IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v57y2020i14p2885-2900.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rigour and rigour mortis? Planning, calculative rationality, and forces of stability and change

Author

Listed:
  • Iain White

Abstract

A defining feature of planning is that it is informed by sound evidence. An ever more diverse range of decision support tools is available to help achieve this, a trend that is set to accelerate along with the rise of Big Data and Smart Cities. At the same time, planning is frequently requested to improve the urban and environmental outcomes it helps deliver. This research draws upon intellectual resources from Science and Technology Studies, and empirical data from actors across the science–policy–practice interface, to analyse critically issues connected to the design, application and wider effects of calculative practices within planning. It finds that these practices selectively open up or foreclose discourses and play important political roles relating to ordering complexity and mitigating professional risk. They are also revealed as underpinning a stability and certainty within decision making that not only maintains the power of established calculative agencies but also serves to replicate an ideology of urban form that is in tension with more normative calls for change. More broadly, the findings help unsettle the planner and planning policy as the key agent able to change planning outcomes, which is instead revealed as more contingent on the political, institutional and professional culture, and the ways human and non-human objects align and combine to create internal stability when there are external calls for change.

Suggested Citation

  • Iain White, 2020. "Rigour and rigour mortis? Planning, calculative rationality, and forces of stability and change," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(14), pages 2885-2900, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:57:y:2020:i:14:p:2885-2900
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098019886764
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098019886764
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098019886764?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donald Mackenzie & Fabian Muniesa & Lucia Siu, 2007. "Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics," Post-Print halshs-00149145, HAL.
    2. repec:elg:eebook:16021 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. James Porter & David Demeritt, 2012. "Flood-Risk Management, Mapping, and Planning: The Institutional Politics of Decision Support in England," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(10), pages 2359-2378, October.
    4. Peter Miller, 2008. "Calculating Economic Life," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 51-64, March.
    5. Louise David & Ludovic Halbert, 2014. "Finance Capital, Actor-Network Theory and the Struggle Over Calculative Agencies in the Business Property Markets of Mexico City Metropolitan Region," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(3), pages 516-529, March.
    6. Laurence Murphy, 2014. "'Houston, we've got a problem': The Political Construction of a Housing Affordability Metric in New Zealand," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(7), pages 893-909, October.
    7. Donald MacKenzie, 2006. "An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262134608, April.
    8. Robert L. Heilbroner, 1979. "Modern Economics As a Chapter in the History of Economic Thought," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 192-198, Summer.
    9. Brett Christophers, 2014. "Wild Dragons in the City: Urban Political Economy, Affordable Housing Development and the Performative World-making of Economic Models," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 79-97, January.
    10. Michel Callon & Fabian Muniesa, 2005. "Economic markets as calculative collective devices," Post-Print halshs-00087477, HAL.
    11. Michel Callon, 2009. "Elaborating the notion of performativity," Post-Print hal-00460877, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vollmer, Hendrik & Mennicken, Andrea & Preda, Alex, 2009. "Tracking the numbers: Across accounting and finance, organizations and markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 619-637, July.
    2. Walter, Christian, 2016. "The financial Logos: The framing of financial decision-making by mathematical modelling," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 597-604.
    3. Williams, James W., 2013. "Regulatory technologies, risky subjects, and financial boundaries: Governing ‘fraud’ in the financial markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 544-558.
    4. Roberts, John & Jones, Megan, 2009. "Accounting for self interest in the credit crisis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 856-867, August.
    5. Aspers, Patrik, 2009. "How are markets made?," MPIfG Working Paper 09/2, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    6. Mennicken, Andrea & Miller, Peter & Samiolo, Rita, 2008. "Accounting for economic sociology," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 10(1), pages 3-7.
    7. Callon, Michel, 2009. "Civilizing markets: Carbon trading between in vitro and in vivo experiments," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(3-4), pages 535-548, April.
    8. Quintin Bradley, 2022. "The accountancy of marketisation: Fictional markets in housing land supply," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(3), pages 493-507, May.
    9. Neil Crosby & John Henneberry, 2016. "Financialisation, the valuation of investment property and the urban built environment in the UK," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 53(7), pages 1424-1441, May.
    10. Pucci, Richard & Skærbæk, Peter, 2020. "The co-performation of financial economics in accounting standard-setting: A study of the translation of the expected credit loss model in IFRS 9," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    11. Preda, Alex, 2009. "Brief encounters: Calculation and the interaction order of anonymous electronic markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 675-693, July.
    12. Möllering, Guido, 2009. "Market constitution analysis: A new framework applied to solar power technology markets," MPIfG Working Paper 09/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    13. Pierpaolo Andriani & Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, 2015. "Transactional innovation as performative action: transforming comparative advantage in the global coffee business," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 371-400, April.
    14. Hanna Hilbrandt & Monika Grubbauer, 2020. "Standards and SSOs in the contested widening and deepening of financial markets: The arrival of Green Municipal Bonds in Mexico City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(7), pages 1415-1433, October.
    15. Franck Aggeri, 2017. "How can performativity contribute to management and organization research? Theoretical perspectives and analytical framework [Qu'est-ce que la performativité peut apporter aux recherches en managem," Post-Print hal-01609172, HAL.
    16. Pollock, Neil & D’Adderio, Luciana, 2012. "Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings, graphic visualisations and sociomateriality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 565-586.
    17. Gerhard Rainer, 2021. "Geographies of qualification in the global fine wine market," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(1), pages 95-112, February.
    18. Faulconbridge, James R. & Muzio, Daniel, 2021. "Valuation devices and the dynamic legitimacy-performativity nexus: The case of PEP in the English legal profession," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    19. Katrin Hirte, 2020. "Das doppelte Reflexionsproblem in der Oekonomik," ICAE Working Papers 115, Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy.
    20. Millo, Yuval, 2007. "From green fields to green felt tables and back: the origin of index-based derivatives," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36124, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:57:y:2020:i:14:p:2885-2900. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.