 The Power of (Re)Attachment in Urban Strategy: Interrogating the Framing of Social Sustainability in MalmöRandi Gressgård
Environment and Planning A, 2015, vol. 47, issue 1, 108-120 Abstract: Based on a critical examination of Malmö's new development strategy, this paper discusses the power of attachment in urban strategy, with a special focus on the ideological framing of social sustainability. It argues that the social sustainability agenda has less to do with its practical purpose of equalizing living conditions in a segregated city and more to do with its ability to mobilize people under a future vision through attachment to a fantasmatic narrative. The fantasmatic construction of the ‘future city’ helps promote ideological closure, but the fantasmatic vision is not tantamount to a utopian ideal that transcends participants' self-interests. The paper analyzes urban strategists' communication of visionary planning ideas, such as the idea of social sustainability, as a ritual practice that generates an abstract uniformity through people's consensual appropriation of schemes. At the same time, the appropriation of schemes affords the participants a space of resistance which could turn the power of attachment into a politics of reattachment that critically engages with—and politicizes—ideological constructs that relate everything to a single vision. Keywords: urban strategy; social sustainability; power of attachment; ideological framing; ritualization (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:1:p:108-120 DOI: 10.1068/a130167p Access Statistics for this article More articles in Environment and Planning A |
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