Planning for a Material World

Today, urban scholars think of cities and regions as evolving through networks of human associations, technologies, and natural ecologies. This being the case, planners are faced with thea task of navigating a profoundly material world. Planninga with and for humans alone is unacceptable: in the unfolding of urban processes, non-human things cannot be ignored. This inclusive vision has consequences for how planners envision the connections among norms, technologies and life-worlds as well as how they design and implement their plans.a The contributors to this volume utilize a variety of examples - ecologically-sensitive, regional planninga in Naples (Italy); congestion pricing in New York City; and public participationa in Europe, among others - to explore how plannersa engage a heterogeneous and restless world. Inspired by assemblage thinking and actor-network theory, each chapter draws on this "e;new materialism"e; to acknowledge, in quite pragmatic ways, that spatial politics is a process of becoming that is inseparable from the materiality of urban practices.