Decolonizing Planning

Edited by Bjørn Sletto, Community and Regional Planning, University of Texas at Austin, USA, Tanja Winkler, School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, University of Cape Town, South Africa and Efadul Huq, Program in Environmental Science and Policy, Smith College, USA

‘A shape is cut at the edges, not the center. For planning, the practice, pedagogy, and knowledge of city building have long been shaped at the edges of urban life among marginalized communities. Through struggle and practice, resistance and insurgence, and daily care, these communities produce ways of knowing and building that have always shaped cities despite (not because of) what is taught and advocated, what is legitimized and justified, in planning institutions at the center. This co-edited volume, composed of chapters co-authored with community partners, exemplifies anticolonial knowledge co-production, bringing the excitement of shapes formed at the edges of urban communities across the world, along with the refusal of despair and a radical hope for a different planning. Decolonizing Planning: Power and Knowledge in the Informal City is an important book for all who refuse to accept planning as it is and who recognize how anticolonial insurgent planning practices are re-shaping the field.’

• Contents1 Introduction to Decolonizing Planning 1Bjørn Sletto, Tanja Winkler and Efadul HuqPART I RATIONALITIES2 Decolonizing resilience: Learning from unexplored storiesand perspectives surrounding hazard and disaster risks inPuerto Rico 26Santina L. Contreras, Monique A. Lorenzo Pérez and LornaG. Jaramillo Nieves3 Urban design otherwise: Weaving learning alliances forco-creation in/with popular neighbourhoods in Medellin 45Catalina Ortiz and Luz Mila Hernandez Pineda4 Decolonizing planning for socio-environmental protection inthe periphery of Fortaleza, Brazil: Reflecting on the power ofepistemic disobedience 64Clarissa Freitas, Naggila Frota and Carla Nascimento5 Urban decolonial narratives by grassroots urban actors inLusaka, Zambia 86Gilbert Siame, Cinthia Freire Stecchini and Ian Marshall MatimbaPART II REPRESENTATION6 Caring for life/Cuidar la vida: Documenting grassrootsterritorial control and self-determination in Tirua 106Magdalena Ugarte, Natalia Caniguan, Javier Marihuen andMiguel Melin7 Local collectivist capability and the people’s plan for ChitturThathamangalam, Kerala, India 126Jayaraj Sundaresan, Malini Krishnankutty and Richard Scaria8 ‘I am a planner too’: Confessions of a grassroots ‘slum’ leader 146Tanzil Shafique and Mohammed Taher9 Killakina: Decolonizing planning for rematriating land and life 163Gladis Grefa and Alexandra Lamiña10 Situated pedagogies in preservation planning: Transgressingborders and co-producing knowledge through arts-based andengaged scholarship 181Magdalena Novoa and Elizabeth AguileraPART III REFLEXIVITY11 Residents’ learning-by-doing whilst planning from the‘border’: Towards an interstitial understanding of planningpraxis 204Nobukhosi Ngwenya and Mabhelandile Twani12 Decolonizing planning studio pedagogy: Grappling withtensions and dissonances 223Clara Irazábal, Bi’Anncha Andrews, Maxine Gross andJoanne M. Braxton13 The Nilgiris Field Learning Center: an experiment in themaking 244Neema Kudva, Anita Varghese and Mira Kudva Driskell