Solutions in Search of Problems: The construction of urban inequality in "smart growth" discourse

Abstract

This paper interrogates the discursive formation of social inequalities within descriptions of urban growth. The term growth ff encompasses a contradictory bundle of built projects, planning practices, and public policy measures. In addition to its multiple material and institutional iterations, smart growth is also a type of discourse, articulating disparate social problems to sprawling urban growth. In yoking social inequalities to the built legacy of suburban sprawl, smart growth acts as a legitimating discourse for particular planning interventions. Identifying an archive of smart growth literature, this project analyzes the representations of social inequalities within explanations of how smart growth acts as a solution to the problem of sprawl. The tension between the description of public problems and the development of state solutions turns attention to the structure of power within the deployment of narratives about urban development, while the representations of how sprawl produces social inequalities tells us about the political stakes and stakeholders in the struggle to define smart growth. By understanding urban inequalities within particular ideas about smart growth, this project furthers research on the limitations and political potentials of emerging efforts to describe the relationship

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