‘Like Nailing Jelly To A Wall’: what observing meetings tells us about the agency of planners in contemporary planning practice

Abstract

It is commonplace to assert that planners have limited ‘acting space,’ or agency nowadays. In this paper we assess this contention through ethnographic analysis of ‘sites of practice’, specifically an under-studied but important area of planning work, the meeting. Using examples we confirm Beauregard’s proposition that powerplays of land, capital, and regulation interweave with the micropolitics present in practice situations to explain why particular outcomes emerge from planning processes. We also note the skills displayed by planners and others that emerge through ethnographic observation of meetings, noting how they might be deployed to claw back a degree of agency but also how issues such as gender play a hidden role in such processes. We conclude with calls for more attention to researching the everyday routines of planners and to a greater focus in research and planning education on questions of equality and diversity in workplaces and built environment professions.

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