Spacing the Post‐Political Critique: Dealing With Politics and Spatial Dissonance in Suburban Planning

Abstract

The article explores the spatial planning and development trajectory of Randesund, a district of Kristiansand, Norway, critiquing the dominant planning paradigm for its spatially blind and post‐political tendencies. Drawing on Mouffe, the authors highlight how current planning practices prioritize procedural consensus while sidelining fundamental political contestations. To expand and nuance existing critiques of this procedural inadequacy in the post‐political condition plaguing planning, and to resolve some of the democratic deficiencies it produces, we suggest a more spatially aware understanding of urban life, praxis, and development. Inspired by Lefebvre, the article suggests that the spatial code produced in Randesund also generates spatial dissonance, dissent, and strife - manifested in actions that are not, but ought to be, recognized as legitimately political, particularly from the perspective of planning.