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In this paper I explore how the culture of land-use planning in Scotland has been targeted as an object of modernising reform, exploring how ‘culture change’ initiatives played a prominent role in stabilising a new settlement around ‘open for business’ planning between 2006 and 2012, containing potential tensions between diverse goals to make planning more efficient, inclusive and integrative. This highlights the potentially significant role of governance cultures in containing tensions and securing consent to processes of state restructuring. I therefore argue that greater empirical attentiveness to the cultural micro-politics of state restructuring can improve understanding of complex, contemporary dynamics of change, and the contested role of the neoliberal hegemonic project in reshaping urban governance. I conclude by arguing that the continued power of neoliberal critiques of the inefficiency of land-use planning indicate a need to acknowledge and engage contemporary cultural battles over the purposes of planning and urban governance. 本文将探讨苏格兰的土地利用规划文化如何成为现代化改革的目标，并探讨“文化变革”举措 在2006-2012年间围绕“商业开放” 规划建立新定居点方面发挥的重要作用，包含使规划更加 高效、包容和一体的不同目标之间的潜在紧张关系。这凸显了治理文化在遏制紧张局势和确保 与国家重建进程步调一致方面发挥的潜在重要作用。因此，作者认为，在经验层面更多地关注 国家重建的文化微观政治，有助于更好地理解复杂的当代变革机制以及新自由主义霸权项目在 重塑城市治理中发挥的争议性作用。最后，文章指出，对土地利用规划之低效率的持续新自由 主义批判表明，有必要承认并参与当代关于规划和城市治理之目的的文化论战。

What is required of the citizen to make planning more democratic? In this article, I argue this previously overlooked question illuminates key challenges for democratising planning in theory and practice. Distinguishing between deliberative and agonistic conceptions of communicative planning, I review the qualities these theories demand of citizens. Through examples from Scotland, I then contrast this with the roles citizens are currently invited to perform within a growth-orientated planning culture, drawing attention to techniques that use constructions of 'good' and 'bad' citizenship to manage conflict generated by development. I conclude by suggesting that while 'ordinary' citizens' experiences draw attention to the strengths and weaknesses of deliberative and agonistic accounts, they also highlight hidden costs associated with participation that present significant challenges for the project of shaping a more democratic form of planning.

This article explores the value of Stuart Hall’s approach to conjunctural analysis for examining the complex relations between ideology and planning. By ‘thinking conjuncturally’, we explore planning as a site where multiple social, economic and political forces coalesce; ideology is one of these forces whose role and influence must be tracked alongside others. To illustrate this, we draw on recent and ongoing planning reforms in England and their relationship with housing development. Highlighting the faltering role of a particular ideological formation in ‘suturing together contradictory lines of argument and emotional investments’ around housing and planning, this article draws attention to planning as a space where ideological struggle takes place within the frame of a broader, contingent cultural hegemony. This struggle may help to reaffirm that hegemony, but it can also open space for alternative visions to be articulated, with potential to transform dominant logics of planning, and reveal routes to practical and progressive action.

This Special Issue starts from the premise that the concept of ideology holds significant analytical potential for planning but that this potential can only be realised if ideology is brought to the fore of analysis. By naming ideology and rendering it visible, we hope to bring it out from the shadows and into the open to examine its value and what it can tell us about the politics of contemporary planning. The articles in this Special Issue therefore seek to contribute to established academic debates by exploring some of the ways ideology can be deployed as a tool in the analysis of planning problems. This article introduces the Special Issue by exploring the various accounts in the articles of (1) what ideology is; (2) what its effects are; (3) where ideology may be identified and (4) what different theories of ideology can tell us about planning. There inevitably remain many un-answered questions, paths not taken and debates left unaddressed. We hope other scholars will be inspired (or provoked) to address these omissions in the future.

Recent political developments in many parts of the world seem likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the planetary-scale challenges of social polarization, inequality and environmental change societies face. In this unconventional multi-authored essay, we therefore seek to explore some of the ways in which planning theory might respond to the deeply unsettling times we live in. Taking the multiple, suggestive possibilities of the theme of unsettlement as a starting point, we aim to create space for reflection and debate about the state of the discipline and practice of planning theory, questioning what it means to produce knowledge capable of acting on the world today. Drawing on exchanges at a workshop attended by a group of emerging scholars in Portland, Oregon in late 2016, the essay begins with an introduction section exploring the contemporary resonances of ‘unsettling’ in, of and for planning theory. This is followed by four, individually authored responses which each connect the idea of unsettlement to key challenges and possible future directions. We end by calling for a reflective practice of theorizing that accepts unsettlement but seeks to act knowingly and compassionately on the uneven terrain that it creates.

The last 50 years have not only seen major changes in the forms and practices participation but also in the ways in which it has been characterized and unders Alongside the report of the Skeffington Committee on public participation in planning, 1969 saw the publication of Sherry Arnstein's 'ladder of participation' which famously typified participation from tokenism to citizen control. Since the ladder has been replaced by the networks of collaborative planning and both have been challenged by the focus on planning's 'dark side' where participation is associated with coercive forms of governmentality and governance through community. This article discusses the evolution of these ideas, not to provide a historiography perse, but to highlight the themes, issues and contradictions they suggest lie behin participation. These include debates about the extent to which power can ever devolved to the people; clashes between the different modes of governance inherent in planning (representative, legal/bureaucratic, participatory); the significance of action outside the formal participation apparatus (insurgent planning); and the ways in which the publics of planning have been made and remade within differemt planning regimes, often with profound implications for the inclusion and exclusion of different social groups and concerns. The article concludes that as a result public participation in planning can be seen as a shifting terrain of underlying tension and contradictions, which presents both openings and closures for citizens seeking ot influence the use and development of land.

Nature-Based Solutions concepts and practices are being used worldwide as part of attempts to address societal challenges but have also been criticised for not dealing with deeper transformations needed to face urgent issues including biodiversity loss, climate change and inclusion. In this paper, we explore how an inclusive, integrated and long-sighted approach, emphasising a more radical integration of nature within cities, might support the transformations needed to endure major contemporary challenges. Addressing important emerging critiques of Nature-Based Solutions, we consider the potential of a more incisive form of Nature-Based Thinking (NBT) in cities, based on more holistic perspectives. The paper draws on a reflective and iterative research process that engaged both the research and practice communities through a symposium and a series of futures workshops that together explored the potential of NBT to develop future nature-cities relations in Europe and Latin America. The results of the reflective process suggest that notions of nature with people —not for people— new organisational structures, and the intention and capacity to apply long-term perspectives, are needed when planning for NBS interventions aimed at sustainable urban development. This includes developing a cultural-structural change based on new and inclusive understandings of human–nature relations, and novel governance paradigms that allow cross-sectoral coordination and engagement of local stakeholders beyond formal organisational structures.

Dr Andy Inch University of Sheffield, Michael Edwards UCL, Bob Colenutt University of Northampton, Dr Tim Marshall Oxford Brookes University, Dr Jenny Pickerill University of Leicester, Dr Sara Gonzalez University of Leeds, Dr Nancy Holman LSE and 50 others See guardian.co.uk/letters