plaNext–Next Generation Planning is an international peer-reviewed open access e-journal. The young academics network of AESOP founded plaNext to provide prospective authors with an opportunity to engage their ideas in international planning debates as well as to make their research available to the wider planning audience. plaNext invites authors to submit original work that includes: empirical research; theoretical discussions; innovative methodologies; case studies; and book reviews on selected books, textbooks, or specific topics dealing within planning.

View Vol. 11 (2021): Planning Theories from the Global South
Vol. 11 (2021)
Planning Theories from the Global South
Published: 2021-07-01

Editorial introduction

  • Introduction: Planning theories from 'southern turn' to 'deeply rooted/situated in the South/context' A project in the making
    Chandrima Mukhopadhyay, University of Gothenburg, Vanessa Watson
    9-25

    Over the years a growing number of planning and urban theorists located in, or writing on, planning and urban theories in the global South have argued that theories emerged on the basis of assumptions within a northern context that do not ‘fit’ or are not applicable in global South contexts (Rao 2006; Ferguson 2006; Watson 2009; Roy 2009; Myers 2011; Parnell and Robinson 2012). Hence, they maintain, there is a need to rethink the northern bias in planning and urban theory and to develop new concepts, ideas, vocabularies and practices from southern perspectives. McFarlane (2008) uses the...

Research article

  • Generative pedagogies from and for the social production of habitat Learning from HIC-AL School of grassroots urbanism
    Julia Weesley, Adriana Allen, Lorena Zárate, María Silvia Emanuelli
    26-43

    Re-thinking dominant epistemological assumptions of the urban in the global South implies recognising the role of grassroots networks in challenging epistemic injustices through the co-production of multiple saberes and haceres for more just and inclusive cities. This paper examines the pedagogies of such networks by focusing on the experiences nurtured within Habitat International Coalition in Latin America (HIC-AL), identified as a ‘School of Grassroots Urbanism’ (Escuela de Urbanismo Popular). Although HIC-AL follows foremost activist rather than educational objectives, members of...

  • Rooting metropolitan planning in critical theory and participatory practices A university planning experience in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
    Geraldo Costa, Heroisa Costa, Roberto Monte-Mór
    44-61

    The paper aims at contributing to the discussion about planning theory and participatory practices in the Global South by focusing on a planning experience for the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, led by faculty, researchers and students at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, between 2009 and 2019. The initiative unveils the University autonomy in designing and carrying out the metropolitan analyses and planning proposals, in adopting theoretical principles and methodologies and, in developing an outreach programme tightly linked to education and...

  • A Lacanian understanding of the southern planning theorists' identification under the hegemony of western philosophy
    Mohsen Mohammadzadeh
    62-80

    As a planning theorist who has studied and taught planning theory in the Global South and North, I grapple with the question - "What does planning theory mean in the Global South?" To answer this question, I ontologically investigate the meaning of Southern planning theory based on a Lacanian approach. Drawing on the Lacanian theory of human subjectivity, this article explains how planning theorists’ identities are constituted through their interactions within academia. Lacanian discourse theory assists in exploring how most Southern planning theorists adopt, internalise, and use...

  • Inclusion in urban environmental governance of small and intermediary cities of the global South
    Charrlotte Adelina, Diane Archer, Oliver Johnson, Romanus Otieno Opiyo
    81-105

    Urban sustainability is governed beyond the urban scale through trans-local networks and assemblages of actors and institutions. There is an emerging field of interest that aims to understand the outcomes of urban sustainability interventions, both from the environmental and social equity perspectives. This paper contributes to the literature on governing urban environmental sustainability transitions, with a distinct focus on small and intermediary cities of the global South. Actors in cities of the global South are adopting a variety of ways towards achieving urban sustainability...

  • Legacies of mistrust Why colonial imprints on the implementation of fiscal reforms in Mozambique and Mexico matter
    Gabriella Y. Carolini, Sarra Lynn Hess
    106-124

    National authorities across Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa have implemented various forms of fiscal decentralization over the past three decades with equivocal results. The design of such reforms haslong rested on theories based on the experiences of high-income countries’ efforts at increasing local autonomy, accountability, and basic service efficiencies.  Critics of the global advocacy for fiscal decentralization, however, point to several challenges with its implementation across diverse political economies that differ...

  • Infrastructural insurgency Constructing situated data at Brazil’s urban periphery
    Kristine Stiphany
    125-143

    This paper focuses onhow insurgenciesare continually recastin parallel to State-led redevelopment or 'upgrading'. It brings attention to communities that shape and are reshaped by inclusion of data in processes through which citizens participate in city-making. Drawing onacomparative casestudy of intensively upgraded informal settlements in São Paulo, Brazil, findings show that data-based insurgencies have been forged from prior collective action. The resultant co-created or situated data challenge the State’s legitimacy as sole arbiter of informal settlement representation and...

  • Retrofitting, repurposing and re-placing A multi-media exploration of occupation in Cape Town, South Africa
    Liza Rose Cirolia, Nobukhosi Ngwenya, Barry Christianson, Suraya Scheba
    144-165

    The vast majority of city planning literature on informal occupations has focused on how residents occupy vacant and peripheral land, developing informal structures to address their basic needs. A smaller body of work, but one with much purchase in South Africa, explores the informal occupation of existing formal structures and how residents infuse these emergent places with social and political meaning. Across this work, occupations represent a dominant mode of city-building in the Global South. Contributing to this debate on city-making and occupations, this paper departs from an...

  • Housing systems in the Global South The relevance of the ‘social housing’ approach in meeting housing needs
    Alireza Vaziri Zadeh, Frank Moulaert, Stuart Cameron
    166-183

    This paper addresses the problem of accessing decent and affordable housing in the Global South, where the housing need is, in general, more problematic than in the Global North. The paper first identifies five distinctive characteristics of housing systems in the Global South as compared to those in the Global North. These include: (a) the diverse facets of global financialization; (b) the role of the developmentalist state; (c) the importance of informality; (d) the decisive role of the family; and (e) the rudimentary welfare systems. Given these features, the paper reflects on the...

  • Gentrifying the Brazilian city? Convergences and divergences in urban studies
    Marina Toneli Siqueira
    184-192

    There is a growing number of processes in Brazilian cities that have been identified as gentrification. However, the classic definition of gentrification as a process of transformation of existing urban housing stocks by new homeowners with a higher socio-economic profile poses challenges to understand recent empirical data coming from Brazil and the Global South more generally. Instead of dismissing them as deviant cases, this paper challenges the Northern empirical foundations of gentrification theory and calls for a new methodological approach to both classic and new cases that take...

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Join the Editorial Board of plaNext––Next Generation Planning!

2022-05-14

plaNext is an international open-access peer-reviewed journal devoted to young academics within planning and other related fields. It is managed by the Young Academics Network of AESOP, publishing high-quality and original research. The fundamental approach taken by plaNext is to provide prospective authors an opportunity to engage their ideas in international planning debates as well as to make their research available to the wider planning audiences.

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