“Because I am who I am and my mother is Scottish”: neoliberal planning and entrepreneurial instincts at Trump International Golf Links Scotland

Abstract

Focusing on the establishment of the first European Trump Golf development – on the Menie Estate along the Scottish North Sea coast – the paper contends that neoliberal planning, understood as state interventions to allow individual entrepreneurs to realise their visions, reshapes both planning practice and the socio-ecologies governed by planning in problematic ways. Neoliberal mindsets here cause politicians to depart from previously established practices. The paper analyses how governance becomes tied up in questions of entrepreneurial freedom and with beliefs in the capacity of an individual entrepreneur to steer the fate of the region.

Keywords:

• celebrity
• leisure
• neoliberalism
• planning
• tourism

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to Wim Carton, Iain Hay, Eric Clark and two anonymous referees for providing extensive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the Swedish Research Council for the Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS) and a fieldwork grant from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG).

Notes

1. The full name is actually Trump International Golf Club Scotland Limited (with Registration Number SC292100), but the development has mostly been labelled Trump International Golf Links Scotland, Trump International Golf Links, or sometimes Trump International, Scotland. Since most documents, especially during the first years of the development, used the term TIGLS this is what we utilise in this article.

2. SSSI is a UK environmental protection designation given to sites due to their biological and/or geological interests. Scottish SSSI's are protected by law from development, damage or neglect through lists of Operations Requiring Consent (ORC's) from Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). Such protection is not absolute but rather an acknowledgement that the SSSI interests should be weighed against other factors.

3. Since interviews were carried out, Neil Hobday has left TIGLS.

4. We are grateful to one referee for suggesting this particular phrasing to us.