Recent Posts
Archives
- July 2011
- June 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- December 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- June 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
Categories
- Abstraction
- Admin
- Analytic/Continental
- Blogging
- Book
- Capital v.1
- City Planning
- Coffee
- Cognitive Science
- Contradiction
- Conversations
- Courses
- Critical Theory
- Critique
- Current Events
- Dialogue
- Drafts
- Ecology
- Empiricism
- Events
- Family
- Fetish
- Fieldwork
- Grundrisse
- Intellectual Property
- Interdisciplinary
- Linguistics
- Links
- Logic
- Logic of Science
- Marxes
- Materialism
- Math and Science
- Metatheory
- Methodology
- Miscellaneous
- Negations
- Overheard
- Phenomenology of Spirit
- Philosophy of History
- Political Economy
- Politics
- Procrastination
- Professional Life
- Psychology
- Reading
- Reading Group
- Reification
- Religion
- Self-Reflexivity
- Social Movements
- Social Science
- Sociology of Knowledge
- Supervision
- Teaching
- Technology
- Thesis
- Transformation
- Writing
Advertisements
Yes, I’ve often made the same remark about capitalism and regulation, and been frustrated with being lectured (including by RMIT staff) about the paramount importance of certainty – certainty for whom you might ask. Inconclusionary zoning is a fascinating example. In fact, many policy makers argue that it’s unnecessary because there’s nothing stopping the same arrangements being negotiated under current legislative heads of powers. The point is that developers stand to gain by playing in this game through the various planning bonuses and allowances provided. The whole system can be seen as premised on the need for adjustment to market failure – not only in terms of viable developments, but also workforce sustainability and reproduction. The interesting longer term question perhaps is whether the system helps to usher in a more collaborative, communicative approach to planning, or whether it merely hardens the arteries of a divisive model. Meanwhile, don’t get too excited at 50 units of social housing in the mountains of excusivity down on the Docks.
Hey Martin – I didn’t realise you were lurking (I might have written something more sophisticated if I had known ;-P).
If you’ve done the postgrad theory course, incidentally, I’d really appreciate your general opinions about the course – what it does well, what it should spend more time on, etc. I taught into the course this term for the first time, in part to help prepare for the redesign, but (speaking of collaboration) would rather have input from people who have taken the course, before I re-engineer the course around my interests…
On your specific points – I’d certainly agree with this: “Meanwhile, don’t get too excited at 50 units of social housing in the mountains of excusivity down on the Docks.” There is a certain… lack of appreciation of the scale involved, at least in the article cited…
This, however, is probably more complicated: “many policy makers argue that it’s unnecessary because there’s nothing stopping the same arrangements being negotiated under current legislative heads of powers.” There are structural pressures for the creation of a “level playing field” – and, yes, structural pressures for predictability (for business) – that would tend to generate pressures for more general regulation, rather than case-by-case negotiation.
You’re right that this sits in tension with collaborative and communicative planning principles, which require more case-by-case flexibility – the question then becomes what sorts of pressures are stacked against communicative models, and how to tilt structural incentives in favour of these models, if this is what we are trying to do…
P.S. I assume this was just a typo, but I really like the phrase “inconclusionary zoning”.