ABSTRACT
We seem to be witnessing the disappearance of ‘the political’, at least according to statements made in the contemporary planning theory debate. According to Oosterlynck and Swyngedouw (2010), for example, “the elimination of ‘the political’ through a postpolitical tactic which focuses on consensual management erases the gap between policies and the political, resulting in a process of depoliticisation”. In light of this, they call for “the re-emergence of conflict” and thereby “the re-emergence of the political”. Swyngedouw (2011) develops this further in a later paper that again points to the “disappearance of the political”, claiming that “politics implies the ‘retreat of the political’”. Others have recently used similar interpretations to describe on-going political changes to planning. Haughton and Allmendinger (2012), for example, claim that current political changes to planning in the UK cannot be seen as the outcome of a “properly political moment”, but rather as a reworking of a postpolitical management of dissent.
