‘Time’ as a focus for planning research: exploring temporalities of coastal change

ABSTRACT

‘Time’ is a taken-for-granted backdrop for most planning research. However, a nascent body of work suggests the need for greater sensitivity to the influence of time in stimulating views on what ‘is’ happening and ‘should be’ done about it. This paper extends such work by exploring how temporalities shape interpretations of reality in ways that can profile thinking and action. To achieve this, the paper mobilises the ‘assemblage theory’ of Deleuze and Guattari to facilitate an analysis of how signification and significance is constituted in the context of planning for change. A case study of coastal erosion is used to empirically explore the role of temporalities in contouring ontological, epistemological and normative perspectives. The analysis demonstrates that temporalities can be plural – and consequently political – in planning debates. This is important for planning research and practice as it suggests that attempting to appreciate diverging viewpoints in the absence of attention to different temporalities limits the capacity for understanding, and as such, curtails the feasibility of finding resolution to contentious planning issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Time
• temporalities
• climate change
• coastal erosion
• Deleuze and Guattari
• assemblage theory

Introduction

Although time is a ubiquitous presence in planning literature, it is usually invisible and habitually overlooked as something meriting attention (Abram, 2014; Connell, 2009). Yet, ‘planning only exists in time, and time opens up the possibility of planning’ (Laurian & Inch, 2019, p. 281). Seen in this light, ‘Planning, in its most elemental form, is a way of conceptualizing space and time, and the possibilities that time offers space’ (Abram & Weszkalnys, 2013, p. 3). Consequently, omitting time as a concern for planning research is problematic as it reduces the explanatory potential of such work by disregarding what is a key dimension profiling our understanding of space, and what should be done with it.

In response to this knowledge deficit, this paper examines how perceptions of time may influence thought and action on what ought to be done and why. Specifically, the paper reports on an exploratory case study of planning for coastal change. This teases apart how differences in perceptions of time may shape divergent views on how we should plan for change. Here, the normal conceptual order is reversed, such that the inevitability of ‘change’ becomes the background against which the different ways of apprehending the temporality of change emerges as something whose disparate conceptualisations may shape understandings of how the coast is contoured and what should be done about it. The paper mobilises the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari to supply the theoretical apparatus for identifying and unveiling the processes through which alternative perspectives on time can create different standpoints in decision-making.

Following this short introduction, the paper is organised into four sections. The next section profiles how time has been considered in planning research. This section distinguishes and discusses the problematic of how time is approached in planning academia. The subsequent section profiles the philosophical grounding of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘assemblage theory’ and outlines how the various concepts associated with it can help redress the identified problematic of time in planning academia. Following this, the conceptual tools supplied by Deleuze and Guattari are applied to a case of coastal change in Castlemaine Harbour, Ireland. This empirically highlights the influence of different perceptions of time on decision-making. The paper closes with a discussion that draws conclusions from the foregoing on how deploying the work of Deleuze and Guattari can help elucidate the importance of time as a key variable in planning research.

‘Time’ in planning research

A nascent vein of enquiry has sought to redress the deficit of attention afforded temporalities in planning research by demonstrating the conceptual centrality of ‘time’ as an often unacknowledged concern of planning practice (Henneberry, 2017; Kitchin, 2019; Madanipour, 2017; Moore-Cherry & Bonnin, 2018; Wolf & Van Dooren, 2018). For example, Raco et al. (2018) demonstrate how time can be used as a resource within the development management process, such that ‘it represents a source of both power and control’, and can help explain ‘why and how urban development projects in major cities have become increasingly global in scale and disconnected from broader social needs and objectives’ (p.1190). Degen echoes and extends these findings through the careful use of longitudinal studies to show that ‘while the working of time is intangible, it is framed through social and institutional practices and its ordering effects can be grasped by focusing on technologies of time, discourses of time and experimental symptoms of time’ (2018:, p. 1077). Although most of this work has concentrated on the urban realm, a small but increasing number of researchers have begun turning their attention to ‘time’ as an important variable in rural planning. Much of this seeks to mobilise theoretical frameworks focused on the entrenchment of ‘path dependencies’ through time that have become difficult to alter (Heaphy & Scott, 2021; Urry, 2016). Recent work has also helped to address the comparatively understudied role played by perceptions of time in influencing the future configuration of spatial futures in coastal communities. Resonant with research emerging in both the urban and rural fields, this seam of work illustrates how histories of spatial attachment interweave the past, present and future of place such that the experience of coastal change is palpable in the everyday activities of those impacted (Fincher et al., 2015; Galway, 2019; McMichael & Katonivualiku, 2020). Here, time and temporal qualities are understood as embedded in social and cultural contexts and practices (Bornemann & Strassheim, 2019, p. 1003) that render them interpretively malleable (Schatzki, 2010). In this sense, time can be plural. This potential for plurality draws attention to how the temporal frames used in planning are not given but are chosen from a plurality of options (Abram, 2014). Yet the temporal frameworks imposed determines what is seen and done (Adam & Groves, 2007). Where a plurality exists, differentials thereby emerge as to whose temporal interpretation should be privileged in decision-making processes. Hence, the temporalities of planning are political (Laurian & Inch, 2019, p. 275). Appreciating the impact of how time is conceived and mobilised in planning thus requires ‘considering both the power relations that shape the production of temporalities as well as the power effects produced through their ordering’ (Besedovsky et al., 2019, p. 582). As such, taking time seriously ‘changes socio-environmental analyses ontologically, epistemologically and methodologically. That is to say, it alters our subject matter, how we know it and how we study it’ (Adam, 2008, p. 5).

However, in exploring time-inflected power relations, planning academics have tended to emphasise time as a tool in manipulative tactics (Raco et al., 2018), or as an inescapable dimension in the politics of spatial governance (Bornemann & Strassheim, 2019). While such work is valuable in enhancing our appreciation of time as an important concern for planning research, the focus of such work renders unexamined the agential capacity of time as a force creating concepts and coordinating perceptions in ways that structure thought and worldly interaction. Other, more anthropologically accented approaches address these dimensions of time by acknowledging its influence in shaping peoples’ understanding of events (Galway, 2019; McMichael & Katonivualiku, 2020). Whereas the place-centred focus of such work is valuable in deepening our interpretive sensitivity to the role of culture in delineating temporal horizons, it generally fails to address issues of power, privilege and marginalisation in the plurality of those temporalities it identifies. Although power, ontology and epistemology are thus discussed with varying degrees of depth across the planning literature on time, these remain disaggregated considerations, which through their separate analytical foci neglect the interweaving of ontology, epistemology and normativity in the allocation of power in decision-making.

This omission is acutely problematic when examining planning for climate change, where uncertainty about the future elicits debate and disagreement on what is happening and what should be done about it (Hulme, 2009). Those living and working in coastal environments are particularly sensitive to such ontological, epistemological and normative issues concerning change, as the privileging and marginalisation of views concerning what ‘is’ happening and what ‘should’ be done about it may have existential consequences for peoples’ homes and livelihoods (Farbotko & McMichael, 2019; Soma & Vatn, 2009). Unpacking the black box of time is therefore of importance to planning research generally, and planning for change in coastal communities specifically. Deleuze and Guattari are especially useful in this respect as their ‘assemblage theory’¹ provides conceptual tools to redress the deficient attention allocated the role of time as a force creating concepts and coordinating perceptions. Their theoretical approach achieves this by offering a means to identify and describe how relationships between a diversity of things (people, places, objects, ideas etc) are generated and given significance through distinctive temporalities (Williams, 2011). In this, their work furnishes the theoretical apparatus for exploring the role of time in weaving together the ideational, emotional and material in ways that domesticate uncertainty through providing a sense of surety in one’s understanding. Accordingly, use of their assemblage theory can complement and extend existing research on time in planning academia through revealing the ontological, epistemological and normative aspects of temporal interpretations in a way that exposes how the interactions between these can engender privileged and marginalised positions in the governance of coastal spaces. Hence, assemblage theory is outlined below and subsequently deployed in analysing time as a dimension of approaches to coastal change.

Assemblage theory

The individual and collaborative work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari comprises an immense and complicated oeuvre. This has received some interest among sociologists, political theorists and geographers (Anderson & McFarlane, 2011; Doel, 1996; Latour, 2013; Sibertin-Blanc & Hodges, 2016; Williams, 2013), and more recently among a growing number of researchers in planning (Abrahams, 2016; Hillier, 2018; Van Wezemael, 2008; Wood, 2009). Yet, even when attention is shown to the concepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari, this most often entails following the normative agenda developed in their capitalism and schizophrenia books – Anti-Oedipus (1983) and A Thousand Plateaus (1987) – rather than the broader insights they provide as to how we manoeuvre within a world we constitute as ‘reality’ (Purcell, 2013). Furthermore, their philosophy has at times been interpreted and reworked in new directions that depart from the ontological and epistemological visions they advance. In this regard, their concept of ‘assemblage’ has enjoyed particular attention, but as noted by Buchanan (2017), such attention habitually elides the agency inherent to the concept of assemblage they advanced only to replace it with a focus on the materiality of that which is ‘assembled’ (Bennett, 2010; DeLanda, 2016). For Deleuze and Guattari the assemblage should instead be understood as a ‘process’ as much as a ‘product’ (Phillips, 2006). As will be discussed below, the ontological and epistemological positions they propose means that ‘the assemblage is not a thing in the world – it is assemblages that explain the existence of things in the world, not the other way around’ (Buchanan, 2017, p. 463). It is this effective dimension of the assemblage that renders it a useful tool in apprehending the role of temporalities in framing planning for coastal change.

Multiplicities

Deleuze and Guattari developed the concept of an ‘assemblage’ to describe the situation wherein ‘a heterogeneous set of forces are assembled so as to produce a specific agency and a particular use of power’ (Due, 2007, pp. 132–133). Underlying this agential dimension of an assemblage is an ontology of multiplicity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). For Deleuze and Guattari, a multiplicity is an unclassified heterogenous ‘group’ defined by a capacity to be affected. This group becomes determinate through the forces that work on it and within it, so that when a multiplicity is affected it is organised as a series of specific relations. Our understanding of reality is thereby conceived to unfold between the indeterminate capacity to form relations, which is the multiplicity, and a particular determination of relations.

Ordinal, intensive and machinic processes

Conceiving the world as a multiplicity upon which we impose order means that the concepts we construct to render the ‘truth’ knowable results in a world that is systemised by us and not independent of us. This is because the concepts we form and mobilise are ‘active’ in calling things into being and forming relations between such things. Our concepts thereby fashion the world, even though our ways of understanding reality normally assumes that our concepts are ‘reactive’ in simply labelling things found existing and already ordered in the world (Deleuze, 2006). Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari (1994) contend that the way the world is ordered through these concepts is not value neutral. They argue that every concept is simultaneously both ‘ordinal’ and ‘intensive’ in how it relates to other concepts. By ordinal they refer to the order generated or sustained by the concept within a system of organisation. By intensive they refer to the affects and affective capacity that the concept stimulates or intensifies in that system of ordering. Hence, concepts do not just link-up things (feelings, matter, perspectives etc); they create things, relate things and specify the order of priority between things. Concepts therefore prescribe and proscribe certain ways of thinking and acting. These prescriptions and proscriptions are given form through ‘machinic processes’ (agencement machinique) that delineate the relationships between things (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 90).

For example, traffic modelling is conventionally used in transport planning to quantitatively predict future movement scenarios by cars, trains, bicycles and pedestrians in an effort to mathematically inform the correct course of action in decision-making. Such predictions are set within temporal assumptions that conceive time as linear and/or cyclical where movements occur on an anticipatable and/or repetitive basis. Here, the machinic process operates through advancing concepts (methods, facts, explanatory theories) grounded in an appeal to scientific truth which converts things (people, preferences, journeys) into measurable variables (speed, frequency, duration) that feed into mathematical models which impose a temporal order on a potentially chaotic world of multiplicity to facilitate decision-making on what is desirable.² This arrangement of perspectives, needs, concepts, activities, matter, people etc, forms an ordered set of relationships – ‘an assemblage’ – that accrues agential power by exerting influence on the identities and significance of those things comprising it (timetables, bus lanes, transport planners etc.) as well as in its relations with other assemblages (e.g. climate change planning, retail planning, public health planning etc.).

Territorialisation

An assemblage is thus a collection of heterogenous things and systems of meaning (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 504). In this sense, it is both content and expression³ that link signifiers with effects (Macgregor-Wise, 2011, p. 94). By following the instruction of Deleuze and Guattari, we can therefore conclude that to know an assemblage we must focus on how it works to position things in creating the world we perceive as reality (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 257). This work of arranging and expressing things functions pragmatically to help confront the chaotic multiplicity we otherwise encounter by creating the sense of meaning, reliability of explanation and legitimacy of understanding that facilitates worldly engagement. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this process as ‘territorialisation’, and the position of sureness created as ‘territory’. It is important to note here that territories are not ‘spaces’. Rather, they are better conceived as socio-psychological states that enable us to negotiate the world, in for example, confidently deploying one’s knowledge in decision-making. Thus, territorialisation is not accidental. Instead, ‘it is produced quite deliberately with a precise set of effects in mind’ (Buchanan, 2021, p. 95).

To summarise, Deleuze and Guattari conceive assemblages as operating through content and expression to enable the making of conviction (territorialisation)⁴ in knowing what one knows and/or of feeling at home in the world (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 504). This is achieved through generative (‘machinic’) processes that order things into a system of relations with affective capacity. These relations then prescribe and proscribe ways of thinking and acting, which reinforce the system of order while concurrently buttressing one’s convictions (‘territory’) on what is ontologically, epistemologically and normatively correct. As demonstrated below, mobilising this conceptional framework for an examination of perspectives on coastal change is helpful in revealing the role of time as a machinic process ordering contrasting affective and normative relations through divergent temporalities that delineate contending interpretations of what ‘is’ happening and ‘should’ be done about it. The particular benefit of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical approach is therefore the conceptual apparatus it supplies for examining how often overlooked dynamics, such as temporal perspectives, help forge differing understandings of coastal realities by relating the ideational, the emotional and the material in ways that generate a sense of agency in the constellation of things related. These philosophical insights are next employed in examining a case study of coastal change in Ireland. The subsequent discussion and conclusion section then draws out the learning from this case study to reflect on the relevance of employing Deleuze and Guattari in ‘time sensitive’ planning research.

Assembling coastal change in Castlemaine Harbour

Methods

The theoretical insights of Deleuze and Guattari are used to analyse and interpret information obtained from fourteen interviews undertaken between January and April 2020 with those involved in coastal change management in Castlemaine Harbour, County Kerry, Ireland. The interviewees were identified through an initial purposive sample of stakeholders involved with managing and/or affected by coastal erosion and flooding in this area. This initial set of interviewees was then expanded by a snowball sampling process (Atkinson & Flint, 2001). The interviewees included representatives of relevant state agencies, including those responsible for managing coastal erosion and flooding (Office of Public Works), and the conservation of coastal habitats (National Parks and Wildlife Service), as well as both executive staff and elected representatives at local government level. The interviewees further included representatives of local community groups, namely a residents’ association and a fisheries cooperative (see Table S2 supplied as Supplementary Material). Several of those interviewed were local residents and themselves directly affected by coastal erosion and flooding. Given the low population density of the area and the limited number of actors involved in planning for coastal change in Castlemaine, ‘interview saturation’ was reached relatively quickly.

The interviews followed a semi-structured qualitative interview approach whereby a set of standard questions based around the key concerns of the study (initially focused on knowledge conflicts surrounding the management of coastal climate hazards) were posed to interviewees. However, the questions were open-ended and provided scope for interviewees to introduce new issues which they felt to be important (Longhurst, 2016). Most interviews were conducted in person but due to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, a small number occurred over video call (see Table S2). The depth of information obtained from these interviews is supplemented by a review of 20 planning related documents relevant to coastal management in Castlemaine Harbour. This followed a comprehensive search to identify all planning and policy documents regarding contemporary coastal management challenges in the area, the results of which were narrowed to key relevant sources. These include documents produced by the local authority (Kerry County Council), by statutory agencies with responsibility for coastal management (Office of Public Works) and conservation authorities (National Parks and Wildlife Service), and other local community groups (Cromane Community Council, Killorglin Tidy Towns) (see Table S3). The documents examined also include studies of coastal erosion and management in the area by consultants and academic researchers. The range of such documentary sources used enabled the researchers to obtain a comprehensive understanding of pertinent issues through providing detailed background information not available through other means and by offering additional insight into the views of the different stakeholder groups that produced these documents.

This interview material was analysed with the aid of NVivo software. Issues were allowed to emerge from the data in a manner that was framed by the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (Saldaña, 2009). For example, initial analysis of the transcribed interview data suggested that ‘time’ was a potentially significant force in profiling explanatory and normative perspectives. Here, preliminary inductive coding involved identifying the specific temporal reference (e.g. ‘scientific prediction’, ‘memory’, ‘bureaucratic timeline’ etc). Such preliminary codes were confirmed and nuanced as the data was subjected to additional rounds of coding. In this way, the initial codes where revised, expanded and/or synthesised to provide greater subtly in the organisation and analysis of the data. For example, the inductive codes ‘geological time’ and ‘long term system dynamics’ were synthesised in later rounds of coding into the inductive code ‘deep time’. However, rather than adopt a purely ‘grounded theory’ method to the analysis of this data, the researchers concluded from experience in working with policy analysis cases studies that mobilising an explanatory theoretical framework would provide greater explicatory subtly in the interpretation of those materials collated.

Hence, the work of Deleuze and Guattari was consulted to sensitise the research process to a possible means of providing theoretical depth in the elucidation of patterns emerging from the data. Accordingly, concepts from the work of Deleuze and Guattari such as ‘ordinal’ and ‘intensive’ were used in deductively coding the data to thematically reflect the way things (people, places, objects, ideas etc) were related in systemising items and issues, and their perceived salience, within the data. Inductively coded data was then related to this deductively thematised material (see Figure S3). This abductive method facilitated both the determination of prominent patterns emerging from the data and the relation of these to deductively thematization codes. This furnished a theoretically nuanced explanatory interpretation of the data that would have unlikely been possible by using inductive coding alone. For example, the inductive code ‘deep time’ was related to the deductive code ‘ordinal’ in providing explanatory clarity in how concepts were organised in discourses to create an understanding of reality that generates certainty (‘territorialise’) on what is the correct way of thinking about and acting on an issue, such as coastal erosion. Moreover, such theoretical richness offers greater scope for the transferability of learning from this paper’s case study to other cases and topics in planning research.

Coastal change in Castlemaine Harbour

Castlemaine Harbour is situated east of Dingle Bay in Co. Kerry, Ireland (see Figure S1 supplied as Supplementary Material). The harbour runs east–west through a series of sandspits and peninsulas surrounding mudflats, saltmarshes and low-lying farmland that offer it protection from Atlantic storms. Castlemaine Harbour and the contiguous coastline have been profiled by human activities over several centuries, including through land reclamation, farming, residential development, storm protection works and aquacultural activities. Parts of the surrounding coast encompass designated conservation sites under the provisions of the European Union’s Natura 2000 network (Ryle et al., 2009). While Castlemaine Harbour and the surrounding area has a long history of coastal erosion, a particular concern regarding erosion of the dunes at Rossbeigh sandspit surfaced throughout the twentieth century leading to calls for coastal protection works and a prohibition in the 1950s on the harvesting of marram grass for thatch (Derrig, 1951). More recent concerns include the loss of property due to erosion and flooding. In this context, considerable local anxiety has been expressed regarding severe erosion of the Rossbeigh sandspit and dunes. The sandspit is uninhabited but is a popular recreational amenity and tourist attraction for the area. This erosion at Rossbeigh is also considered by many to be aggravating the risk of flooding for areas on the landward side of the harbour, which were previously considered to enjoy greater protection from waves and storm surges. In response, current climate adaptation planning responses include the consideration of enhanced and new engineered coastal defences at various sites along the coastline (Kerry County Council, 2019).

A natural assemblage

For many of those involved in coastal planning in Castlemaine Harbour, colouring their perspectives on what matters is a temporality of nested cycles set within a profoundly dynamic system. For these actors, ‘there are natural processes of erosion that have been going on for millennia, for as long as we have had soft coasts and they will continue to go on’ (Interviewee 13). Here, a particular erosion event is viewed as simply the manifestation of natural processes operating in ‘deep time’ that people may erroneously conclude as an aberration in local environmental conditions. For these actors, the concept of ‘natural process’ thereby profiles their understanding of what drives most coastal erosion phenomena. For them, the coast appears to operate as an erratic system when viewed over a short period but is more predictable over longer durations. Indeed, an issue of concern for those involved in coastal planning is that ‘What people quite often fail to grasp is it’s all part of the big sediment cycle’ (Interviewee 02). In this sense, those in state organisations involved in coastal planning feel that there is a misapprehension of the temporal horizon on which change operates, such that,

One of the issues you get on the coast are yes, things are changing, but things have always been changing. You know, but it’s changing on a geological timeframe and so coastal erosion, in one person’s life, yeah, it doesn’t really change that much and then people will be like, ‘In my grandfather’s life it was like this.’ Yes, but in his grandfather’s day it was like that. You know? And it’s been going and going and going. (Interviewee 01)

Here, science provides the foundation upon which knowledge is grounded and ‘territories’ made. The sea, sand, storms etc are ‘ordinally’ related through a temporally calibrated machinic process that specifies the ‘true’ relationships between things. Unifying such interpretations is an appeal to the objectivity of scientific knowledge that mobilises a particular understanding of ‘time’ as the prism through which the multiplicities of observed change are differentiated and determined. The need for more scientific knowledge thereby emerges resultant from a desire to know the reality being confronted. Hence, those charged with planning for erosion management along the Irish coast stress that,

We need to keep up to date with quantifying that risk and mapping that risk … so that we’re constantly working with up to date and valid information. So, this is how we can stay ahead of this, or at least stay on top of this risk. That our risk assessments are reasonable and accurate and that we continue to monitor, [so that] we have sufficient monitoring programmes and monitoring information coming back to us to get a handle on just how quickly things are changing. (Interviewee 03)

This brings into view a conceptual and material arrangement given expression through terms such as ‘natural’, ‘process’, ‘information’ and ‘system’, which are embedded in scientific discourses of explanation, prediction and specification. Here temporality acts as a machinic process to organise this arrangement through an horizon of ‘deep time’ within which are nested constant monitoring activities aimed at accurately knowing the present as a means to plan for the future. Accordingly, the temporality of ‘millennia’ and ‘a geological timeframe’ extend the purview of policy makers into the deep past in a way that weaves into the present the ordinal dimension of explanation with the intensive dimension of justification for action. This occurs in a manner that ascribes agency to a ‘natural assemblage’ of coastal change. As noted by one policy development actor working in the area: ‘I think people have this perception of nature that it’s like static. And it’s not. So, if we don't interfere with it, it does its thing’ (Interviewee 07). The perceived agency of this natural assemblage thereby influences how specific erosion events are interpreted. Such interpretations convey a territorialisation of perspectives that link the agency of nature with a normative evaluation of the processes perceived. For example, when inferring the causes of a particularly dramatic erosion event on Rossbeigh Strand (a large sandspit at the mouth of Castlemaine Harbour), one interviewee mobilised their territorially grounded perspective to assert that,

The issue with Rossbeigh, to me that was actually probably a natural issue. I don’t think it was heavily over-grazed. You know, sometimes you’d have that situation arise where you have excess of exploitation of the habitat; use of the vegetation that would keep it together. But I actually think that that bay is just incredibly dynamic … So, for me, once the sand is retained in the system and hasn’t been taken out to sea and dumped, that means that that whole area has a dynamic which means that it’s likely that we will end up with ‘building dunes’. And that is really positive. (Interviewee 13)

Conversely, to inhibit the agency of this natural assemblage is inappropriate and can result in problems when managing the coastline. Thus, to actors whose territories are grounded in a scientific perspective, this lack of appreciation for the temporality of natural processes leads to negative perceptions of nature’s agency in coastal areas. As conveyed by one actor and echoed by others,

Irish people, they tend to have slightly over-stabilised some areas [of the coast]. And the reason is that because in general, the natural processes – the dynamism. Basically, a coastal area is often seen as a negative because people build closer and closer to the shore. (Interviewee 13)

This normative perspective on the agency of the natural assemblage resonates with European Union ecological conservation regulations and exerts prescriptive and proscriptive influence on local planning that have tangible impacts on how spaces are managed. For example, the role of natural processes in shaping landscapes, determining the appropriateness of interventions and defining land use is illustrated by one interviewee involved in local planning activities when asserting that:

So, us putting up a wall that stops the tide; that’s not a natural process therefore we’ll be contravening [the EU Habitats Directive]. So, I suppose my point then would be say alternatively if nature blocked the wall itself for whatever reason and the habitat inside naturally started to change then we wouldn’t do anything. It’s nothing to do with us. It’s nature doing its thing, you know. Habitats come and go but we can't intervene I suppose is the point. (Interviewee 07) [Emphasis added]

Here, a ‘machinic process’ attuned to the temporality of natural processes rooted in a scientific foundation ‘ordinally’ profiles content and expression (relationships between places, events, materials, concepts etc), which exerts ‘intensive’ agency as the motivation for perspectives on what should be done and why. Therefore, mobilising theoretical insights for Deleuze and Guattari enables nuance in the identification and explication of how time operates in ‘machining’ the ‘ordinal’ and ‘intensive’ relations between things that profile reality as it concurrently contours a sense of surety on what should be done and why. This facilitates an exposition of the interpretive processes through which the ideational, emotional and material are simultaneously given shape, significance and agency as they are interwoven into frameworks structuring thought and action. Consequently, the machinic process of temporal perspectives influences how decision-making is approached from an ontological, epistemological and normative perspective. Moreover, this ‘natural assemblage’ of coastal change in Castlemaine Harbour does not exist in isolation. Rather, it relates to, and is reinforced by other assemblages, such as European Union law, national and local planning policy, as well as various scientific assemblages operative at different scales (e.g. global climate change, north Atlantic weather forecasting, coastal ecology studies etc). However, there exists an alternatively organised assemblage in Castlemaine Harbour, which adjusted to the temporality of a different ‘machinic process’ is contoured by a distinctive series of relations that lend it a different form of agency. This assemblage is characterised by forms of interpretation that explain erosion events not through reference to natural cycles, but as expressions of the sea’s capriciousness.

A capricious assemblage

For many residents in Castlemaine Harbour, erosion is perceived on generational and intergeneration timescales. Such lifetime measures serve as a temporally inflected ‘machinic process’ by ‘ordinally’ arranging the relations between things (places, events, concepts etc) in specific ways. Hence, on contemplating environmental change, residents usually focus on memory rather than the impartiality of objective science to discuss change in the landscape. For example, when reflecting on the issue of coastal erosion on Rossbeigh sandspit, one resident involved in coastal planning noted that,

My grandfather used to say that there was an acre of ground in the spit for every day of the year. I'd say there isn't much with 100 acres there today, maybe 120 acres, so there's probably two thirds of it gone. (Interviewee 04)

Others arrange the relations of environmental change in the shorter timescales of direct experience, such as when one local fisherman relating erosion to issues encountered in his aquacultural activities observed,

At Rossbeigh huge areas of sand have been eroded. There is something called a ‘spatfall’ which is how the mussels breed, and that would normally happen every three to four years. But that has not happened recently, or it has not lasted when it has happened. (Interviewee 05)

This organisation of content and expression is thus grounded in epistemologies profiled by timescales of human experience. Such machinic processes concurrently weave emotion into these ordinal dimensions of reality-making by intensively relating places, happenings and experiences into an arrangement of anxiety, where terms such as ‘angry tide’, ‘fear’, ‘frightening’, ‘concern’ and ‘worry’ mould discourses of trepidation at the perceived unpredictability of the sea. Here, the erratic nature of the relationships between the coast and the sea is machined through a series of temporal references into a ‘capricious assemblage’ where change can occur swiftly with no warning or apparent reason. For example, one interviewee when portraying the fickleness experienced on the local coastline noted that,

People that walk down there [Rossbeigh sandspit] on a regular basis; every week you'd see it changed. Even for example last week. I mean the world of sand went here last week; you could come next week and them sticks, them planks that are out there sticking up, they could be covered. (Interviewee 05).

This capricious assemblage is felt through the agency it exerts on those living locally. Moreover, this perceived insight into the temperament of the assemblage by residents is viewed as contrasting with the lack of understanding demonstrated by those non-residents officially charged with coastal planning and management. This is vividly conveyed by one resident when recalling the efforts made by local authority engineers to address the repeated flooding experienced by several households:

Even the engineers that came to us doing this job, they couldn’t understand. They kept saying it would have to be this, this, this, this and this. And I said ‘But the waves never hit us here. It’s not a wave that comes.’ ‘And what?’ they were saying. So, I suppose not knowing the actual terrain around there, I suppose, they didn’t really know themselves. They were just expecting water to come. Like the water that came into our place, as you can see it’s quite calm in that [showing photo of flooding]. It just came creeping like the divil [devil], it just came, and when the tide turned, it just went away again. But that is how it is. (Interviewee 09)

Thus, although the temporally inflected machinic processes informing the views of local residents is one characterised by unpredictability that is expressed in terms of foreboding and defined by a pervasive anxiety for life, property and livelihood, those subject to the agency of this assemblage feel they have a better understanding of how the sea relates to the coast than do those officially responsible for managing that coast. As such, this capricious assemblage supplies a ‘territory’, which though not providing comfort, grants confidence in an understanding of how the local environment works. Accordingly, what should be prescribed and proscribed in the ‘capricious assemblage’ are delineated differently to that of the ‘natural assemblage’. In the former, interfering with a habitat designated under European or national legislation is deemed permissible in the interest of protecting homes, as the habitats themselves are made and unmade by the caprices of an erratic sea-coast relationship (Interviewee 05). However, such interference is problematic in the context of the natural assemblage wherein the view of the coast is of,

… a natural system and if it’s meant to go, it’s going to go, and you know, if you start protecting this area with hard, say rock armour, you're just kind of pushing the problem down the coast a little bit. And then, so what do you do then: rock armour the entire coast and then the beach doesn’t, the deposits don't build up – it’s not a dynamic system anymore? Habitat will go and you know, you'll get an answer: ‘leave it’. (Interviewee 14)

Hence, mobilising insights from the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari facilitates an appreciation of how the ideational, emotional and material are entwined through the ordinal and intensive dimensions of temporally inflected machinic processes. This contours ontological, epistemological and normative commitments that accrue agential capacity by structuring perceptions on what is prescribed and proscribed regarding local coastal interventions.

Discussion and conclusion

This paper has sought to emphasises ‘time’ as a key variable in determining what counts in planning activities by mobilising the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. Applying their insights helps unveil the oft overlooked ways through which time operates as a machinic process that organises a particular constellation of relations between objects, ideas, people and actions to mould realities grounded in ontological and epistemological standpoints, which beget normative views shaping thought and action. In this context, the case of Castlemaine Harbour illustrates the benefit of mobilising these insights by demonstrating how time can machine relations in distinct ways to produce different understandings of reality, and what should be done with respect to it.

In this case, we witness science as a form of performance through the deployment of technologies of information acquisition, modelling and risk assessment by those schooled in the methodologies of scientific analysis. This knits together a multiplicity of ideas and objects into a perception of reality. This natural assemblage weaves a series of self-reinforcing ontological, epistemological and normative perspectives that exert force by specifying what is, what ought to be, and who may legitimately determine this ground of understanding for thought and action. From the perspectives of the scientists and policy makers, the residents are at fault for initially interfering with the dynamic agency of the coastal system by constructing homes in inappropriate locations and subsequently seeking to manage inundations through dikes and walls that impede nature’s agency as manifested in the natural processes conceptualised through the performance of science. For them, the natural dynamics of coastal change should not be interfered with. Conversely, the residents view those aligned with the natural assemblage as not properly understanding how the sea interacts with the coast. For them the sea is capricious. The means by which they form their understanding of this reality is through direct experience and the knowledge of past generations; it is intersubjective and intuitive rather than objective and abstract. As with the natural assemblage, their capricious assemblage forges self-fortifying ontological, epistemological and normative commitments that wield power by presenting what is, what ought to be, and who may rightfully determine correct thought and action. For them, lives, livelihoods and property must be protected from the unpredictability of an erratic sea by building dikes and introducing other flood protection measures. Hence, the perspectives of scientists and policy makers regarding ‘what’ should be done are inversely positioned relative to those of the residents. This is consequent on how perceptions of reality and what ‘should be done’ about it are machined by different temporal horizons (see Table 1).

Table 1. Summary of contrasting perspectives.

Perspective	Scientists & policy makers	Residents
Ontological	Deep time of systems & cycles	A capricious sea
Epistemological	Impartial science of processes	Intergenerational memory and personal experience
Normative	‘Natural’ as good	‘Nature’ as threatening
Prescription	Facilitate natural dynamics	Protect lives, livelihoods and property
Proscription	Do not interfere with natural processes	Do not leave land vulnerable to flooding

The particular benefit of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical approach is therefore the conceptual apparatus it supplies for examining how often overlooked dynamics, such as temporal perspectives, help forge realities by relating the ideational, the emotional and the material in ways that generate agency in the constellation of things related. In this sense, this paper demonstrates how a seeming multiplicity of heterogeneous entities, concepts, feelings and happenings can be organised by a series of relations that help stabilise meaning through creating a sense of identity and significance to that which is encountered. Importantly, the paper highlights that time is not a neutral backdrop against which reality unfolds but rather is a key variable influencing the evaluative positions prompted by the reality that emerges. Should there be a singular universal time, this would not form an issue of concern for planning as the normative suppositions stimulated would be shared by all. However, this paper evidences time as plural. Consequently, a plurality of realities is possible and a plurality of normative standpoints conceivable. This creates potential problems for planning in the context of change as what should be done has the possibility of becoming a political issue rooted in contending understandings of what change signifies. Hence, divergent temporalities may stimulate opposing assessments of a situation that generates strife, mistrust and a sense of marginalisation as certain views are perceived to be privileged over others. Indeed, the positioning of planners between the often-conflicting imperatives of supranational legislation, national policy, local politics and community relations, often leave them struggling for solutions to apparently intractable disagreements profiled by different temporalities. This is particularly acute in the context of climate change, such as in the case of Castlemaine Harbour, where diverging opinions on issues such as coastal management can have life-altering implications for people and communities.

By mobilising the thinking of Deleuze and Guattari this paper addresses a deficit in current research that has provided otherwise valuable contributions to understanding the role played by temporalities in planning thought and practice. Specifically, deploying their theoretical insights facilitates an explanation of reality-making that limns the processes through which the ontological, epistemological and normative dimensions of decision-making are woven tight with an entwined material-emotional understanding of what matters and why. This moves planning research beyond a discrete focus on the role of time in ostensibly determining outcomes via use and abuse, or examining the part played by culture in profiling perspectives on time. Instead, it highlights the work done by temporalities in delineating what matters and why in decision-making fora, as well as who enjoys legitimacy in advancing the ‘truth’ concerning what ‘is’ and what ‘should’ be done about it. However, such conclusions are limited by the exploratory nature of this research and the relatively small dataset available. Future research should collate and examine a more extensive archive of materials, possibly across different case studies and topics. For example, multiple case studies of coastal and riparian erosion management could be conducted over a wider geographical area with differing land use characteristics (housing, transport, recreation etc), differing levels of population density (urban, suburban/peri-urban, rural), and differing administrative contexts. These could be compared to more comprehensively determine the role played by time in configuring perceptions of reality that prompt views on what should be done about it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Centre for Applied Geosciences/Science Foundation Ireland under grant 13/RC2092.

Notes on contributors

Mick Lennon

Dr Mick Lennon is Associate Professor at the UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, Dublin, Ireland. His work focuses on the intersections between planning and environmental policy, with a particular emphasis on cultivating resilience in the context of environmental transitions.

Fiadh Tubridy

Dr Fiadh Tubridy is currently an Irish Research Council funded postdoctoral researcher in Maynooth University Department of Geography, Maynooth, Ireland. Her work is in the area of spatial and environmental justice including in relation to climate change, urban development and housing.

Notes

1 This paper adopts Assemblage Theory as developed by Deleuze and Guattari, rather than that subsequently reinterpreted by Manuel DeLanda, which he acknowledges is ‘not strictly Deleuze’s own’ and could be called ‘neo-assemblage theory’ or ‘assemblage theory 2.0’ (DeLanda, 2006, p. 4), even though he subsequently uses the label ‘Assemblage Theory’ to describe his perspective (DeLanda, 2016).

2 It is acknowledged that this is an ‘ideal case’ of how transportation planning operates and is used here simply for illustrative purposes. Traffic management decisions, while ostensibly scientifically determined, are often heavily infused with political agendas (Flyvbjerg, 1998).

3 Deleuze and Guattari refer to this dimension of an assemblage as the ‘collective assemblage of enunciation’.

 

 

4 Deleuze and Guattari also theorise ‘deterritorialisation’ as the unmaking of territories through particular paths of thinking and doing called ‘lines of flight’ that are characterised by a ‘becoming’ something different. They stipulate three forms of deterritorialization, namely: ‘negatative’, ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’, that are defined by their position with respect to the territory from which the ‘line of flight’ emerged (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, pp. 226–227). Hillier (2018) has proposed that such ‘becoming’ serve as a focus for planning. However, Purcell (2013) contends that the core orientation of planning as that which seeks to order the future renders this fundamentally problematic, especially given the interest of Deleuze and Guattari in a perpetual becoming characterised by multiple ‘lines of flight’ which prevents the manifestation of capitalism as an ordering principle in society.