Paper short abstract:

The focus of the proposed paper discusses and compares the technologies, modalities and trajectories of planning in Zurich and Vienna. To do so, it rethinks the performative logics of the planning exercise by portraying the situated, allocated and enacted framings of the city in the displacement of politics.

Paper long abstract:

While the planning department - conceived as the figurative institution for the development of urban territories - has progressively gained in relevance and established as a prominent component and passage point within city governance structures, the allocated role of the planner has seemingly become less obvious. The operational characteristics of planning range from deliberative policy-making to normative agenda-setting, often mashed up in political discourses, technical narratives and expert-driven scenarios. The emphasis of this inquiry lies on the multiplicity, asymmetry and modalities of the planning exercise. In other words, by making (urban) politics into an empirical question, this contribution traces the distribution of planning activity within governance networks, by rethinking the framings of planning practices in political machineries and examining through what means and back-loops human and non-human actors shape and stabilise socio-technical arrangements. Following an irreductive approach and drawing on post-ANT's pragmatic-experimentalist strands within STS, the proposed study will compare the technologies and trajectories of zoning-related phenomena embedded in the wider contexts of the local planning procedures in Zurich and Vienna. The observed evidence is described, reviewed and discussed by drawing together three comparative repertoires: (i) an analysis of disruptive moments relative to the emergence of relevant urban issues, (ii) an understanding of the nexus between innovation and expectations within planning practice, and, (iii) a review of public platforms as performative and mobilising persuasion tools of urban development.