Collaborative planning - A neoliberal strategy? A study of the Atlanta Belt Line

Collaborative/communicative planning theorists have engaged Habermas's idea of communicative rationality to offer a framework for a more democratic decision-making process. However, critics of communicative rationality and its underlying assumptions raise fundamental questions about the very possibility of an actually existing collaborative planning process. While collaborative planning theory provides a worthwhile ideal, the assumptions of bracketing status difference, identifying common good and building consensus, problematize its application in real life. In fact, collaborative planning principles provide a means for the market-driven local state and planning agencies to reinforce present neoliberal hegemony. While such processes may result in community empowerment and greater democracy under certain conditions, market-led planning projects are more likely to co-opt the high democratic principles of collaborative/communicative planning theory and nurture a post-political condition. This paper elaborates these points by examining the planning process of the Atlanta BeltLine as an instance of neoliberal governance. Using qualitative research methods this paper analyzes the BeltLine's community engagement effort to democratize the planning process in the Historic Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta. It argues that BeltLine-like market-led planning efforts tactfully take advantage of the problematic principles of collaborative planning theory to create an ostensibly democratic decision-making process that in reality reinforces the neoliberal hegemony instead of challenging it. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.