ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which categorisation is instrumental in the production of contested ideas and interests in the regulatory process using a case of planning regulation in Stockholm in which Apple, the global tech giant, applied to build its flagship store in the Kungsträdgården, the city’s most popular historical park. It highlights the malleability of categories and categorisation, how the work with categorisation is influenced by existing power relations and predominant discourses, and how the resulting categories themselves, in turn, contribute to reproduce this power relation. The chapter illustrates how categorisation can be used as technical device through which categories became depoliticised, helping politicians and planners to effectively evade socially and politically contentious questions in the regulatory process. The chapter also shows how municipal planning monopoly can be undermined, not by the lack of regulatory instruments but by planners’ internalisation of the neoliberal logic in which economic growth was considered most important for urban development. The chapter underscores the need to problematise categories and the work of categorisation in the planning regulatory process, and the importance of public consultation and participation to include citizens’ voices to counterbalance the dominance of corporate interest.
