Towards a New Radical Approach to Planning: Taking Arendt's Theory of Action Seriously

Society certainly is in a mode of crisis. In planning, too, we are facing obvious limitations. The different approaches to participatory planning have failed in many cases. A possible ways out of this situation is to take Hannah Arendt’s theory of action serious. Arendt’s ideas have recently been discussed again in the face of the crisis and is acknowledged to have enormous transformative potential from multiple angles. That’s what we need, a complete transformation of our society in order to drastically reduce CO2 emissions within the next eight years. In times of crisis Arendt advocates for keeping the space for political action open and promoting an essential (re)politicisation at all levels. However, her deep insights hardly have been taken up in planning so far. The aim of this project is to translate the radical and thus transformative basic concept of Arendt's political theory of action for planning, to co-creatively develop a new action-oriented approach to planning and to experimentally test it in a setting dramaturgically adapted to Arendt's concept of an associative-communicative power to act. Planning is political to the core. Therefore, according to the thesis of this project, citizen participation needs to be understood as citizen power, the decision-making process needs to be transformed and, accordingly, completely reconceptualised. Arendt's non-authoritarian concept of politics, her conception of citizen power as associative-communicative political power to act and her descriptions of subsidiary and agonal decision-making structures can serve as a guideline. Thinking with Arendt, it is a question of how planning can recognise the moments of political action, keep them open through adequate framework conditions as everyday space. A pluralistically constituted and egalitarian public space, is crucial here, both in the process and in the outcome of planning. For the implementation of the project, the starting point is the translation of Arendt's theory of action into the language of planning. Subsequently, the central Arendtian distinctions (poiesis and praxis, labour, work and action, private and public sphere) will be examined by analysing three case studies in which attempts of pluralistically constituted spaces for action have been realised (Baugruppen, community gardens). Planners, stakeholders and administrative staff from the case studies or similar projects will be invited to develop a new planning approach in a co-creative process and test it performatively in two workshops. The result is a concept for pilot projects with a radically new approach to planning that combines poiēsis and praxis (praxis as doing and an end in itself and poiēsis as the making and producing of external ends) in such a way that public-political everyday spaces can emerge in the process and as a result.