Urban future-making: Contours of a practice perspective

Abstract

Multiple, reemerging, and interconnected crises have eroded certainties about the yet-to-come by challenging established ways of engaging with futures, such as urban planning. Consequently, urban futures are not self-evident anymore: They have to be ‘made’. How, then, do experts and administrators develop and deploy strategies and interventions of ‘urban future-making’, and how can these be examined and theorized? Matthias Wenzel discusses the contours of a practice perspective on urban future-making. Such a perspective sensitizes scholars to the partly subtle or mundane streams of activity performed by experts and administrators through which urban futures are made, and which may be performed in the shadows of more conventional future-making practices. Furthermore, the key dimensions of a practice perspective – performativity, situationality, heterogeneity, and relationality – draw attention to areas for future research on urban future-making.

Bio

Matthias Wenzel is a professor of organization studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He examines ‘practice-based organizing and strategizing’, i.e. the practices through which organizing and strategizing are accomplished, as well as their societal implications. His research contributes to future-making and strategy as practice, which are vibrant areas of research in management and organization studies. Matthias’s work has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Perspectives, Business & Society, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Organization Studies, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Strategic Management Journal. Furthermore, he serves as senior editor of Organization Studies as well as on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Project Management Journal, and Strategic Organization.