Strife: Urban Planning and Agonism

Abstract

Conflict is immanent to planning, and perhaps particularly to practice within a pluralistic, multicultural society. Chantal Mouffe argues that there is a political need for an ‘agonistic pluralism’ as a democratic response to a context of diversity and conflict. Perhaps the key complex of problems in contemporary planning is how to work with ‘strife’. Proceeding from the perspective of a Danish urban regeneration project named ‘kvarterløft’, this article will discuss planning experiences with conflicts, empowerment, consensussteering, and governance that point to the need to make ‘strife’ – the ongoing dispute about words, meaning, discourses, visions or ‘the good life’ – central to planning processes.