Planning futures of the past: Contradictory temporalities in the governance of water scarcity in Germany’s Lusatia region

This article inquires how proposed urban futures are stuck in the past. Dwelling on the ponderous nature of bureaucratic planning systems in the governance of urban water scarcity, it illuminates situations where the pace of climate change overtakes planning’s sustainability visions, rendering planned futures obsolete. Which temporal dynamics characterize this process? And what are the democratic stakes embedded in the making of these temporalities? Combining literatures on temporalities and planning, water as a temporal factor, and the plural politics of emergencies, the article breaks new ground in urban future studies. It investigates the contradictory temporalities employed by different actors in the governance of water scarcity, as well as the role of hydrological time in the emergency politics associated with it.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980251379335