK in the early 2000s. The last positions that need to be categorised for this analysis are the commentators on the policies and practice of urban village. This research divided the commentators into two major groups: rational researchers who wrote academic reviews after in-depth research, citing and conducting surveys and site visits, and Modernist defenders who wrote articles/papers based on their existing beliefs of Modernist design. Admittedly, the division is arbitrary to some extent, but it primarily aims to assist the later analysis within the schemata of the four discourses.

Table 2.

Social positions and discourse data.

Social positions	Format of discourse	Sources
Prince Charles	Prince’s speeches, book and broadcasts	Transcripts of speeches from the Prince of Wales website (https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/speeches, accessed on 7 August 2017) A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture (The Prince of Wales, 1989) BBC’s broadcast in 1988: HRH the Prince of Wales: A Vision of Britain (Rossiter, 1988) Prince Charles’s prefaces for the urban village publications (Aldous, 1992; Lichfield and Aldous, 1995; Neal, 2003)
UVG	Handbooks and reports	Urban Villages: A Concept for Creating Mixed-use Urban Developments on a Sustainable Scale (Aldous, 1992) Economics of Urban Villages (Lichfield and Aldous, 1995) Urban Villages and the Making of Communities (Neal, 2003)
UK government	National and regional planning policies	Planning Policy Guidance (PPG, 1997) Planning Policy Statements (PPS, replacing PPG in 2005) Regional Planning Guidance for the South West (1994 and 2001) Draft Regional Spatial Strategy for the South West (2006) National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF, 2012) other Regional Planning Guidance
Real estate developers	Developers’ information package Email correspondence	Developers’ booklets and official websites (http://morrish-builders.co.uk/developments/dorset/poundbury, accessed on 7 July 2017) Email correspondence with Morrish Builders (an estate builder involves in the Poundbury development) conducted between 2 August and 9 September 2016) News reports and interviews in professional magazines between 1990–2017 (see detailed citations in the text)
Rational researchers	Peer-reviewed articles; scientific reports	Google Scholar, Webofknowledge and Scopus between 1990–2017 (see detailed citations in the text)
Modernist defenders	Blogs News reports; magazine articles	Google search (see detailed citations in the text) Newspaper and magazine sections in ProQuest search between 1980–2017 (see detailed citations in the text)

As an influential planning concept in the UK, the discourse of urban villages contains a wide range of sources, including public speeches, government documents (planning guidance, funding initiatives and local plans), media reports, academic publications and statements from the company’s websites (Table 2). The classification based on social positions provides a clearer map of various discourse resources and draws a defined scope of the discourse for further analysis.

Revealing findings of three phenomena

The following sections analyse three phenomena observed in the UK urban village movement with the assistance of the LDA-based analytical framework: the reactions of public institutions to Prince Charles’s request for urban village planning, the mutations of the urban village concept from planning policy to practice, and the professional and public debates on urban villages. The close reading of the categorised discourse data detects possible variables in specific planning discourse (step two). After that, this research speculates the possible types of discourse and reveals the unexpected findings by filling the unknown positions in the schemata (step three). It should be noted that the three steps of the analytical framework may not flow so straightforward for the first instance. It usually comes back and forth in seeking deeper findings in discourse.

Master’s discourse: institutions’ reactions to Prince Charles’s command

As he was extremely unhappy with the dominance of the on-going post-war Modernist urban development($), Prince Charles was the master delivering his dream of new community development under this new label (S1) in the discourse of urban villages in the UK (The Prince of Wales, 1989). Prince Charles took every opportunity to deliver his vision to politicians, architects, planners and developers, via his speeches and writings (Aldous, 1992; Bunting, 1990; Neal, 2003). On account of his enormous political influence, his proposal changed existing regulations and knowledge systems of town planning and the existing paradigms of urban research (S2). The UK government, the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) and Prince Charles’s created UVG all reacted to his urban village concept. After defining these three variables, this research analyses the social effects between Prince Charles and the public institutions involved in this movement within a diagram of the master’s discourse (Figure 3).

The diagram of the master’s discourse indicates that the production of this discourse is merely the unattainable object of desire (a). This means that the production did not fully conform to Prince Charles’ expectations yet still reflected the organisation’s desire to a certain extent. After the formation of the UVG at Prince Charles’s request, a report was produced to guide its practice (Aldous, 1992). However, this publication contains some uncertainties and contradictions as the UVG had to make urban villages flexible and versatile to accommodate its members’ diverse interests. Similarly, the UK government and TCPA adopted this concept to some extent in response to Prince Charles’s request, although through a different set of interpretations (DoE, 1997; Hardy, 2006). The broad definition in the UVG’s manifesto and the contradiction in the planning policies reconfirm that the will of the master (Prince Charles) is difficult to deliver in practice with only the process of imposing a new signifier on the existing planning system.

University discourse: professionals’ interpretations of the manifesto, handbooks and guidance in practice

The dissemination of design guidelines and planning policies (S2) in the name of the urban village concept (S1) can be regarded as a form of university discourse. Nevertheless, its core ideas also shifted among planning policymaking and practice. During the early 1990s, new-build schemes in the designated urban expansion areas were the primary development model of urban villages (Aldous, 1992; Thompson-Fawcett, 1998). Since the late 1990s, the focus shifted to urban regeneration because of difficulties in finding new-build sites, changes in personnel within the UVG and an increasing demand for public money (Biddulph et al., 2002a). Finally, any urban development project with (a touch of) mixed-use were labelled as urban villages (Biddulph et al., 2002b) (Figure 4).

This phenomenon can be interpreted in the diagram of the university discourse (Figure 4): estate developers, planners and architects pursuing their desires for their additional pleasure (a). Therefore, they produced alienated understandings or conduct practice implementations in their own way ($). For instance, the real estate developers did not care about details of the urban village policies and guidelines but only focused on their own desire for ‘an urban product’ that is ‘very marketable’ (Osborne, 1996) or a ‘sales premium’ for good quality master-planning and architecture.⁶ Any non-profitable characteristics of the urban village, such as social housing and mixed social classes, are largely ignored in their discourse.

Analyst’s discourse: public debates I – modernists’ criticism

The analyst’s discourse can help us understand the fierce criticism from Modernist architects and journalists. Since the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 150th Anniversary Gala speech in 1984, Prince Charles ignited an architectural debate between Preservationists and Modernists by strongly attacking the latter (Jencks, 1988).⁷ The debate continued after the Prince shifted his focus to advocating his beliefs under the urban village. Although the UVG technically avoided mentioning the choice of architectural taste (Bunting, 1990), urban village projects in practice, however, were associated with anti-Modernist styles, such as the vernacular style in Poundbury and Lightmoor urban villages (Dorrell, 2003). Therefore, modernist architects and journalists were disappointed with the ideas attached to urban villages (a) and fiercely attacked Prince Charles’s dream with new labels: ‘theme-park city’ (Dench, 1995), ‘townscape manual’ (Ward, 1992) and ‘nostalgic ideal’ (Hutchinson’s interview in BBC, 1990) (new S1). As a deliberate subversion of Prince Charles’s master’s discourse, their criticism can be analysed within the schema of the analytical discourse (Figure 5).

According to the analyst’s discourse, the key reason that Modernist architects and journalists rejected the urban village was that this concept could not fulfil their own desire of the Modernist urban environment. The knowledge about urban villages is different from Modernist architects and journalists’ beliefs in the future built environment, and their established knowledge (S2) was attacked. Therefore, according to their established knowledge, they tried to point out its speculative flaws (S2). Their professional and social positions largely determined their criticism. For instance, the then head of RIBA, Maxwell Hutchinson, spoke out on behalf of the professional society in which Modernist architects comprised the majority. Therefore, their real motivation inevitably made some arguments emotional and biased.

Hysteric’s discourse: public debates II – researchers’ rational evaluations

The majority of researchers were sceptical of the value and feasibility of urban village ($) and questioned this label (S1): How much can urban villages contribute to the popular planning values of urban regeneration (Biddulph, 2003; McArthur, 2000), aesthetics and place-making (Biddulph, 2003; Forsyth and Crewe, 2009), and social and environmental sustainability (Brindley, 2003; McArthur, 2000; Thompson-Fawcett, 2000)? Are urban villages still a fixed planning concept (Biddulph et al., 2003)? Or, do urban villages improve the emergence of women in the public sphere (Roberts, 1997)? Therefore, the two explicit variables are the researchers’ initially different understandings of urban village ($) as the agent and their questions concerning urban villages (S1) (Figure 6).

The schema of the hysteric’s discourse reveals that the real motivation (truth) of the research evaluations was the researchers’ chance to insert their own expertise into the academic discourse of planning policy and practice around urban villages (a). For instance, Thompson-Fawcett (2000: 287) attempted to appropriate urban village into the popular context of sustainability. Almost all researchers attempted to reshape the ideas of urban village in a way that they were familiar with and provide new constructive knowledge following their curiosity about urban villages. For instance, McArthur (2000) suggested that transferring resources from ownership housing to social rented housing might improve social inclusion and social sustainability. These research evaluations added new thoughts to the ideas under the urban village label (S2), encouraging a wider discussion in a broader context in an academically rigorous way.

Discussion: perceptions and actions are based on social positions

One says ‘pleasure in a thing’: but in reality, it is pleasure in oneself by means of a thing. Friedrich Nietzsche (1996: 180)

This study reviewed different social positions and their interactions in the UK urban village movement. It reveals that different social positions have drastically diverse understandings of the urban village. The diverse interpretations inevitably lead to divergence and conflict towards the urban village concept, particularly after this label was vested with further political, financial and academic meaning. For the same planning concept, different standpoints competed to establish a particular version of its ‘reality’ to pursue their own objectives (Jacobs, 1999). With the assistance of the LDA-based analytical framework, this research reveals that the variety of praises about and objections to urban villages were driven by individuals’ judgements of this concept and also closely associated with the participants’ interests/desires, which they hoped to achieve within this label from the perspective of their social positions. This is summarised in Table 3.

Table 3.

Social Positions and their Perceptions and Actions towards urban villages.

Social positions	Interest/desire	Perception/interpretation of the urban village	Actions about the urban village
Prince Charles	Counter the Modernism urban environment	Traditionalist community, development with human scale, intimacy and a vibrant street life	Propose his idea under the urban village label Call for the UVG to further develop his idea Support ‘urban village’ projects through his Prince’s Foundation Implement his idea on his own land -Poundbury - as a pilot project of the urban village movement
UVG	Support Prince Charles’s idea	Mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale, with the characters of pedestrian permeability, walking distance size, public involvement and a quality environment	Publish urban village design/planning/financing manuals Organise urban village conferences and workshops nationwide Lobby for including urban villages in national planning policies
UK government	Bear pressures of lobbying	Large scale mixed-use development, usually within urban areas (PPG1) Sustainable urban development for new or expanded settlements that relate to the major urban areas (RPG10)	Include ‘urban village’ in national and regional planning policies: Planning Policy Guidance 1: General Policy and Principles (PPG1, 1997) and Regional Planning Guidance for the South West (RPG10, 2001) Provide financial support through the English partnership
Real estate developers	Maximise profits	Marketable urban products to boost residents’ living (Osborn) ‘Sales premium’ for good quality master-planning and architecture (Morrish)	Develop their projects as usual, and only pick up the aspects that they feel are profitable to various ideas of urban village Label their projects as an ‘urban village’ only for marketing or fund-seeking, when necessary
Rational researchers	Curious about urban village policies and/or practices	Various understandings, depending on their expertise and research fields, but relatively comprehensive	Conduct urban village related research through on-site observation, surveys, planning/design reviews, interviews and policy analysis Publish academic reports and articles to review urban villages and to point out the advantages and weaknesses of existing projects and policies
Modernist defenders	Believe in the Modernism approach	Various understandings, but principally associated with two ideas: Fake traditionalist, (neo)classic or historic townscape Financially infeasible in modern times	Write articles/blogs/news reports to express worries of the ‘urban village’ Speak out on TV programmes/professional conferences against ‘urban villages’

These different social positions mean that conflicts and compromises exist throughout the planning, policymaking and practice processes. Some conflicts are explicit, such as the tension between Prince Charles and the Modernist architects in casu. However, in most situations, people of various social positions can attain their own interests without explicitly aggravating others’ interests and beliefs. For instance, the actions of planners and architects did not entirely conform to the original manifesto, handbooks and guidance of the urban village concept as they wanted to seek their own ‘pleasure’ under the policy packages. To some extent, social positions, rather than how progressive the urban village ideas were, determined the potential perceptions of and actions towards this label.

Conclusion

Based on Lacan’s theory on discourse, particularly focusing on master signifiers and four discourses, this research developed a three-step analytical framework for probing the discourse of specific planning concepts. This framework enables an insight into the complex social effects in the policy and practice discourse of popular planning concepts. Its demonstrative application in the UK urban village movement used the analogy between master signifiers and the urban village as the foundation and then explored the social effects within this movement by revealing hidden variables in social interactions among the different stakeholders. It illuminated that different social positions have drastically diverse interpretations of the urban village, leading to divergence and conflicts of actions towards this planning concept. Compared with previous studies on urban villages, this approach further reveals some surprising and convincing reasons behind the conflicts in the UK urban village movement. This demonstrative study demonstrates that this analytical framework has the potential of employing the LDA approach to analyse other trendy planning concepts in specific contexts, such as the ‘ecocity policy and practice in China’, ‘understanding Indian smart cities’ and the ‘Rockefeller Foundation’s dream and reality of resilient cities in the USA’.⁸

Do planning concepts matter? To some extent, yes. As master signifiers in planning discourse, they make a discourse readable by imposing a powerfully positive or negative value on the subject-identified signifier. As demonstrated in the UK urban village movement, the communications surrounding urban villages are the first step into infusing values and beliefs into the future urban environment. Planning concepts unite different narratives under the same name to ‘knit together different constituencies, appealing equally, albeit in very different ways to, a variety of classes’ who might be opposed to each other (Hook and Vanheule, 2016: 4). Planning concepts are platforms in which different thoughts compete, collide and ally and they are places for urban planners and scholars to generate novel ideas and knowledge.

However, the public’s passion for new planning concepts is usually short-lived. Many critics and policymakers are eager to interpret new concepts based on their own knowledge system before the popularity disappears (McCann and Ward, 2011). However, concepts need both a normative fit of blending into the existing discourse and a practical fit of translating into an actionable program to retain lasting popularity (Stevenson et al., 2021). Although new concepts might be as ephemeral as the British ‘urban village’, which faded after its popularity of nearly 15 years, their legacy remains for a significantly longer duration if some ideas can be implemented in (re)creating the built environment.

In recognising the limitations, it is necessary to note that this research primarily employed the discourse-related portion of Lacan’s theory, applying it to urban planning as a tool to explore the social effects that are manifested in the planning discourse from a new perspective. It is important to keep in mind that this analytical approach is not an antidote for all urban planning processes (Fink, 1998). It would be dangerous to reduce complex social relations to four specific conditions (Verhaeghe, 1995). In a Lacanian way of speaking, the understanding process between this author and Lacan, or other Lacanian scholars, can never be complete, as the author can only express thoughts in the symbolic form. The major intention of this research is to provide an alternative of detailedly and practically analysing the illogical sphere of human beings in planning activities through planning concepts and their discourse.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

In memory of Michael Gunder, a passionate scholar and supportive friend who guided me to the Lacanian way of planning thinking. I am most grateful to Suzanne Ewing and Ruxandra-Iulia Stoica for their encouraging and inspiring guidance on this research. Thanks to Ann Forsyth and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: China Scholarship Council (Grant/Award Number: ‘201306210041’). Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneurship Talent Program.

ORCID iD

Chuan Wang

Notes

Author Biography

Chuan Wang is a lecturer at the School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing. His research aims to explore how post-structuralist planning theories facilitate planning practice, specialised in Lacan, language and discourse. He is also interested in global mobility of planning theory, particularly between the West and China. His recent publications include an AESOP-sponsored booklet Jacques Lacan: Introducing Thinkers for Planners – a Narrative and Conversation (co-authored with Michael Gunder, 2019). Dr Wang holds a PhD in Architecture (Edinburgh), a Master of Urban and Rural Planning (Tsinghua) and a Bachelor of Architecture (Tsinghua).

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