Desiring Docklands: Deleuze and Urban Planning Discourse

Abstract

This article examines fundamental changes in the form and content of Melbourne Docklands planning discourse, between 1989 and 2003, which would seem to represent a radical departure from planning's 'normal paradigm'. It draws on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to provide an account of these changes, showing how the planning process moved from a grounding in site, history and community, through an unbounded, ungrounded and dream-like phase of 'deterritorialization', to a phase of 'reterritorialization' with the production of new identities and desires. It concludes by considering what this analysis entails for understandings of urban planning practice; planning's relationship to capital and desire; the exercise of power in planning; the 'discursive turn' in urban studies; and the relevance to planning of Deleuze and Guattari's privileging of 'immanence' over 'transcendence'.