Governing through design: the politics of participation in neoliberal cities

Abstract

This article critically analyses an empirical case of how design mediates governing power in situated contexts. Using the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, the article examines the specific role of co-design to enable governance through the strategic use of design techniques and artefacts. Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken during the participatory urban redevelopment of Waterloo, Sydney, the article unpacks four concrete mechanism of governance through design: (1) the building of a seemingly coherent, stable and shared visions of Waterloo’s future; (2) the regulation of local knowledge production and political imagination; (3) the rendering of community technical through calculation techniques, standardisation, and the objectification of subjects; (4) the performance of diversity of choice while smoothing out differences. In conclusion, the article argues that, in Waterloo, the shift from top-down modes of urban governance to decentralised multi-stakeholders did not imply the reduction of state power but only supposed the rearrangement of governing power in the face of neoliberal urbanism.