ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I pursue the argument that in a global urban age, the process of urban planning, not least the planning of mega-projects, is the work of a diverse set of actors and complex power relations that extend across space and time. These ensure it is not only the comprehensive approach to planning that makes the project ‘mega’, but the scales through which the project is itself produced. Capitalist agendas, regional power structures and the institutional dimensions of planning seek to guide and control developments

in various ways (Watson 2013). It is important therefore to understand the terms of engagement between the forces of globalisation, the practices of local planning actors, and the tactics and strategies aimed at both countering and engaging with these (Shatkin 2011). The chapter will be used as a means of providing an empirical contribution to the core themes of the book in relation to the ‘fast’ production of urban master plans, and to raise questions about how these plans are constructed. A particular focus will be on the nature of the implicit relations of power that work to ‘assemble’ both the plans and their institutional landscapes of construction. By introducing the master plan, its background and design principles, followed by a conceptual interrogation, the chapter will discuss a) the universalised nature of sustainable design discourse; b) the situating of government agency; and c) the legitimation tactics of the post-colonial state. In doing so, the chapter contributes to a retheorisation of city-making in the global south through the ways it seeks to engage with discourses around sustainable development and represent them in master plans.