Planning and economic representation : the economics of three media

Abstract

The present thesis addresses a problem of implementation failure which has been identified in regard to sustainable development. The problem is that the 'stylised facts' (or axioms) of mainstream (i.e., neoclassical) economics frequently lead to 'anti-planning' policy conclusions, insofar as they abstract completely from questions of structural continuity. To achieve the successful implementation of environmental initiatives, planners need to be able to challenge such 'stylised facts'. In the language of Patsy Healey and Tim Shaw, planners must acquire "real leverage over economic discourse". Such leverage does not come automatically; for, although planners have long recognised that there is a tension between planning and neoclassical economics, there does not seem to have been an intellectually sustained engagement between planning theory and economic theory as yet. The present thesis seeks to help remedy this deficiency. In the present thesis, the numerous 'stylised facts' of neoclassical economics are catalogued and reduced to a common intellectual denominator, that of the so-called 'convex space-time'. This may be thought of as a 4-dimensional hollow container full of given commodities and social atoms. This space-time image is contrasted to the realist space-time favoured by planners and geographers. It is shown that the assumption of convexity, and the more concretely stylised facts associated with it, are at odds with a realist theory of production. This being so, neoclassicism is vulnerable to a powerful immanent critique in terms which favour planning and geography. An exhaustive account of past economic ideas is adduced in support of this critique. Evidence is also brought to suggest that concepts favouring structural continuity have been left out of the economic canon precisely because they would support a normative and political exercise of planning. It is concluded that planners may wish to further the act of deconstruction which is thus carried out in the present thesis. Positive recommendations are also made regarding alternative economic formalisations, which embed the 'medium' of commodity exchange in other media of a type that contribute to structural continuity: namely, power, and the gift relation.