Detachment in Planning Practice

ABSTRACT

Despite increasing privatization of planning, little is known about the practices, feelings, and values of planners in the private sector. Likewise, although scholars acknowledge the potential regressive outcomes of planning, the involvement of planners in regressive practices remains understudied. This paper focuses on the practices of private sector planning professionals involved in the making of suburban gated communities in Brazil. The analysis reveals that these planners understand their practices through a narrow lens as they approach planning through political, professional, and valuative detachment.

KEYWORDS:

• Private sector
• planning practice
• regressive planning
• gated communities
• detachment
• Brazil

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank PTP editors Jill Grant and Heather Campbell and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and thoughtful comments. I am also grateful for engaging conversations with John Forester, Charlie Hoch, and Anne Taufen that helped to shape the ideas here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Campbell and Marshall (1998) included two private sector planners among the eleven planners who participated in their focus groups.

2. Elsewhere (Zanotto, 2016), I referred to SGC as “global suburbs.” This term emphasizes the proliferation of these developments as a global phenomenon and highlights the role of globalization in enabling the reproduction of the American suburban model (see Fishman, 2002).

3. For the role of other actors involved in the making of suburban gated communities see Zanotto (2016).

4. For more details regarding the methodology of this study, see Zanotto (2016).

Additional information

Funding

The research conducted for this paper was partially funded by CAPES, the Brazilian Agency for the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, Grant BEX 1051/12-1.

Notes on contributors

Juliana M. Zanotto

Juliana M. Zanotto is a researcher and instructor at the School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, where she also coordinates the Empowering Sustainability initiative. Her research focuses on the practices of urban planners and designers to understand the relationship between social processes and the production of space. She is interested in theorizing from the Global South and in exploring qualitative methodologies to connect theory and practice. Email: [email protected]