The “Flatness” of Deleuze and Guattari: Planning the City as a Tree or as a Rhizome?

Abstract

Flat ontology has become an umbrella term for several theoretically based approaches, notably Delanda’s controversial reconstruction of DeleuzoGuattarian concepts. I highlight key divergences in Delanda’s “flat ontology” from that of Deleuze and Guattari’s “flattening” of multiplicities on a plane of immanence. The rhizome is arguably the concrete image of Deleuze and Guattari’s multiplicity, constituted by intensive relations, or becomngs, between heterogeneous singularities. A rhizomatic multiplicity contrasts markedly with the hierarchical dualism of the pseudomultiplicities of arborescent structures.

Referencing Marston et al.’s “flat” site-ontology, I introduce sites as DeleuzoGuattarian eventspaces; emergent properties of entangled human and non-human relations and their capacities to affect and be affected. I select two spatial planning sites from urban fringe Australia, both of which involve significant transformation of (semi-)riparian habitat. One illustrates an arborescent system of thought and practice and the other a more rhizomatic approach which explores the situational potential of human/non-human encounters. I explore capacities of both sites to affect humans and non-humans and how the respective planning systems engage with them. I then question the possibility of rhizomatic planning practices, whether arborescence is inevitable, or whether a double-structure is possible, before concluding that a double-structure may afford glimpses of the bi-directionality or “flattening” of DeleuzoGuattarian multiplicity – “both/and” – an inclusive disjunctive synthesis of becoming.

Notes

1 Whilst assemblage is another DeleuzoGuattarian concept which is widely used (and abused), I have no space to discuss it here.

2 A rhizomorph is an aggregation of parallel fungal threads intertwining like strands of rope. It is rhizome-like, though more structural. Deleuze and Guattari explain the difference: “A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles are rhizomorphic” (1987: 6).

3 Since this is not the focus of my paper, in the spirit of Deleuze, I simply list differences without passing judgement. References are given for interested readers to follow debates further.

4 According to Buchanan (2015: 389), Delanda proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, Deleuze and Guattari from the abstract to the concrete; Delanda requires a transcendent “real” to underpin an immanent form of organisation, Deleuze and Guattari do away with transcendence; Delanda reverses Deleuze and Guattari’s actual-virtual relation.

5 As we now recognise with coronavirus.

6 See Duckham (2014: 34–41) for a list of plans and policies relevant to the 2015 version of the Frasers Landing ODP.

7 Management Plans for Mosquitoes, Urban Water, Environment, Nutrient and Irrigation and Fill, Artificial Water Bodies, Wildlife, Vegetation Retention, Vegetation, Flora Retention, Foreshore and Core Conservation Reserve, Acid Sulphate Soils (City of Mandurah 2015, Appendix 10).

8 Darwin = c150 000; Perth = c2.0 million; NT = c212 000; WA = c2.6 million.

9 As the Breezes development is undertaken by Defence Housing Australia on Australian Defence Force land, application was also necessary to the Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works.

10 Mosquitoes contribute to the breakdown of detritus and recycling of nutrients in aquatic systems, provide food for other species and pollinate plants. Some species carry pathogens which negatively affect human health.

11 After Whelan’s retirement and prepared by new planning consultants, the Area Plan for extension to the Muirhead development was more arborescent in nature and has faced problems receiving planning approval. The NT EPA, for instance, assessed that the development “would likely increase mosquito problems for future residents of the proposed development as well as existing residents in adjacent subdivisions” (NTEPA 2018: 24).

12 It is important, however, that there be no “universal” requirement, as rhizomes develop through particular and partial connections.

13 I am reminded, by the editors, of descriptions of “soft spaces” of “joined-up” or network governance which integrates public and non-public sector agents of governance across a range of fields and spaces in a semior informal manner and which exist “outside, alongside or inbetween” (Mäntysalo, Bäcklund 2018: 244) the “hard spaces” of statutorily defined and institutionally fixed spatialities (Allmendinger, Haughton 2009; Faludi 2013; Haughton et al. 2010). Whilst discussions of soft and hard spaces seek to develop a “nonterritorialist cartography” (Faludi 2013: 1306) to varying degrees, the authors do not engage a DeleuzoGuattarian form of territorialisation in which territories are more than spaces. Territorialisation can be social, conceptual, linguistic or affective. Territory is not given, but constituted through a form of coding or action on, or capture of, individual or social forces which seeks to provide meaning and order, and thereby to limit or constrain their possibilities for action. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) associate territorialisation with deterritorialisation (acts to remove coding) and reterritorialisation (the establishment of new codes).

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Jean Hillier

Jean Hillier is Emeritus Professor with the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include poststructural planning theory and methodology for strategic practice in conditions of uncertainty, planning with non-human animals, and problematisation of cultural heritage practices in spatial planning, particularly in China. Recent books include Connections: exploring contemporary planning theory and practice with Patsy Healey (2015), edited with Jonathan Metzger; Deleuze and Guattari for Planners (InPlanning e-book, 2013, with Gareth Abrahams); Complexity and the Planning of the Built Environment (2012) edited with Gert de Roo and Joris Van Wezemael. Recent relevant articles include: ‘Is extermination to be the legacy of Mary Gilbert’s cat?’ (with Jason Byrne) Organization (2016); ‘Make kin, not cities! Multispecies entanglements and ‘becoming-world’ in planning theory’, (with Diana MacCallum, Wendy Steele, Donna Houston and Jason Byrne) Planning Theory (2017); ‘Cat-alysing attunement’, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning (2017); ‘No Place To Go? Management of Non-Human Animal Overflows in Australia’, European Management Journal (2017); ‘Towns within Towns: From incompossibility to inclusive disjunction in urban spatial planning’, (with Jonathan Metzger) Deleuze and Guattari Studies (2021).