infonet-economy

In recent years, attempts to move urban planning from a focus on formal designs to processes of organizing that take place outside and across the boundaries of well-defined planning projects have gathered steam. The presentation seeks to contribute to this movement through a conceptual and empirical reconsideration and revitalization of the notion of participation. Empirically, the presentation is based on an ethnographic study of a so-called participatory urban development process dedicated to the question of whether and what kind of a new art museum should be built in a medium-sized city in Switzerland. Drawing upon Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and its after, I introduce new concepts into the participation debate and reconstruct how the planning and imagination of a new museum is performed through heterogeneous "modes of ordering" (Law 1994). Based on my analysis, I will argue that a performative politics of participatory processes consists of taking into account the controversies between multiple organizational realities, and their ongoing translations.