‘Neoliberalism is dead’: Traversing neoliberal planning education is an exigency

Abstract

Neoliberalism has been the hegemonic ideology that has fundamentally transformed planning over the last four decades. Neoliberalism has significantly restructured pre-existing organisations, such as universities that were initially expanded during the period of industrial capitalism. From Foucault’s perspective, universities work as components of the dominant control apparatus to subjectively normalise people to docile bodies in the capitalist society. In planning schools, new planning students are introduced to the discipline and its values, norms, knowledge, and practices. This article explores how neoliberalism has changed planning education and subsequently practice in favour of the market operation by detaching planning from its intellectual and theoretical context, and used planning as its scapegoat to conceal its failures. Following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 and the global pandemic of COVID-19, several thinkers, economists and politicians have declared that ‘neoliberalism is dead’ and pointed to the necessity of a new doctrine to address the adverse side effects of neoliberalism that include social inequality and climate change. Planning was initially developed to address the environmental issues and social inequality that resulted from industrial capitalism. This article suggests that planning education should traverse neoliberalism by retrieving its critical and theoretical knowledge to redefine its role in the post-neoliberal era.

Introduction

Neoliberalism is a hegemonic ideology that has fundamentally transformed planning over the last four decades. This article begins by reviewing how neoliberalism has changed planning education. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 and later the global pandemic of COVID-19, challenged the myth of the perpetuity of neoliberalism and its market-based values. Since the GFC, a number of thinkers, economists and politicians have declared that ‘neoliberalism is dead’ (Cooper, 2011; Kılıç, 2021) and pointed to the necessity of a new doctrine to address the adverse side effects of neoliberalism that include social inequality and climate change (Badiou, 2015; Beck, 2015; De Vogli, 2014). The hegemony of neoliberalism is being challenged since ‘it fails to command popular and political assent; it cannot sustain its normalisation and institutionalisation as the dominant principle of common sense’ (Clarke, 2010: 390). Planning as a discipline has developed to address the environmental issues and social inequality that resulted from industrial capitalism (Hall, 2002). This article suggests that planning education should traverse neoliberalism by retrieving its intellectual, critical and theoretical knowledge to understand the drivers of the increasing attacks on planning and its achievements.

Since the late 1970s, neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideology has demonised planning as a ‘bureaucratic, anti-enterprise form of social engineering’ (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2014: 29). Hayek (1960), one of the founders of neoliberalism, perceives planning, particularly state economic planning, as an impediment to human freedom, market operation, and economic growth. From the neoliberalism perspective, ‘state failure is typically worse than market failure’ (Sager, 2011: 330). Yet, in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek (1944) accepts the necessity of a level of planning as a component of the market to manage the accumulation of people and wealth in the cities. He (1944: 46) argues that

Planning and [market] competition can be combined only by planning for competition, not by planning against competition. The planning against which all our criticism is directed is solely the planning against competition [or against the free market operation].

The adherents of neoliberalism argue that the free market is capable of providing adequate solutions to all economic and social problems (Peck and Tickell, 2002). This ideological perspective, particularly planning for market competition, has fundamentally transformed planning education and practice over the last four decades (Taşan-Kok and Baeten, 2011).

The occurrence of the GFC in 2008 and the global pandemic of COVID-19 largely challenged the hegemony of neoliberalism as the dominant ideology (Cooper, 2011; Stiglitz, 2016; Kılıç, 2021). Since the GFC and the pandemic, the critiques of planning have increased because of its failures to predict the crisis and mitigate its adverse effects. As Gunder (2016) correctly argues, planning has been used as the scapegoat to conceal the failures of neoliberalism in meeting its initial promises. By increasing the critiques on planning, planning theorists have endeavoured to shed light on the meaning as well as the impacts of neoliberalism as the dominant ideology in planning. For instance, Sager (2011) systematically reviewed planning-related academic literature on neoliberalism and its impact on urban policies between 1990 and 2010. Taşan-Kok and Baeten (2011) focused on the meaning of neoliberal planning and its contradictions. These literature provide a good understanding of neoliberal planning from different perspectives. Although neoliberal planning practice has been the result of the neoliberalisation of planning education over the last four decades, these investigations have generally overlooked the impacts of neoliberalism on planning education.

Neoliberalism has significantly restructured pre-existing organisations, such as universities that were initially expanded during the period of industrial capitalism (Clarke, 2015; Giroux, 2002; Olssen and Peters, 2005). Foucault (1991, 2010) maintains that universities works as a component of the control apparatus to subjectively normalise people to docile bodies in the industrial capitalist society. ‘Any system of education is a political way of maintaining or modifying the appropriation of discourses, along with the knowledge and powers which they carry’ (Foucault, 1971: 123). ‘The political and economic theory behind neoliberal ideology is one of the main architectural and philosophical features of the educational policy paradigm in the Western world since the late 1970s and early 1980s’ (Peters and Tesar, 2017: 2). In planning schools in particular, new planning students are introduced to the discipline and its values, norms, knowledge and practices. Concurrently, they are ‘absorbed by essentially contested and intractably ambiguous intellectual discourses’ (Gunder, 2004: 229). Through their education, planning students encounter different discourses, and learn that planning depends on ‘dynamics of power and knowledge within and between discourses’ (Richardson, 1996: 280). This article explores how neoliberalism as the dominant ideology changes the dynamic of power and knowledge in planning education, in favour of the market operation.

Neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology

Over the last four decades, neoliberalism as a term has widely been used in both academic and non-academic debates. Several thinkers and academics have provided different definitions of neoliberalism as an empty signifier. There is not a generally accepted definition of neoliberalism; however, neoliberalism is generally suggested to be ‘the dominant ideology shaping our world today’ (Thorsen, 2010: 188). ‘The doctrine of Neoliberalism is in many ways the reassertion of a classical liberal economic argument: society functions better under a market logic than any other logic, especially a state-directed one’ (Purcell, 2009: 141).

Neoliberalism, as a word, is constructed through the addition of the prefix ‘neo’ to ‘liberalism’. That means neoliberalism is a new version, or a revived form of the pre-existing ideology of liberalism. Liberalism refers to a set of political ideas that limit state controls over people and the market. These political ideas generally assert individual rights, private property ownership, global free markets and economic competition (Critchlow and Vandermeer, 2012). However, following the Great Depression in the 1930s, under the Keynesian flag, the welfare state played the main role in regulating market operation by controlling the major industries and infrastructures in the liberal democracies until the late 1970s. Keynes argued that to protect liberal democracy, the state should regulate the market to mitigate its failures (Fitzpatrick, 2011).

Following the occurrence of a GFC in the late 1970s, neoliberalism was suggested by some economists such as Hayek and Milton Friedmann as an alternative for Keynesianism (Peck et al., 2012). Neoliberalism has transformed the pre-existing mechanism by privatising and deregulating the market, liberating trade, encouraging foreign investments, and facilitating the movement of people, capital, information and goods. Neoliberalism has empowered global markets associated with the reduction of state power including the minimisation of state interventions in the economy, the mitigation of capital controls and trade restrictions; and the establishment of the entrepreneurial state (Mayhew, 2015). If liberalism was previously limited within national borders, neoliberalism has re-regulated social, political and economic institutions and their interconnections through the marketization of local institutions to work as components of the global market (Brenner and Theodore, 2005). Harvey (1990) observes that the late 1970s and early 1980s were consequently a period of economic restructuring and social and political readjustment as the requirement shifted from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism embedded in finance and real estate. These transformations and readjustments have generated an entirely new regime of capital accumulation, coupled with a quite different system of political and social regulations at both national and international levels. The new mechanism of capital accumulation largely relies on the constant flows of labour, goods and capital. This new financial global capitalism is also characterised by the emergence of entirely new global markets, including labour, goods and finance (Harvey, 2005). This mechanism of capitalism has encouraged and expanded commercial, technological and organisational innovations to address the needs of the finance and service economy, which differs from the pre-existing industrial based economy.

Neoliberal reforms

Since the 1970s, neoliberalism has informed the economic trajectories and political strategies of almost all states, including old-style social democracies and welfare states (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberalism was initially introduced as an alternative political and economic strategy to replace the Keynesian welfare state and its traditional economic protective policies that were unable to resolve the global recession in the 1970s (Brenner and Theodore, 2005). Neoliberal economic and political reforms have included the large-scale privatisation of state-owned companies, the pervasive de-regulation and re-regulation of institutions, and the mitigation of the regulatory role of the state. Sometimes these transformations have occurred in response to coercive pressures from international organisations such as the OECD, World Bank and IMF to adapt local policies to the global market (Harvey, 2005; Peck, 2010).

Neoliberalism has demonised planning as a ‘bureaucratic, anti-enterprise form of social engineering’ (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2014: 29). The proponents of neoliberal policy have argued that ‘state failure is typically worse than market failure’ (Sager, 2011: 330). ‘Market forces typically unleash growth, innovation and efficiency, whereas governmental regulations and expenditures typically impede growth, stifle entrepreneurship, and generate inefficiencies in both private and public sectors’ (Head, 1988: 466).

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek (2001) promotes a market-driven planning to manage the accumulation of people and wealth in the cities as well as to increase market competition between cities. He (2001, 46) argues that,

Planning and [market] competition can be combined only by planning for competition, not by planning against competition. The planning against which all our criticism is directed is solely the planning against competition [or against free market operation].

The adherents of neoliberalism argue that the free market is capable of providing adequate solutions to all economic and social problems (Peck and Tickell, 2002). This ideological perspective, particularly planning for market competition, has fundamentally transformed the role of planning over the last four decades (Taşan-Kok and Baeten, 2011).

Neoliberalism has diminished the regulative and distributive roles of the state, particularly in terms of the economy, through omitting economic planning. In some countries such as New Zealand, neoliberal reforms have attenuated, or eliminated, national/regional planning as an expression of proactive state involvement in regional economic development aimed at providing the required services and infrastructure and sustaining the regions’ population (Albrechts et al., 2013). Instead, neoliberalism has expanded regional/city planning, including urban design for place-marketing and city-branding, with the intention of raising the ranking of major cities in the global competitive market (Dovey, 2005; Govers and Go, 2009; Kavaratzis, 2007). In other words, neoliberal reforms have increased the centrality of urban/regional agglomerations, rather than national/regional economies. Creating strategies of locational competition and urban entrepreneurialism have been the centre of neoliberal policies and plans (Brenner, 2004).

As Hayek (2001) predicted, competitiveness has become the centre of all policies. Therefore, competitive advantage has been the pervasive focus instead of pre-existing comparative advantage.

[The] notion of comparative advantage was derived from economic theory on international trade which suggested that a nation or region would specialize in an industry in which it had a comparative advantage related to its particular resource endowment which provided a factor cost advantage in producing a particular good. Later on, the emphasis changed towards the notion that regions would need to develop a competitive advantage that necessitated not only a factor cost advantage, particularly related to productivity and quality of goods and services that are traded, but also with respect to other factors that enhance business development and operations, and minimize risk. (Stimson et al., 2006: 13, 13)

During the last four decades, neoliberalism as a political project has significantly transformed pre-existing social, economic and political mechanisms around the world. Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade (Harvey, 2007).

Neoliberalism has brought about major changes in the structure, processes, influence and scope of organisations and institutions that were mostly developed during industrial capitalism. Peters and Tesar (2017: 2) argued that ‘[t]he neoliberal restructuring of state education systems, and particularly of higher education in many Western countries in recent decades, has become a new paradigm that has been positioned, historically, as a series of important shifts and turns’. Educational organisations including universities, which were developed to educate docile bodies who could work effectively and efficiently in the factories (Foucault, 1980), have changed into market-based organisations that often aim to educate individual entrepreneurial actors in the market-oriented society.

Under the flag of liberalisation, the movement of capital, goods, information and people has been promoted to empower and expand the pre-existing global market. The controlling and regulative roles of the state have faded; they now largely operate as companies that primarily focus on economic growth. The entrepreneurial states, including local governments, generally implement different strategies and policies such as city marketing policies to entice these flows from the global market, which are vital for their economic growth (Mohammadzadeh, 2014). The massive urban projects have been developed to create a brand for the cities by promising a high standard of living (Klingmann, 2007). The transformation of the state as the main actor in shaping the built environment has largely informed and reshaped the universities' planning courses as the main educator of planners who will work in these market-oriented organisations as well as private companies.

Neoliberalism has largely failed to deliver its promises; on the contrary, it has significantly widened socio-economic inequality. Even adherents of neoliberalism, such as Fukuyama, who believe that neoliberalism is an indispensable ideology, admit that neoliberalism has failed to achieve its initial promises (Fukuyama, 2016). Nonetheless, planning regulations are vastly scapegoated to conceal the failures of neoliberalism (Gunder, 2016). This article argues that the expansion of critical thinking and planning theory in urban planning programmes is crucial. These skills can assist the next generation of planners to think and act beyond neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideology (Aalbers, 2013), and to answer the constant market-driven attacks on the discipline.

Urban entrepreneurialism

Neoliberalism has significantly lessened the state’s control apparatus that was shaped during the period of industrial capitalism. The state initially deployed planning as a regulative tool to mitigate the adverse side effects of industrialisation (Foucault, 1980; Hall, 2002). Harvey (2007) argues that as a consequence of neoliberalism, the shift of factories in developed countries to developing countries has reduced the pre-existing controlling role of the state. Instead, the regulative capacity of the entrepreneurial state has been deployed to direct the flows of capital and workers in ways that generate higher profit for investors and lead to economic growth. Thus, the entrepreneurial state with its regulative capacity has become a component of the global system which functions based on the market rationale (Peck et al., 2013). Further, the transformation of the state has largely influenced contemporary planning as a component of its control apparatus.

The deregulation of the state apparatus has significantly affected urban policies and plans. The idea of planning as a means for creating growth is often conceptualised with a focus on larger urban areas and urban governance. This is most famously portrayed by Harvey (2007) as a shift from managerial to entrepreneurial urban governance, whereby city authorities and other actors attempt to attract economic growth to their cities, rather than focussing on managing the effects of growth. This shift in planning is reinterpreted by Peck and Tickell (2002) as the neoliberalisation of planning, that is, the process by which the political-economic ideology of neoliberalism becomes increasingly hegemonic in planning. This process involves among other things the promotion and normalisation of a ‘growth-first’ approach to urban development and planning. This reorientation of planning has in particular influenced strategic planning in cities and urban regions (Olesen and Carter, 2017).

Competitive cities and the flows of capital and labour

Neoliberalism has facilitated the circulation of global finance, people, information, and ideology (Hall, 2001). These circulations have generated surplus-value in the neoliberalised cities, which is materialised in the form of massive urban projects, such as business towers, luxury gated communities and shopping malls. Since economic growth has become the primary aim of the entrepreneurial state, including planning, it has generally attempted to lure the flows of capital and people by implementing market-oriented policies, which suggest higher profit for investors and greater enjoyment for creative class workers (Florida, 2002).

The neoliberalised city competes with other cities to attract the required work force from the global labour market. Florida (2003) observes that the economic growth of the global city relies on the flow of creative class workers (human capital) who are perceived as the primary driving force for the city’s economic growth. In his latest book, The New Urban Crisis, Florida (2017) argues that the flow of skilled people and cheap labour into neoliberalised cities has generated adverse consequences such as housing crises and pressure on the cities' infrastructure. Despite the fact that the movement of footloose workers is indispensable for economic growth, the entrepreneurial state largely regulates the flow of labour, including a cheap work force and skilled expats, to maximise economic growth (Deleuze and Guattari, 2003). This controlling mechanism is widely deployed to keep the local workers’ wages low, to diminish the negotiation power of the local labour unions, and to decrease the cost of educating skilled local labour by importing new skilled labour from the global market when they are needed (Harvey, 2007).

Lefebvre (1976: 30) argues that ‘there are interrelationships between the production of goods and that of space’. Neoliberalism transforms the mechanism of production, distribution and consumption in contemporary cities. Subsequent to the dislocation of industry to developing countries such as China, India, and Indonesia, ‘the city is in fact nothing more than a space for consumption’ in most developed countries (Miles, 2010: 1). The entrepreneurial state, in collaboration with its international co-partners and local influential players, largely commercialises the contemporary city space. The implementation of market-oriented policies, including the privatisation of urban space, creates the space for further consumption, such as shopping malls, theme parks, cinema complexes, entertainment centres, casinos and luxurious gated residential communities, which characterise the contemporary city under the hegemony of neoliberalism (Sager, 2013). These projects largely promise desirable images of cities such as the high quality of living enjoyed by both residents and new arrivals. However, only affluent people who can afford to pay the cost of these facilities and services will have the promised high quality of living in the cities.

The entrepreneurial state and its components, including planning, legitimises and facilitates the establishment of these urban projects to lure the flows of finance and workers, both of which are required for constant economic growth (Dovey, 2005). Therefore, cities are competing with others in the global market; to do so, the entrepreneurial states have implemented market-oriented plans and policies to attract the required flows needed to attain economic growth.

City-marketing, place-branding and place-making

Urban scholars have endeavoured to identify the role of the state, including planning and urban design, in the post-industrial era. To reveal the way in which contemporary planning operates to maximise international investment flows and lure the creative class, a variety of concepts have been proposed, including ‘urban-entrepreneurialism’ (Brenner and Theodore, 2005), ‘city-marketing’ (Kavaratzis, 2007), and ‘place-branding’ (Nicolas, 2004). These concepts emphasise the competition between neoliberalised cities in their attempt to lure a greater share of global capital flows. Outside judgement and international perceptions are important for raising the profile of cities (Ong, 2007). Thus, planners and designers, as the workers in an entrepreneurial apparatus, deploy and legitimise market-oriented policies and plans to improve the profile of their cities in the global market. Gotham (2002: 1735) states that ‘[m]arketing is the use of sophisticated advertising techniques aimed at promoting fantasy, manipulating consumer needs, producing desirable tourist experiences and simulating images of place to attract capital and consumers’. To respond to the market, many developed countries have reformed their planning practice, including institutions, scale of plans and regulations. Lord and Tewdwr-Jones (2014) observe that the British planning system has undergone five waves of planning reform in the last 20 years. What many of these reforms have in common is the attempt to reorient planning towards facilitation of growth, and as a result, planning today is largely conceived as a vehicle to enable development and economic growth (Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2014).

Entrepreneurial city management has largely endeavoured to sell its product, the desirable image of the city as a brand, in the global market. This brand should promise further enjoyment to its new arrivals (surplus enjoyment) and further benefit to the investors (surplus capital). Dovey (2005: 20) argues that ‘[w]hat we call buildings and cities, identities and institutions, what gets congealed as symbolic capital, are effects of these flows of desire’. City marketing has traditionally been seen as a marketing practice with three objectives and target audiences: to attract new inhabitants to the city, to attract business investments and new companies and to attract tourists (Sager, 2013). Deleuze and Guattari (2003) categorise the flows into two main types: attracting new inhabitants as a flow of labour, and absorbing businesses and tourists as a flow of capital. To attract these flows on a global scale, the city should promise both enjoyment and prosperity to the investors and new arrivals. Žižek (1989) maintains that the productions of surplus enjoyment and surplus capital are not separated, but are intertwined and interdependent.

Under the hegemony of neoliberalism, the New Zealand state and local governments have extensively utilised city marketing, place branding and place making as strategies to attract both human and financial capital to the country and its cities. Since the late 1990s, the New Zealand government has employed the slogan ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ to entice tourists and investors (Lewis, 2011). At the local government level, Auckland Council has adopted the slogan ‘making Auckland the world’s most liveable city’ as a central theme in its plans and policies, particularly the Auckland Plan (Mohammadzadeh, 2015). These market-based concepts have had a profound impact on planning and urban design education and programs in New Zealand. Gunder and Fookes (1997) argued that planning schools should reflect the ideological shifts occurring within New Zealand as the government brings about changes in its views on political economy and the role of the state. Consequently, Gunder and Fookes recommended a set of generic qualities and skills required of qualified planners seeking employment in various government agencies, organisations, as well as the private sector, including consultancy with diverse private and public sector clients. Most of the courses and teaching pedagogies in planning programs have been designed to educate, and normalise, planning students’ attitudes and skills as technocrats capable of developing and implementing market-driven plans and policies that attract people and financial resources to the cities. Since these concepts are widely utilised in both planning education and practice, planning students often accept and use them as unquestionable realties of the discipline. Planning students eagerly learn and use these concepts because they (un)consciencely know that neolberal policies will generate surplus value and wealth in the cities and subsequently create a sense of kudos for them at the subjective level (Dovey, 2005).

Planning as an obstacle

Under the hegemony of neoliberalism, planning has been under attack in the political arena, the social media and even academia (Klosterman, 1985). ‘The idea that planning hampers growth is not new, and has been part of political and public debates across the world’ for at least the last 50 years (Olesen and Carter, 2017: 690). Traditionally, urban plans and policies have two functions in societies: firstly, urban plans have been used as instrumental tools to control the everyday life of the residents by regulating cities and towns (Yiftachel, 2000) and secondly, at the same, urban plans, as law, generate obstacles to the aspirations of powerful elites (Hopkins, 2001).

Since the late 1970s, many ‘countries have reformed their planning systems, often inspired by a neoliberal political agenda, involving a desire to favour private actors and prioritise economic growth objectives’ (Lord and Tewdwr-Jones, 2014: 351). Hayek (1967: 23) argued that

with our attempts to use the old apparatus of restrictionism as an instrument of almost day-to-day adjustment to change we have probably already gone much further in the direction of central planning of current activity than has ever been attempted before.… It is important to realize in any investigation of the possibilities of planning that it is a fallacy to suppose capitalism as it exists to-day is the alternative.

Hayek (1944) argues that planning and its regulations are embedded in totalitarianism and dictatorship; therefore, he suggests the mitigation of planning and its regulations to protect people and their rights. Consequently, some planners have argued that planning regulations such as zoning and growth prevention regulations are often used instrumentally by parochial governments for the consolidation of political power (Feiock, 2004).

Following Hayek, a number of planners have started to challenge the regulative role of planning. Savini et al. (2015: 304) argue that ‘in the practice of contemporary planning, a regulation dilemma stems from the particular nature of planning action, which is intrinsically normative as it binds freedom of action’. Planning and its regulations create obstacles and limit individual freedom and creative thinking in collective action making (Coglianese and Kagan, 2007). Hayek believed that socio-economic and political issues are too complex to be investigated, understood and controlled by experts who work for the state such as economists and planners (Hayek, 2011). By referring to Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand of the market’, Hayek (2011) maintains that the market has the capacity to fix its failures, to the extent that regulations, plans and policy are perceived as disruptions in the market operation. Accordingly, some planners have argued that relying on legalism as a form of spatial intervention is no longer suited to accommodating complex socio-economic change, and have started to employ informal or softer formal tools of orientation (Turner, 2012). The pre-existing plans and regulations including economic planning, national and regional planning, comprehensive plans and land-use plans that are perceived as obstacles to the market operation, have been replaced by flexible and dynamic plans and a vision, including strategic plans, strategic visions and orientation maps. These strategic plans and visions have explored future directions of development in a more open way for the market with the aim of maximising economic growth. Savini (2013) argues that the deployment of these flexible planning tools has enabled entrepreneurial urban management to boost urban development and growth.

However, the entrepreneurial state has largely deployed the capacity of urban design to not only generate a high quality, built environment, but also to create a city brand in the global market. Planning, including urban design codes, has become a scapegoat following the failure of the market to meet its promises such as affordable housing (Gunder, 2016). Urban design codes have been recognised as one the main causes of housing unaffordability since these codes impose further costs on the development of housing projects. Therefore, there is more pressure on planners and urban designers to justify their plans and policies based on the market value. Planning ‘intervention, regulation, and investment dilemmas are at the core of daily planning [and urban design] innovation and they are hardly detachable in the daily work of planners’ and urban designers (Savini et al., 2015: 304).

Old but new problems

In contrast, in The End of History and The Last Man, Fukuyama (1992) predicted that neoliberal ideology would become indispensable. The GFC in 2008 has revealed the ephemerality of neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideology. Neoliberalism and its hegemonic ideology of market values is largely under attack because of widening social economic and spatial inequality (Ostry et al., 2016). The GFC ‘drew public attention to the pervasive, and dysfunctional, role of neoliberalism in the restructuring of national and global policy thinking, economic institutions, and patterns of economic and sociocultural development’ (Lovering, 2010: 528). Even adherents of neoliberalism, such as Fukuyama (2016), admit that neoliberalism has failed to achieve its initial promises. In a 2016 interview with Business Insider, Nobel prize-winning economist Stiglitz (2016: 2) said that ‘Neoliberalism is dead in both developing and developed countries’. Some of the most senior economists of the IMF question neoliberalism and its capacity to help economic growth. Ostry et al. (2016: 39) argue that neoliberalism generates considerable inequality that ‘hurts the level and sustainability of growth’.

Neoliberalism has expanded pre-existing issues such as social and spatial inequality (Bieler, 2011) and environmental issues such as climate change (Castree, 2010; Parr, 2014). ‘Planning is inherently ideological, because ideology constitutes our chosen and dominant belief, or value, systems’ (Gunder, 2010b: 299). Shove (2010) argues that climate change is like a ‘mirror’ that reflects the urban researchers, policy makers, and planners’ values back at them. ‘[P]lanners might identify and develop counter-hegemonic discourses and praxes that enable us to re-imagine our experience of and responses to climate change, in ways that support multispecies justice in the climate-changed city’ (Houston et al., 2016). Planning should traverse neoliberalism and its competitive rationality, it should return to its original values, which embed in collective activities and regulations.

The increasing socio-economic and spatial inequality in the cities has generated a new urban crisis (Florida, 2017). Ostry et al. (2016: 41) argue that

there is now strong evidence that inequality can significantly lower both the level and the durability of growth.… The evidence of the economic damage from inequality suggests that policymakers should be more open to redistribution than they are. Of course, apart from redistribution, policies could be designed to mitigate some of the impacts in advance – for instance, through increased spending on education and training, which expands equality of opportunity (so-called predistribution policies).

Some planners have claimed that planning should be renewed in order to face neoliberalism and its crisis. Following Hall (2014), Ponzini (2016: 1244) calls ‘for more and better planning, assuming that the accumulation and transfer of planning knowledge is needed for not having to start building the discipline over again and for avoiding old mistakes’. The reclaimed planning should aim to raise living conditions and standards to acceptable levels by redirecting existing resources (Bray and Bray, 2002).

Universities in dilemma

The market-based cities are also representative examples of a new model of urban development, where planning models have been implemented merely to create new economic opportunities, generally in the real-estate sector (Watson, 2006). Neoliberalism as a powerful global trend generates its discourses in academic disciplines in general and, more importantly, promotes a particular understanding and interpretation in planning and urban design which merely evaluates cities as big markets (Jessop, 2002). Arguably, planning, including urban design, is largely affected by neoliberal discourses and values (Townshend and Madanipour, 2008).

Foucault points to the fact that the dominant ideology regulates and normalises the pervasive knowledge through education institutions such as universities, which are largely controlled by power institutions. Townshend and Madanipour (2008) acknowledge that universities and planning schools, among other power institutions, regulate the contemporary cities by educating planners to have global market values. Neoliberalism has increasingly influenced planning and urban design by normalising planners’ identity with its symbolic discourse (Gunder and Hillier, 2009). Firstly, students are globally labelled as planners, which is a signifier. This signifier creates new connections with other signifiers in universities and planning schools. Students become continuously familiar with the dominant planning discourse and signifiers in interactions with others such as lecturers and also during the reading of planning references. Planner identification is an unconscious process (Gunder and Hillier, 2004). Planning discourse generates a new identity, creating and, more importantly, internalising new desires as planner ambitions (Gunder and Hillier, 2009). Planners, like other experts, are educated in universities and planning schools which are largely dependent on international information flows, the dominant ideology and academic references. Academic references and resources, either directly or indirectly, more or less address neoliberal values (Goonewardena, 2003). Neoliberal discourses and concepts have become dominant in the academic realm and universities are increasingly managed as companies. In this context, student knowledge, in general, and the understanding of the planner, in particular, are regulated by market-driven values and discourses. Thus, young planners are prepared and expected to work in the global market mechanism under the hegemony of neoliberal discourse.

Planners want to be accepted by others who are in the market such as urban developers, politicians or those who are involved in planning communities. This ambition unconsciously drives planners to follow and accept others, their market values and their norms. A planner who can create greater economic opportunity in cities, or attract international investment flows to urban projects, is assumed to be a successful planner (Gunder, 2010a). Thus, planners, in order to be accepted into the existing mechanism, endeavour to respond to market demand. The dominant planning discourse connects planners to socio-political structures and institutions such as private companies or public organisations which have largely been reshaped by global market-driven forces. Planners accept and, more importantly, legitimise neoliberal concepts such as city competitiveness as a reality for which they should find economic solutions in order to win this open-ended competition between neoliberalised cities.

Planning is a practice-based discipline, and planning education mianatins strong ties with the industry. Many planning educators and academics, including the authors, possess practical experience as practitioners. Planning programs are often accredited by relevant planning institutes such as the New Zealand Planning Institute (NZPI), which include both academics and practitioners. Both planning practice and education have always been influenced by the dominant ideological and discursive frameworks of the time (Gunder, 2010b). According to Fougère and Bond (2018: 156), ‘in a planning framework, policy and the law will shape what can and cannot be considered in granting planning permission and will guide decision-makers. However, the nature of those “guides” will always have particular effects and reflect certain discourses’. Under the hegemony of neoliberalism, planning tends to emphasise on its technocratic and bureaucratic functions, with a particular focus on delivery. Campbell et al. (2014) argue that

The technologies of neoliberalism, inscribed in governmental structures and practices, most particularly various forms of performance management, when combined with the orthodoxy of the ‘entrepreneurial city’, have had the powerful effect of constraining planners’ perceptions of their room-for-maneuver. The rhetoric of ‘delivery’ drives the need for visible signs of change, often with minimal focus on who benefits from the change and whether it is desirable.

In this context, there is often a preference for technical and practical knowledge, skills and competencies that facilitate the delivery of expected outcomes, especially in terms of generating surplus value and capital accumulation in cities. Conversely, critical thinking and theory that challenge the hegemonic discourse, norms and values, including plans and policies, are often seen as obstacles or, at the very least, irrelevant to planning practice. Olesen (2018: 302) argues that

employability is one of the contemporary buzzwords of university education. As universities increasingly are forced to compete for research funding and students under neoliberal logics, priority in university education is given to what students perceive as immediately useful knowledge, skills and competencies in their future careers. Students are seeking to increase their set of skills, which they believe will enhance their capability to gain and maintain employment.

Planning students mostly prioritise courses that offer a well-defined set of technical skills over planning theory courses (Friedmann, 1995). As a result, planning programs tend to offer more technical skills that are perceived as required skills in planning practice, aiming to enhance the employability of their graduates in the market. For instance, in New Zealand planning programs, several courses focus on the consenting process and delivery based on the Resource Management Act (RMA). However, the RMA has been widely criticised for its alignments with neoliberalism and environmental capitalism, as well as for supporting economic development and favouring well resourced ‘big players’, and failing to meet environmental mandates (Fougère and Bond, 2018; Higgins, 2010; Towns, et al., 2019). In response to these failures, some planning academics critically analyse the limitations of market-driven plans, policies, and acts including RMA, and incorporate critical analysis into various planning courses such as urban economics, policy making and particularly planning theory. Since 1980s, planning theory courses have included in planning programmes worldwide, including those in New Zealand, with aim of moving beyond the pervasive use of rational models in planning practice, and later the neoliberalised planning (Pokharel, 2022). However, most planning students tend to undervalue these critical perspectives, primarily focussing on acquiring practical skills for future practice. The prevailing neoliberal trends in the field appear to encourage such a mindset. Campbell et al. (2014) argue that under the hegemony of neoliberalism, there is a lack of actual or, perhaps more importantly, perceived spaces for critical and alternative thinking to exist in planning practice. Consequenctly, ‘the neoliberalisation of planning has been so successful that it is now entirely unchallenged in the world of practice’ (Porter, 2011: 477).

Planners understand knowledge as a technique, but are often not aware of the consequences of their knowledge (Gunder, 2010b). In other words, what is the consequence of planning knowledge under the hegemony of neoliberalism? This model has largely reduced and misread planning concepts and techniques by merely creating greater financial benefit, regardless of the adverse side effects of its practice in respect of social and environmental impacts. What we have witnessed in the last couple of years is not the dismantling of neoliberalism but, by and large, the furthering of neoliberalism.

Indefence of planning theory

‘Planning as a form of urban policy formulation and analysis is largely normative in the shaping of its ideas and values’ (Gunder, 2010b: 298). However, neoliberalism fails to meet its initials promises such as the improvement of social well-being. ‘What we have witnessed in the last couple of years is not the dismantling of neoliberalism but, by and large, the furthering of neoliberalism’ (Aalbers, 2013: 1085). Since urban decision-makers, planners, and urban designers are largely educated and normalised within the neoliberalised discipline, universities and most of the suggested solutions to the urban social, economic and environmental problems continue to be embedded in neoliberalism and its market values. Therefore, neoliberal solutions are not the real solutions needed to address the existing problems; instead, they merely conceal the problems to save the dominant neoliberalism. Alain Badiou, the well-known French philosopher, (Badiou, 2015) argues that ‘That’s the real crisis. Sometimes people think that this is a crisis of finance capitalism. No – not at all!’ He adds that the current crisis is not limited to the objective level including the economic or financial crisis; more crucially, this crisis is embedded in the subjective level such as thinking and finding solutions beyond neoliberalism as the dominant ideology. ‘Neoliberalism is flexible enough to influence policy in other ways than through the mantra of free markets: it thrives on presenting existing socioeconomic conditions as failing and neoliberalism as the best solution’ (Aalbers, 2013: 1089). Under the hegemony of neoliberalism, planners have lost their critical abilities to think differently, politically, and to present credible alternatives (Porter, 2011).

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its centralised planning systems has generated a pervasive myth that planning, including planned economies, does not work (Bray and Bray, 2002). The failures of neoliberalism to deliver its promises are more evident – that is, its promises to either improve well-being or economic growth, particularly after the GFC of 2008. There is a need for a new form of intervention to address the failures of neoliberalism and its free market values (Gunder, 2016; Biesta, et al., 2022). Although neoliberalism ‘would have us believe, that “there is no alternative” to neo liberal policy choices. However, at least conceptually within planning, this is far from the case’ (Campbell, et al., 2014: 48). Decision-makers, planners, and urban designers will play important roles in regulating the market through the implementation of different regulative plans and policies. ‘Market allocations should be encouraged within planning guidelines. Runaway greed should be muted by reallocation of benefits in accordance with world, national, and local priorities’ (Bray and Bray, 2002: 119). To do so, planning theory and critical thinking can assist planners to act beyond the existing hegemonic ideology. Universities should provide adequate conditions for planning educators and students to investigate alternative approaches to neoliberalism. Otherwise, Fokkema and Nijkamp (1994: 129) predict that

we are moving towards a new planning culture and style, in which even the question is raised whether there is a case for planning at all. The increased market orientation of almost all countries questions the position of the public sector in almost all countries: deregulation, decentralisation and privatisation have become the key words in a new planning orientation which can be summarized by the generic term devolution.

Conclusion

Neoliberalism has been a process, not a product. Accordingly, finding alternative solutions for neoliberalism will be a process. Universities as the main educator organisation should be part of this transition process. Universities are in a dilemma since their graduates, including planners, should be educated in a way that assists them to find professional positions in the existing market-based society. On the other the hand, planners should have adequate skills to find solutions beyond the hegemonic ideology in order to address the pervasive global, national and urban issues. The authors believe that critical thinking theory is a crucial skill to challenge the existing neoliberal planning practices and to offer alternative approaches and values that can improve planning practice and its outcomes. Therefore, critical thinking and planning theories should be included in all planning courses including technical courses.