Planning, ‘Politics’ and the Production of Space: the formulation and application of a framework for examining the micropolitics of community place-making.

Abstract

The theories of Henri Lefebvre on the Production of Space have been influential to our understanding of the ontology of space. This paper complements work which draws on Lefebvre but extends its benefit for planning research through a dialogue with the philosophy of Jacques Rancière. Specifically, the paper formulates a novel investigative framework for examining the micropolitics of the production of space by integrating the work of these philosophers. The analytical benefits of this approach for planning research are illustrated through its application to a case study of community gardening in Dublin, Ireland.

Keywords: Henri Lefebvre, Jacques Rancière, The Production of Space, Subjectification, Community Gardens

Dr Mick Lennon and Dave Moore

School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy

University College Dublin

Belfield

Dublin 4

Ireland

Introduction

Drawing on a long engagement with continental philosophy and informed by the Paris riots of May 1968, Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space proposed a new way of thinking about space and social change. At the heart of this approach is a relational understanding of space and time, which as ‘integral aspects of social practice’ can only be comprehended in the context of a specific society (Schmid, 2008: 29). Although Lefebvre’s approach has gained increasing prominence in planning research (Leary, 2009; Buser, 2012; Lehtovuori, 2010; Allen and Crookes, 2009; Carp, 2009; Degen, 2008), its absence from the mainstream of planning theory is evidenced in its continued omission from major anthologies of the most influential theories within the discipline (Fainstein and DeFilippis, 2016; Hillier and Healey, 2010; Gunder et al., 2017). Nevertheless, there now exists a growing stream of research inspired by Lefebvre’s work that has yielded valuable explorations of the role played by mobilising opposition to state authority in the production of spaces more responsive to the experiential desires of communities, rather than the capital control and accumulation agendas of elites (Attoh, 2011; Butler, 2012; Mayer, 2009; Schmid, 2012). Work here varies from that which focuses on ‘The Right to the City’ (Lefebvre, 1995) in an applied justice framework (Mitchell, 2003), to that which adopts a deep reading of Lefebvre’s broad oeuvre to advance a radical understanding of the struggle for community self-management in, of and through the urban environment (Purcell, 2013; 2015). While such work has contributing greatly to our understanding of Lefebvre’s relevance to countering asymmetries of power and privilege, this paper takes a different tack by endeavouring to furnish the researcher with a structured approach to the use of Lefebvre’s work that remains attentive to his philosophy, yet facilitates the application of his thinking through a coherent framework that is more analytical than politically provocative in its intention. Specifically, this paper mobilises Lefebvrian theory as a means to address deficits in our comprehension on how new types of spaces come into existence outside the institutions of conventional planning, but nevertheless gain recognition within local governance by bottom-up processes that co-create place identity and community through the affective dimensions of nonconforming activities. This is undertaken via a novel engagement with the work of the French political theorist and aesthetic philosopher, Jacques Rancière.

Although there is a fast growing bank of literature in academic geography engaging with the work of Rancière (Bassett, 2014; Dikeç, 2005, 2017; Enright, 2017; MacLeod, 2011; Purcell, 2014), Rancierian philosophy enjoys a lower profile in planning research (however see Allmendinger and Haughton, 2012; Metzger, 2017). Recent work in this field has undoubtedly supplied useful contributions to planning debates. However, much of this has occurred at the macro scale with a focus on valuable but broad commentaries regarding neoliberalism and postpolitics (Davidson and Iveson, 2015; Dikeç and Swyngedouw, 2017; Metzger et al 2015; Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2014), with less attention focused on the politics of those small spaces that give personality to cities through the generation of affective attachment in place-making. Consequently, the potential contribution of Rancière’s oeuvre to the politics of place-making in planning theory and practice remains comparatively unexplored at the micro-level. This paper seeks to rectify this by demonstrating the value of Rancière’s philosophy for planning researchers both in itself, and in fruitful dialogue with the work of Lefebvre on the production of space. Specifically, this paper will employ a short case study example of planning research conducted into ‘community gardens’ in an inner-city area of Dublin, Ireland, to explore and highlight the elucidatory benefits of generating and employing an analytical framework formulated through a careful integration of Lefebvrian and Rancièrian philosophical approaches.

What is now often called a ‘community garden’ has a long and complex history with shifting boundaries between the organised and the spontaneous. Nonetheless, the modern use of the term ‘community garden’ can be traced to accounts of the community-initiated responses to the blighted urban landscapes prevalent in cities across the United States in the early 1970s (Fox, 1989; Hassell, 2002; Hynes, 1996; Severson, 1990; Spirn, 1984; Warner, 1987). The 1970s also witnessed the term ‘community garden’ migrate from North America to projects being established in Britain (Firth, 2011; McKay, 2011) and Australia (Nettle, 2014), albeit at a small scale. Today, scholarship that intersects with community gardens readily encompasses expansive categories such as urban greening and sustainability (Stocker and Barnett, 1998; Harnick, 2010; Tidball and Krasny, 2014), food justice (Wekerle, 2004; Baker, 2004) and urban agriculture (Martin and Marsden, 1999; McClintock, 2010; Atkinson 2013). A small but growing body of work within this conceptualises community gardens in the context of ‘tactical urbanism’ (Finn, 2014; Lydon and Garcia, 2015; Németh and Langhorst, 2014), which is an emerging line of community design research that refocuses analysis away from the object (e.g. a community garden) and onto the novel processes that generate, sustain and change it. Here, importance is laid on how community supported transformation occurs by using ‘structures that were created for different purposes, in order to achieve urban design solutions…[such that] civics plays a major part in tactical initiatives involving residents and local actors’ (Silva, 2016: 1045). Resonant with this is recent research centred on the perceived distinctiveness of community gardens as instances of the ‘social production of space’ in the contemporary city (Eizenberg, 2013; Tornaghi, 2014). The case study employed in this paper to explore and highlight the benefits of the combined Lefebvrian-Rancièrian framework complements such work. However, this paper advances an approach that extends beyond the current application of Lefebvre’s work by furnishing an original way to identify and explore the nuanced processes lying ‘within’ the ‘production of space’ that help highlight how the micropolitics of spatial production coherently connects with Lefebvre’s broader philosophy. In doing so, the paper demonstrates the general alignment between the positions of Lefebvre and Rancière, and outlines how dialogue with the work of Rancière can assist planning researchers seeking to deploy a Lefebvrian approach to analysing the production of space at the micro scale. In doing so, this paper seeks to relate the works of Lefebvre and Rancière in the context of a mutually supplementing dialogue, rather than correcting one in terms of the other. Accordingly, the next section of the paper outlines Lefebvre’s broader concerns with respect to the production of space, and subsequently how he conceives this production process as operating. The paper then turns to discussing the philosophy of Rancière as a means to generate a fruitful dialogue with Lefebvre’s work at the micro scale. Following this, the illustrative case study of ‘community gardens’ in Dublin is provided. The paper subsequently closes with a discussion of the benefits of the Lefebvrian-Rancièrian framework and what can be learned through its application in planning research.

The Production of Space

Abstract and Differential Space

Rooted in the Romantic idealism of Marx’s earlier works on ‘alienation’, Lefebvre develops the idea of ‘abstract space’ as a conceptual tool for understanding how an often unacknowledged capitalist rationality determines ‘all there is to be perceived’ (Merrifield, 2006: 113). Wading against the tide of structural-materialism that dominated Marxian reflection in his homeland during the 1970s (Shields, 1999), Lefebvre expanded the orthodox interpretation of alienation from proprietary and production relations to encompass a phenomenological understanding informed by Heidegger and Bachelard (Schmid, 2008). In broadening his perspective beyond the materialist concerns of mid-twentieth century neo-Marxism, Lefebvre viewed the homogenising rationality of capitalism as a force that strips the ‘living substance’ from human interactions and thus ‘leads to the impoverishment’ of everyday life (Trebitsch, 1991: xxiii) by silencing the affective and creative dimensions of space’s use. From a Lefebvrian perspective, this disembedding or ‘abstracting’ of space from the social context of its everyday use facilitates its ‘exchange-value’ by constituting an exploitable ‘neutral medium into which disjointed things, people, and habitats might be introduced’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 308). For Lefebvre and many others who have employed his perspectives (Lehtovuori, 2010; Thompson, 2017; Leary, 2009), the activity of planning has become complicit in this abstracting process by deploying a rationality whereby space is conceived as a fungible resource that can be changed and exchanged relative to the needs of capital accumulation, irrespective of the social dynamics which currently sustain and are sustained by it. Hence, countering the insidious forces of abstraction in planning is essential to acknowledging the role of social dynamics in ‘the production of space’, and consequently of facilitating a more meaningful spatial experience.

In characteristically dialectical fashion, Lefebvre paints a rough picture of what resistance to abstraction might look like. For him, space ‘attains its full meaning only when it is contrasted with the opposite and inseparable concept of appropriation’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 165). As such, even within the ever-pervasive abstracting forces of capitalist modernity, there lies the promise of a counter-movement for the reclaiming of social space through affective appropriation and the forging of communal relationships (Shields, 1999). Lefebvre thereby viewed the fracturing of homogenisation tendencies through spatially specific creativity as a counterpoint to the abstraction of space. This resistance to an abstracting rationality reinforces or induces ‘differential space’ wherein ‘the concentrated interaction of people, ideas and materials’ (Thompson, 2017: 107) asserts the prevalence of use-value over exchange-value such that the qualitative significance of place enjoys primacy over the quantitative commodification of space. Therefore,

Lefebvre’s vision of differential space as an inversion of the alienated realities of abstract space – use over exchange, difference over homogeneity, the qualitative over the quantitative, the lived over the conceived...demands the transcendence of productivism and the flourishing of a postproductivist society (Wilson, 2013: 373).

Nevertheless, Lefebvre is rather vague in his writing on how this postproductivist differential space is realised. It is in this context that the work of Jacques Rancière is advanced as a means to enhance analysis of the emergence and maintenance of differential space against the forces of abstraction[endnoteRef:1]. However, before discussing the relevance of Rancière’s philosophy, it is first necessary to outline the dimensions of Lefebvre’s ‘spatial triad’, which form the ‘weight-bearing epistemological pillar’ (Merrifield, 2006: 109) supporting his conception of how space is ‘produced’. [1: This paper does not suggest that Lefebvre is incoherent. Rather, it only seeks to advance a novel dialogue between Lefebvre and Rancière in planning research as a means to enhance the subtlety with which researchers approach the social production of space. ]

The Spatial Triad

Lefebvre advances a three-dimensional dialectic in which the production of space is ‘grasped as both a material and mental process’ (Elden, 2004: 184). In this, he posits three ‘moments’ that are inherently related and not subsumed by a settling third movement/moment. Informed by his study of continental philosophy, Lefebvre broadly considers these moments as defined by ‘thought’ (Hegel), the ‘creative act’ (Nietzsche), and the ‘materiality of social practice’ (Marx) (Schmid, 2008: 33). From a Lefebvrian perspective, each moment is distinct yet none is privileged over the other. Thus, ‘each moment assumes equal importance’ (Buser, 2012: 285). This three-dimensionality and lack of sublimating supplement is a distinctive feature of the Lefebvrian ‘trilectic’. It gives Lefebvre’s understanding of space a sense of perpetual momentum in which space is continually and simultaneously both a product and producer of social dynamics. Furthermore, each of the three moments postulated have both an epistemological and phenomenological dimension inspired by a Nietzschean epistemology of language and a phenomenological reading of spatial perception informed by readings of Merleau-Ponty and Bachelard (Schmid, 2008). Operating in a triadic relationship, the interaction of these moments constitutes Lefebvre’s ontology of space. Having acknowledged that all moments are equal and exist concurrently, each of Lefebvre’s moments is outlined below.

The epistemological element of the first moment is representations of space. This refers to the ‘rational, intellectualised, official’ conceptions of space ‘for analytical and administrative purposes’ (Leary, 2013: 7). Informed by Nietzsche’s assertions on the instrumentalising power of language, Lefebvre sees this as ‘the space of order, of verbal descriptions, language and the written word’ (Buser, 2012: 284) employed by ‘scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 38). It therefore includes such spatial constructs as plans, maps and strategy documents. Consequently, ‘representations of space’ both reflect and are an effort to implicitly or explicitly instantiate power in space by ‘objective expression’ that facilitates the abstraction process through the ‘bureaucratic and political authoritarianism immanent to a repressive space’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 49). As these representations cannot exist without the processes of their conception, Lefebvre posits a phenomenological dimension to this moment that he terms conceived space. Alluding to Hegel, conceiving space is an act of thought that involves a bringing together of ideas to form a ‘whole’ linked to the production of knowledge (Schmid, 2008). Hence, ‘conceived space’ is the phenomenological aspect that specifies what is and can be known within a formal framework for planning, designing and strategizing. As it is interwoven with ‘representations of space’, such that ways of ‘objectively knowing’ are inherently tied to power and ideology (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 33). In this sense, ‘representations of space/conceived space’ reflect Lefebvre’s thinking on how the reduction of space to quantifiable divisions facilitates its disembedding from the social milieu of its occasion so that its use-value is supplanted by its exchange-value in the process of abstraction that generates ‘abstract space’.

The epistemological element of the second moment is an effective inversion of the abstraction of space by ‘representations of space’ and is thus termed spaces of representation. This is the ‘symbolic dimension of space’ (Schmid, 2008: 39). In contrast to the quantifiable nature of ‘representations of space’, this moment is ‘qualitative, fluid and dynamic’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 42). Nevertheless, in keeping with its Nietzschean informed ‘drive to knowledge’ (1909/1961) as a ‘will to power’ (Foucault, 1990), ‘representations of space’ (plans, maps, strategies) ‘want to master it, need to appropriate and dominate it’ (Merrifield, 2006: 110). However, referencing Dada and the Surrealists as examples in art and literature of crafting the imaginable, Lefebvre considers that the fluid nature of this type of space resists such appropriation by creativity, affect and non-reducible symbolic interaction. In such resistance, this moment supplies a ‘terrain of struggle’ (Simonsen, 2005: 7) that does not ‘obey rules of consistency’ but rather is ‘felt more than thought’ (Merrifield, 2006: 110). Accordingly, the phenomenological dimension of this moment is lived space. Such ‘lived space’ is the space of everyday experience (Schmid, 2008). Revealing Lefebvre’s engagement with Heidegger, lived space ‘embraces the loci of the passion, of action and of lived situations, and thus immediately implies time’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 42). Therefore, ‘spaces of representation/lived space’ reflect Lefebvre’s thinking on the processes through which postproductivist ‘differential space’ is generated wherein use-value is created and sustained against the commodifying forces of abstraction.

The epistemological element of the third moment is termed spatial practices. This element ‘designates the material dimension of social activity and interaction’ (Schmid, 2008: 36). Spatial practices facilitate social functioning through ‘spatial competence’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 33) in negotiating the ‘routes and networks’ (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 37) that enable societal cohesion in daily interaction. The phenomenological dimension of this moment is perceived space. Directly relating to materiality, ‘perceived space’ encompasses that which is sensuously perceptible; that which can be ‘seen, heard, smelled, touched and tasted’ (Degen, 2008: 19). Hence, ‘spatial practices/perceived space’ is neither a force of abstraction nor differentiation. Instead it is a plane of interaction that relates with the other moments of Lefebvre’s triad in both mediating and reflecting the struggles between productivist and postproductivist logics.

Thinking about space as the interrelation of these three moments is useful for planning research as it frames as the object of analysis an active ‘process of production’ that takes place in time (Buser, 2012: 285). However, uncertainty on how differential space is ultimately produced and materially instantiated hampers the prospect of Lefebvre’s work for elucidatory application (Merrifield, 2006). As demonstrated below, dialogue with the work of Jacques Rancière can help resolve this by supplying a mutually supporting engagement that facilitates the formulation of a useful framework for analysis in planning research.

The Production of Recognition[endnoteRef:2] [2: The word ‘recognition’ here is employed in the context in which it appears in Rancière and is not an implicit reference to potential similarities or differences to the approach advanced by Axel Honneth. For a detailed discussion on such similarities and differences refer to Honneth and Rancière, 2016.]

Rethinking Equality

Similar to Lefebvre, the work of Rancière was little known outside his homeland of France until the latter years of his life. As with many twentieth-century French philosophers of his generation, Rancière begins with ideas that his audience could be expected to have some acquaintance with before swiftly de-familiarising the terms he employs as a means to confront assumptions and shed light on the processes he wishes to discuss. An example of this process that is fundamental to his thinking is his idiosyncratic concept of ‘equality’. Rancière’s notion of equality differs from most conventional interpretations of the term. This is resultant from his elision of standard debates divided by positions on liberty and redistribution. Indeed, Rancière recasts this debate in the context of what May (2008) refers to as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ stances on equality. May argues that while equality is differently conceived in the work of libertarian theorists such as Robert Nozick, liberal political philosophers such as John Rawls and Amartya Sen, or even neo-Marxist thinkers, they are united by a ‘passive’ conception of equality that ‘concerns what institutions are obliged to give people’ (May, 2008: 4). Hence, from this ‘passive’ position, the equality sought for people ‘is not something they create; it is not something they guide; it is not something they do’, such that while they may use the equality they enjoy in a multitude of ways, ‘equality itself comes to them (or is protected for them) from a source outside of themselves’ (May, 2010: 70). However, for Rancière, equality is ‘active’ in that it is presupposed as already existing among all participants in any situation (Davis, 2013). This is consequent on the equality of capacities by all participants in a hierarchy to perceive their position in that hierarchy relative to others. As such, Rancière holds that equality is not presupposed because it is ethically or rationally desirable, but because it is ‘structurally necessary’ (James, 2014: 113). Thus, in a dialectical turn, Rancière asserts the fundamental nature of this idea as ‘the ultimate secret of every social order, the pure and simple equality of anyone with everyone’ (Rancière, 1999: 79). As a presupposed equality also presupposes the capacity for the recognition of structural inequality (Honneth and Rancière, 2016), this view of equality thereby supplies potential for challenge and change by facilitating an appreciation of the contingency of hierarchies. As such, from a Rancièrian perspective, the ability to resist the abstracting forces of exchange-value rationalities and engender the production of Lefebvre’s ‘differential space’ rests on a universal equality that is presupposed as the condition of that production. In this sense, equality extends to the ways in which the world is conceived and imagined (‘lived’). Accordingly, it concerns inequities in the production of space through the particular configuration of Lefebvre’s triad. Consequently, the ‘equality’ theorised by Rancière holds promise for recognising and resisting the contingency of what he terms the ‘distribution of the sensible’.

Distribution of the Sensible

The ‘distribution of the sensible’ is the system of allotment that assigns parts, provides meaning, and delineates relationships between things in a shared world of interpretation. Acknowledging that the concept is analogous to the transcendentalism of Kant as ‘re-examined’ by Foucault, Rancière envisages the distribution of the sensible as a ‘system of a priori forms determining what presents itself to sense experience’ (Rancière, 2004: 13). In essence, Rancière is articulating the manner in which our experiences of the world is inevitably communal insofar as ‘any world can only be experienced as such on the basis of a horizon of perception which is common to all those who inhabit that world’ (James, 2014: 118). However, within such a common horizon, sensible experience is segregated according to the partition of sites and spaces that govern where one is situated within that world and the particular interpretive frameworks one uses to negotiate that world. Hence, the ‘distribution of the sensible’ is ‘the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it’ (Rancière, 2004: 12). In the context of Lefebvre’s concerns, the ‘something in common’ mentioned here may be understood as a spatial configuration that prompts a particular set of ‘spatial practices/perceived spaces’ stimulated by, and interacting with, the ‘conceived’ and ‘lived’ moments in the trilectic production of space. Accordingly, it is important to attend to the distribution of the sensible, as its distinctions and divisions anticipate the imaginable, and thus the prospect of Lefebvre’s ‘differential space’. This is because ‘in its very givenness’, the distribution of the sensible ‘supplies possible courses of action, forms of relation, as well as new thoughts and sensible configurations’ (Tanke, 2011: 2). As such, the distribution of the sensible ultimately defines the field of possibility and impossibility in the ‘production of space’.

However, it is vital to note that Rancière does not view the distribution of the sensible as open to easy reconfiguration. Rather, he believes that it is maintained by a ‘police order’ that reflects the hierarchical manner in which interpretation is structured and ‘the way in which functions, positions and systems of legitimation are distributed’ (James, 2014: 122). In an idiosyncratic re-description of a familiar term, Rancière’s use of the word ‘police’ here does not refer to a body of people who maintain order (i.e. ‘the cops’) or any other repressive organ of the state. Rather, he is echoing an interpretation more closely ‘identified by Foucault in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writings as synonymous with the social order in its entirety’ (Davis, 2013: 76). Hence, the ‘police’ denotes the prevailing distribution of the sensible[endnoteRef:3] and how it is reinforced by an assumption that all entities are accounted for and participate within ‘a whole as the whole with each part in its proper place’ (Dikeç, 2005: 175). ‘As such, the “police” is rather close to Foucault’s notion of governmentality, the conduct of conduct, the mode of assigning location, relations and distributions or what Alain Badiou refers to as ‘the state of the situation’’ (Swyngedouw, 2009, 606). As summarised by Chambers (2010: 63), [3: Although Rancière contends that his concept of the police is ‘non-pejorative’ (Rancière, 1999: 29), and that some form of police is inevitable, he does accede that ‘there is a worse and a better police’ (Rancière, 1999: 30). ]

This logic can be completed as follows: police determines not just the part that any part has in society; it also determines the intelligibility of any party at all. To have no place within the police order means to be unintelligible – not just marginalized within the system, but made invisible by the system. Police orders thereby distribute both roles and the lack of roles; they determine who counts and they decide that some do not count at all.

Consequently, those spaces that are recognised and functionally determined within plans, maps and strategies (e.g. allotment, house, shop etc.) are already part of the police. In this way, Lefebvre’s ‘conceived space’ of planning constitutes an inherent aspect of the police order. However, those spaces of the imagination that creatively resist the abstraction of space may exist beyond the horizon of this order. Therefore, the ‘differential space’ proposed by Lefebvre may lie outside the bounds of the prevailing police order and not be recognised by it. Nevertheless, as noted above, Rancière’s particular idea of equality entails a capacity to identify the contingency of hierarchical distributions, thereby supplying potential for reflection on the distribution of the sensible and the possibility of resistance to the police order (Dikeç, 2015). In this way, the interpretation of equality posited by Rancière offers clarity to our understanding of how differential space may be instantiated by providing a channel for exploring the ways in which abstraction may be resisted via a transformation of the police order. Rancière refers to the process of resisting and contesting the police order as ‘politics’.

Politics and Subjectification

For Rancière, ‘politics is an activity of reconfiguration of that which is given to the sensible’ (Rancière, 2000: 115). As such, it revolves around ‘what is seen and what can be said about it’ and ‘around the properties of space and the possibilities of time’ (Rancière, 2004: 13). In this sense, politics is about challenging the contingency of the police order through ‘fundamentally divergent ways of understanding or encountering any object of disagreement and the relative possibility of expression and communication which are available to those who may be party to a disagreement’ (James, 2014: 121). ‘Disagreement in the proper political sense hence revolves around a conflict over the distribution of the sensible’ (Metzger et al, 2015, 8: emphasis in original). In terms of a Lefebvrian understanding of space, this ‘object of disagreement’ may be considered the functional determinacy of space and the efforts to give expression to an alternative rationality defining spatial use and delineation. From such a viewpoint, politics may thereby be understood as the activity of seeking recognition for a contextually embedded and socially infused differential space within a police order that conceives space with an abstracting exchange-value logic. Rancière proposes that such recognition leads to a reconfiguration of the police order by introducing new identities and agents. This is achieved through a process of ‘subjectification’. Rancière employs this term inversely to the more familiar form of subjectification discussed by Foucault where power relations create subjects. Accordingly, for Rancière, the notion of subjectification entails a presupposition of equality that facilitates an appreciation of the police order’s contingency and may prompt a striving for recognition. As he explains,

By subjectification I mean the production through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable within a given field of experience, whose identification is thus part of the reconfiguration of the field of experience (Rancière, 1999: 35).

Rancière believes that the identity of that which emerges is neither the source of the subjectification activity nor its outcome. Rather, ‘it emerges alongside the ongoing activity, feeding and being fed by it’ (May, 2010: 79). Expanding upon this, Davis (2013: 84) isolates and outlines the three characteristics Rancière describes as constituting the subjectification process. These are namely: (1) argumentative demonstration; (2) theatrical dramatization; and (3) being-between[endnoteRef:4]. Argumentative demonstration refers to the use of immanent critique in calling for recognition of the legitimacy of an identity by deploying the logic of the police order against itself. However, consequent on how the prevailing police order may inhibit the ability of interlocutors to comprehend the nature of the subject advanced in the discourse, theatrical dramatization is necessary to both draw attention to the call for recognition and to materially demonstrate that for which recognition is sought. Thus, ‘there is a sense in which politics is axiomatically theatrical for Rancière because the emergence of the subject in subjectivication (sic) is also an emergence into the realm of perception, of visibility and audibility: it is a manifestation’ (Davis, 2013: 86). Nevertheless, such emergence involves a ‘being-between’ as the legitimacy of identities are conveyed through a dual process of comparison and contrast, wherein a strategy of highlighting sameness and difference with identities already acknowledged by the police order is employed to carve out the prospect for recognition. Hence, subjectification is a complex yet discernable process in which the subject in question may serve as ‘an operator that connects and disconnects different areas, regions, identities, functions, and capacities existing in the configuration of a given experience’ (Rancière, 1999: 40). From a Lefebvrian standpoint, Rancière’s theory of subjectification may thus help supplement our understanding of the processes through which the creativity, imagination and symbolism of differential space are given legitimacy in a police order concurrent to reconfiguring that order. As such, integrating Lefebvre’s work with that of Rancière’s thinking supplies a coherent framework of concepts for examining how abstraction may be resisted and differential space produced. Accordingly, this paper will now illustrate this framework’s elucidating potential through its application to a short case study analysis of debates surrounding community gardening in Dublin, Ireland. [4: Davis (2010, 84) introduces the term ‘heterologic disidentification’ to describe this phenomenon. However, in keeping closer to Rancière’s own language, the term ‘being-between’ has been adopted here to reflect his assertion that subjectification involves ‘intervals constructed between identities, between spaces and places. Political being-together is a being-between: between identities, between worlds’ (Rancière, 1999: 137).]

The Production of Abstract and Differential Space

As noted by Lefebvre,

An existing space may outlive its original purpose and the raison d’être which determines its forms, functions and structures; it may thus in a sense become vacant, and susceptible of being diverted, reappropriated and put to a purpose quite different from its initial use (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 167).

In such instances, opportunities may arise for the creation of differential spaces characterised by alternate modes of land use, organisation and social engagement to that normally recognised by the bureaucracy of planning. Community gardens represent an example of such alternative spatial forms that have increasingly gathered interest over recent years. Indeed, academic attention to this phenomenon has been broadly based, with researchers often viewing them as possessing a unique ability to combine open space, community development, environmental stewardship and food provisioning in a single site (Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny, 2004). However, recent scholarship has frequently adopted a more suspicious view of community gardens by critically focusing on their positioning in terms of the neoliberalist city (Pudup, 2008; Rosol, 2010, 2012; McClintock, 2014), with other authors suggesting that a more contextually sensitive approach is required (Certomà and Notteboom, 2017). Whatever the academic stance, community garden initiatives are generally thought to represent an ad hoc and collective claim to urban space. Thus, the literature most commonly characterises community gardens as initiated by neighbourhood actors, utilising vacant public land and operating on the basis of collective management (Ioannou et al., 2016; Barron, 2017). As such, most understandings of what constitutes a community garden resonate with the encompassing description of ‘community open space’[endnoteRef:5] advanced by Francis (2003: 7) as a, [5: The concept of ‘community open space’ is rooted in the work of the Neighbourhood Open Space Project (Francis et al., 1984) which characterised vacant lot gardens and community parks as part of contemporary claim for user-managed urban space and as sites embodying distinctive social and psychological meanings from established open space provision in the form of landscaped public parks and playgrounds.]

...neighbourhood space designed, developed, or managed by local residents on vacant land; possibly including viewing gardens, play areas, and community gardens; often developed on private land; not officially viewed as part of open space system of cities; often vulnerable to displacement by other uses such as housing and commercial development.

The literature also reveals that whilst contributing to urban greening and sustainability, their position within the fabric of cities remains overwhelmingly contingent (Drake and Lawson, 2014), with projects lacking the assurance of ongoing land access or the defined status accorded to other public green spaces, such as parks (Harnick, 2010). This position is reflected in an Irish context. Here, most studies related to urban cultivation have focused on the revival of the traditional allotment, rather than specifically on the phenomenon of community gardening (e.g. Kettle, 2014; Corcoran et al., 2017). In contrast to community gardens, such allotments enjoy legal definition,[endnoteRef:6] and are thereby clearly identifiable entities within the ‘police order’ of planning. Similarly, local authority administration accommodates their existence through a system whereby allotment users pay the local authority an annual charge for the cultivation of an assigned and bounded plot at a regulated site (DEHLG, 2009; Benson, 2012). Conversely, community gardens lack clear recognition as a legitimate spatial entity within the ‘conceived spaces’ of the police order guiding the official interpretation of spatial function in city planning. Nevertheless, from the middle of the last decade, dispersed pockets of land across Dublin have been progressively transformed by local residents away from dereliction and towards areas planted with flowers, fruit and vegetables (Murtagh, 2013), yet explicitly serving social roles far exceeding cultivation. Indeed, some of those spaces have attempted to push beyond the horizon of land uses conventionally conceived within planning by seeking to realise community gardens where function, organisation and access arrangements are ill-defined and fluid. Two such spaces are located in the Liberties district of Dublin’s southwest inner city. Both sites were previously occupied by local authority housing that was demolished for urban regeneration. However, the cleared lands remained empty as the global recession commenced, before being eventually repurposed. Despite this change of use, the sites still lie beneath the shadow of a potentially abstracting exchange-value logic, as their prior residential zoning has been retained by Dublin City Council (DCC), thereby maintaining their potential to attract development interest and preserving the local authority’s option to permit the construction of housing thereon. Indeed, since Ireland emerged from economic recession, the Liberties has experienced growing competition for space for both park provision and residential development (Lawton and Punch, 2014). It is in this context that the contrasting genesis and fate of these two community gardens throws into relief how the forces of abstraction and differentiation in the production of space can variably operate within the same neighbourhood[endnoteRef:7]. [6: See Government of Ireland Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010 and, previously, the Acquisition of Lands (Allotments) Act 1926. See Forrest (2011) for a historical account of allotment provision in Dublin.] [7: The case study material presented in this section represents analysis of an exploratory study conducted June-August 2017. Three primary methods were used in this study:(1) In commencing the study, documents published by Dublin City Council were examined including successive versions of city and local development plans and minutes of council and local area meetings. These were primarily identified through use of the Google search engine and by following the trail of further references within documents to related and precursor publications. The search for relevant national legislation and policy documents was approached similarly. Print and online media coverage pertinent to community gardening in the city was also identified, including periodic local coverage and a small number of national articles that related specifically to the Liberties Local Area Plan area. Narratives related to each community garden were also found to exist in the form of Facebook pages. These were consequently examined as a source of data. The research process also benefitted from access to early correspondence, dating to 2011, circulated by way of updates to interested parties in the Weaver Square community garden campaign (RECLAIM), through a contact who had retained these general emails. These were seen to supply a useful contemporaneous narrative.(2) A purposive approach to initial sampling was adopted that sought to identify specific individuals of greatest relevance to the research. A list of potential community garden contacts was drafted from a review of spokespeople in local media features and, thereafter, ongoing site visits were utilised until appropriate interviewees could be determined for the purpose of the study, based on those considered to have operated in de facto roles as organisers at each garden. In addition to identifying respondents, repeat fieldtrips also provided chance to build rapport, observe and photograph the garden spaces and compile extended field notes. (3) A series of interviews with current and former community garden organisers was arranged as the focus of the first phase of interview-based research. All but one garden interviewee were first encountered personally through site visits, where an outline of the research purpose was provided, including standard information on anonymity and the ethical management of data obtained. One additional prospective garden participant was approached by telephone on a similar basis to that outlined above and with comparable provision of information prior to commencement of the arranged on-site interview. Seven semi-structured and garden-based interviews were conducted in-person. These were followed by six interviews with individuals who were determined as the most appropriate contacts in relation to planning and policy processes, based on their current or former roles. Interviewees for this second phase encompassed the local authority’s South Central Area Office and Parks and Landscapes department, a local councillor and an external consultant for the city council with significant involvement in the area’s planning processes. No interview requests were declined. Four of these interviews were conducted by telephone to facilitate the participation of the interviewee.]

The Production of Abstract Space – Weaver Square

Interest in transforming the derelict Weaver Square site was mobilised through a grassroots campaign called ‘RECLAIM’, which was led by young professionals resident in the area and linked together primarily by a nearby food co-operative. Commencing in 2010, organisers within this group sought the support of local representatives to advocate for use of the Weaver Square site as a community garden. The vision for the garden was an open space, freely accessible to all. As conveyed by one of the project’s initiators,

I think everyone was pretty much in unison that they wanted the space to be some sort of community garden space. Something that could be a green space that anyone could access...that it was something that people, anyone, could say ‘Oh look, there’s a lovely community space in the area, a community garden’...if you imagine like an open space with no railings, no barriers (WS1).

Local political representatives advocated on behalf of the campaign but were reliant on the bureaucratic machinery of the local authority’s executive to work with the campaign in formulating a feasible strategy for community use of the site. In this context, the local ‘Area Office’ of DCC assumed responsibility for such liaison, being the division administering ‘allotments’ and through which the ‘community garden’ idea was conflated with the police order profiling interpretation within the local authority. Consequently, the initial vision for the site was swiftly denied by DCC, which as relayed by this initiator,

...more or less just decided ‘this is what we’re doing, we’re going to do it as allotments and we’ll allot one space that’s bigger as a community garden’ which is about three times, three allotments all in one and they pretty much just presented that with a design, with a plan, back to the group (WS1).

This is echoed by a contemporary email circulated to supporters of the project, where another organiser spoke of “a lack of meaningful consultation on the layout and plans for the site” (RECLAIM email 31/5/11, provided to author). For the local authority, issues of security and anti-social behaviour dominated above all other concerns, such that the site was established and operated by DCC with high fencing and tight control over the distribution of a limited number of access keys. Thus, a ‘conceived space’ resonant with the local authority’s ‘police order’ negated the imagined space of an open access community garden by appropriating the initiative within an abstracting logic of divisible exchange-value (allotment) units. Hence, over time the organisers of the project progressively found that the physical and practical arrangements put in place at the site by the local authority hampered the project’s initial community-oriented goals of open access, communal use and social interaction. Particularly, obligatory ‘spatial practices’ institutionalised by site protocols requiring that the gate be secured at all times, in conjunction with the council’s limited issuing of keys, necessitated an ultimately unsustainable reliance on one of two group keyholders to anchor gardening sessions at defined times. Consequently, in 2016 and following a consensual agreement, the plot changed hands to a new community group with a paid project worker able to consistently attend garden slots and facilitate access, albeit now for a community narrowly conceived as being ‘clients’ of the project. The smoothness of this re-arrangement reflects the fact that, from the outset and for all practical purposes, the ‘community garden’ element of Weaver Square was incorporated within the logic of an abstracting police order in which it was simply treated administratively as an exchangeable large allotment plot. So deeply seated was this conception of the space, that the local authority interviewee most familiar with the site did not associate the term ‘community garden’ with it and, instead, confirmed the standard allotment arrangement as applicable:

Allotments are for a period of 11 months. There’s always a break in the licence, you know. It’s a year to year. People aren’t guaranteed they’re going to get allotments on an ongoing basis, that’s the way, and they’re made aware of that when they’re signing up. It’s not a guaranteed thing. That’s really it (DCC1).

Set in this frame of reference, the vision of the group who subsequently assumed the licence for the (‘allotment’) site was more resonant with the ‘conceived space’ of the local authority. Specifically, the space was now more functionally determined for food cultivation as per the council’s understanding of conventional allotment use and reinterpreted as a ‘community allotment’. As relayed by the (paid) organiser of this reconceived space,

The vision is that people get the chance to grow their own food in an urban setting and young people especially get a chance to see what growing their own food looks like and where it comes from and that it’s actually possible to grow your own food being in the city. The adults that come here, the growing group, they don’t get the chance to do it otherwise, you know, they live in an apartment or a rented place, and people just don’t get the chance to grow their own food. That’s the vision: to give access to people like that to a community allotment; that’s why it’s community (WS2).

This alignment of the council’s ‘conceived space’ with the user’s ‘perceived space’ ensures ‘spatial practices’ concerning use and access that accord with an abstracting logic wherein the residential zoning of the site in conjunction with the annual requirement for the renewal of a licence, maintains the latency of an exchange-value rationality that entitles the council to reappropriate the land for conversion to monetarily valuable residential units. Therefore, this abstract space of permitted temporary use characterised by control, calculation and specification reinforces rather than reconfigures the existing ‘productivist’ police order. Consequently, it falls short of the intimations of a postproductivist ‘differential space’ initially envisaged. Indeed, as reflected by one of the initiator’s of the original community garden idea for the site,

So essentially we were seen as no different. My feeling was that, like really, they (local authority) kind of saw us as just one of the allotments, you know, we just happened to be a bigger space and everyone referred to it as the ‘community garden’ but really I think in their eyes you were just space number 29, that happened to be the community (WS1).

What this brief analysis of the emergence and evolution of the community garden concept in Weaver Square illustrates is the failure to create a ‘differential space’ by virtue of the local authority’s successful resistance to the instantiation of a ‘space of representation’ that was open and potentially fluid in its use. In this sense, the trilectic configuration favoured abstract space by materially instantiating a police order of conceived spaces in spatial practices that restricted the latitude for creativity and land use mutability. As such, the production of abstract space was manifested. To an extent, this can be traced back to the insufficient ‘subjectification’ of the initial vision for the community garden. In contrast to this, the experience of the nearby Flanagan’s Fields site demonstrates the importance of effective subjectification to the realisation of differential space.

The Production of Differential Space – Flanagan’s Fields

In contrast to the conventional channels pursued when seeking to establish a community garden at Weaver Square, efforts to create what would later be called Flanagan’s Fields were characterised by a more unorthodox approach. In this instance, unofficial access had been obtained to a derelict site by a pre-existing local residents’ association in June 2011. It was only after they had completed some clearing work on this site that contact was made with Dublin City Council. Organisers recount that this contact was initially through a community development worker who, despite their ‘squatter’ status, championed the project within her administrative division and the wider area office team of the local authority on the basis that it held potential to promote ‘social cohesion’ as,

...the private residents in that area hadn’t interacted very much with the new social housing, so there was a little bit of an issue around ‘them and us’ and stuff like that. And the garden seemed to supersede that because everyone was on the same level and there was interest from everybody around the garden (DCC2).

Hence, by becoming strongly framed as a community development initiative, the function and potentiality of the space came to be considered differently to other growing sites administered by the local authority. Specifically, rather than being interpreted as a conventional allotment space for cultivation, it was primarily viewed as an opportunity for greater social integration. Moreover, this local authority contact was willing to advocate for it as such, thereby helping to move it outside the ‘conceived spaces’ of the local authority’s abstracting police order. Importantly, in doing so, the community development worker did not seek to impose pre-conceived ideas of how the space should be organised, but instead sought to give voice to the imaginative ideas of those engaged in the emerging community garden. As recollected by this community development worker,

...you’re always bound and led by what your group is motivated by and what they want to do. They live there. They know what’s best for them. You’ve got to listen. And if they wanted to set up dog washing on a Friday afternoon in the back of it, I would have supported that because that’s what a group of people wanted to do and that’s Community 101. So it’s seeing development in simple terms and, you know, nourishing it, I suppose and fostering it, but not controlling it. Never controlling it.

... So they had an idea and, I suppose, the inspiration and they just needed someone to facilitate that or help them realise the dream that they had (DCC2).

Such facilitation involved ‘argumentative demonstration’ of the value in assisting a community garden project that was not simply an allotment. Thus, a variety of arguments were marshalled to justify the project. Such arguments were advanced through an immanent critique of the local authority’s own objectives for the area and ranged across the need to accelerate social integration, tackle anti-social behaviour, improve the local authority’s relationship with the community, as well as the necessity for more green space in the neighbourhood. Furthermore, by positioning the project within a community development rather than a land use management frame, resources such as heavy machinery were mobilised through the local authority’s community development budget. This positioning also supplied the latitude to explore ‘spatial practices’ weighted more heavily towards the postproductivist creativity of ‘lived space’ than the functional productivist perspective of those abstracting ‘conceived spaces’ that had suppressed the initial vision for the Weaver Square site. Hence, the garden was developed as a dynamic yet integrated whole with extensive landscaping, rather than as a series of individual allotment plots worked by separate licensees. As conveyed by one of the garden’s initiating members,

It’s an entirety in itself, so that the patches that are worked by individuals add to the tapestry or the patchwork look of the garden and it’s a garden therefore in flux; it’s always in a sense of development or change (FF1).

Hence, although much of the garden is given over to cultivation, those involved in its establishment and daily operation stress an identity of ‘being-between’, whereby it shares certain commonalities with conventional allotments but is clearly different in other respects. As relayed by an interviewee involved in the daily operation of the garden,

No they’re not allotments in the normal way; it’s a community garden... if there’s a space available in the garden what we do is we give it to people that want to grow potatoes or cabbage; which there’s a lot of people not into gardening but there’s a lot of people into growing their vegetables and their potatoes and cabbage and all the whole lot. Now we, the like of the garden, where we grow cabbage and potatoes and there’s nobody coming and taking them, what we do is we take them up and put them in buckets at the gate with a sign on it ‘Potatoes – free’, ‘Cabbage – free’ (FF2).

Reinforcing this identity of ‘being-between’, as something similar yet different to conventional growing spaces has been a consistent stream of ‘theatrical dramatization’ that publicly displays the affective and creative dimensions of the community garden’s ‘lived space’. From the beginning this encompassed a broad range of activities such as barbeques, dancing lessons, fencing classes, as well as shows and field days. However, more emotionally profound events also helped anchor the concept of a community garden in the locality. Indeed, the community development worker advocating for the space provided an example of this when recalling:

On an outing with the ‘men’s shed’ [men’s social activity group], we found out that a lad that was actually killed in the Congo [UN peacekeeping mission], had lived in Fatima [former housing development on which the garden site is situated]. The lads in the shed thought ‘what could we do about that?’, because he was 17, very brave, and I said maybe we could erect something or do something, and then we said what about putting something into the garden. So we went back to the garden and said ‘what would you think about this’? And they said ‘that’s amazing!’ ...that was a huge thing because, before that the social cohesion was good, but because of that it became even better. So that project gathered more momentum for the garden...it really involved a lot more people and kind of gave it kudos. (DCC2).

Into its fourth year in 2014, and now home to a profile-enhancing geodesic dome donated to the site, the garden received an official opening by the Lord Mayor of Dublin City. This ‘theatrical dramatization’ initiative was the result of further efforts by the community development worker to firmly anchor the site’s identity and reinforce its ability to withstand potential alternate claims for housing development. As recollected by the community development worker,

I would have pushed for that because I really wanted to put that garden on the map...it was important to stake a claim to that site for the community to say we are responsible for our space, this is our space and this is where we want to go forward (DCC2).

Thus, the Flanagan’s Field community garden initiative gained recognition at the highest political level in Dublin City Council through a combination of ‘argumentative demonstration’, conveying an identity of ‘being-between’ and ‘theatrical dramatization’ that was facilitated by an insider-advocate (community development worker) who sought to advance rather than control the unconventional aspirations the local community had for the site. Such recognition was formally reflected in 2017 when the community garden was nominated by the local authority for a Dublin City ‘Pride of Place’ award. Therefore, via a process of ‘subjectification’, the Flanagan’s Field community garden helped reconfigure the ‘distribution of the sensible’ characterising the ‘police order’ operative in the local authority. It achieved this through an unconventional alignment of the conceived, perceived and lived dimensions of space that produced a ‘differential space’ promoting a postproductivist ethos of communal ownership, creative dynamism and functional fluidity. This ethos was conveyed by one of the garden’s founders when reflecting on the history and present status of Flanagan’s Fields:

Like there’s revolution and evolution. I see the garden as a revolution in that it breaks down that border: that sense of definition between class structures. And it smudges it because it’s on a day-to-day basis. You see it. It’s not a thing you hope for. It’s not an aspirational thing; it’s a physical, real, visceral thing. That people talk to each other who wouldn’t have talked to one another before. And that’s what the garden invariably is: with all the projects, with all the landscaping, fun and invention of the garden, it’s subtext for me is the break-down of barriers (FF1).

In this sense, the Flanagan’s Field project represents the social production of shared spaces that give expression to ‘spaces of representation/lived space’. As such, it differs from the experience of Weaver Square wherein the initial vision for the site was suppressed by an approach rooted in a police order of exchange-value rationality that privileges abstracting ‘representations of space/conceived space’.

The (Social) Production of (Social) Space

Lefebvre’s dialectical appreciation of abstract and differential space implies an inherent relationship wherein comprehending one cannot be realised independently of the other. One of his most lasting achievements was to theorise how the forms of space that are ‘produced’ from this meta-dialectic are instantiated through the operation of a trilectic that brings together knowledge, creativity and materiality. Connecting these is an embodied agent positioned in time and space. Nevertheless, his concept of the agent lacks the completed ‘philosophical anthropology’ (Taylor, 1989) that clarifies the source of the impulse that stimulates an agent to contest or harmonise with the forces of abstraction. This paper shows how Rancière supplies this by offering a conception of equality that presupposes a capacity by all agents to appreciate the contingency of the many, varied and sometimes overlapping hierarchies in which they are embedded. This thereby provides the philosophical grounding upon which to build a coherent understanding of ‘why’ an agent may seek to challenge what counts in ‘conceived spaces’ by providing the ontological potential for politics as ‘resisting the givenness of place’ (Dikeç, 2011, 17) supplied by a distribution of the sensible that confers an ordering of land use legitimacy that nevertheless cannot fully realise a sutured totality (Dikeç, 2005). As such, it offers opportunity for a nuanced understanding as to both why and how interpreting agents seek to enhance and exert their agency in creating differential spaces that reconfigure the ‘police order’ instantiated in city planning activities. In this sense, a Rancierian sensitivity to the micropolitics operative at the intersection between planning and those planned for, furnishes a fine-grained appreciation of the social production of space. For as noted by Rancière:

In the end, everything in politics turns on the distribution of spaces. What are these places? How do they function? Why are they there? Who can occupy them? For me, political action always acts upon the social as the litigious distribution of places and roles. It is always a matter of knowing who is qualified to say what a particular place is and what is done in it (Rancière, 2003, 201).

By positioning Rancière’s theories on subjectification within the Lefebvrian trilectic and then applying this to an illustrative case study, the paper has sought to profile a means to coherently relate broader Lefebvrian perspectives on society and space to the process of theoretical application in the investigative process. In doing so, this paper also highlights and redresses a deficit in Rancière’s approach to the politics of subjectification. Specifically, Rancière envisages a subject with significant capacity to interpret and act, yet ‘ignores the extent to which capacity itself may be differentially or unequally distributed’ (James, 2014: 126). However, what the application of an integrated Lefebvrian-Rancièrian framework demonstrates is that capacity for reconfiguring the police order to facilitate the flourishing of differential space may be reliant on the presence and support of an ‘insider-advocate’ willing to champion the case with colleagues and peers for the recognition of that which lies beyond currently ‘conceived spaces’. As with the illustrative example provided above, this may entail bypassing the normal channels of land use administration such that the spatial embedding of ‘community development’ gains a foothold over the spatial disembedding of ‘land use development’. Hence, to fully understand how differential space can emerge from those epistemological and phenomenological dimensions of the ontology of (social) space outlined by Lefebvre, it is necessary to attend to how the (social) beings who give meaning to the ontology of the space that is produced are themselves constituted and operate as political agents within, with and at times against a world of opportunities and constraints that must be variably negotiated through resonance and resistance.

In the context of planning, this involves an appreciation of how the process of subjectification is ‘as much about reconstituting new forms of order on the basis of new possibilities for inclusion as it is about rupture or interruption’ (James, 2014: 125). As such, a focus on the role of subjectification in the production of space is a focus on how new identities come into play, not necessarily in contest to institutionalised authority, but nevertheless as an endeavour to render the unrecognised as a legitimate whole. Hence, the process of subjectification need not be conceived as a threat to the objectives of planning per se, whose legitimacy is ultimately grounded on advancing the ‘public interest’ (Lennon, 2016). Rather, employing subjectification as a means for the creation of differential spaces can be seen as a way to further many of the objectives of conventional planning (place-making, community development etc), but in a manner that inverts the processes deployed by conventional planning in delivering those objectives (zoning controls, landuse designations etc). For example, as shown in the case of Flanagan’s Fields, subjectification can be observed in new forms of ‘tactical urbanism’ that thrive by ‘disturbing the order of things’ (Lydon and Garcia, 2015: 1) to give sense to that which was institutionally invisible. In this way, recalibrating ‘acceptable’ community activities from an abstracting, dethatched and sequential order of ‘analyse-plan-implement’ to an emergent, fluid and lived experience ‘breaks from traditional planning approaches which have advocated a linear separation of debate from action, instead incorporating action, in the form of experimentation with temporary physical changes and social events, as instrumental within the process of understanding places and their possible futures’ (Webb, 2018: 63). As such, the Lefebvrian-Rancièrian framework outlined in this paper provides the conceptual tools for examining an emergent phenomenon in the politics of knowledge, wherein activity outside of, but inherently related to planning is legitimised through its effective and affective dimensions, rather than through the implementation of institutionally sanctioned concepts. This is a politics of knowledge that gives voice, representation and respect to lived experience, action and affect, instead of omitting such qualities in conceiving fungible spaces that can be easily converted to unlock their economic potential in a logic of value exchange that pays little heed to emotional investment, local meaning and community desire[endnoteRef:8]. In this sense, the framework outlined above resonates with theories of planning grounded in the pragmatic tradition that stress the importance of peoples’ perception in contouring the capacity of planning to effect change, as such users of space (‘place-makers’) co-construct and navigate a world of meaning (Healey, 2008). Therefore, this paper supplies a means for appreciating how the unrecognised becomes included in the determination of land use through spatial practices which create new meanings that help rebalance asymmetries between the ‘conceived’ and ‘lived’ in the production of space. Accordingly, it offers tools for understanding how inclusion happens from the bottom up: how communities are co-constituted with the places they transform through meanings beyond the pale of conventional planning ordinances, such that these new places become legitimised in transforming the conception of place-making (Lydon and Garcia, 2015). Indeed, the Lefebvrian-Rancièrian framework advanced in this paper seeks to facilitate sensitivity to unanticipated community desires for place-making, that while congruent with the professed aims of planning to support community integration and development, may be incongruent with the institutional mechanisms through which planning operates. In doing so, the framework highlights internal tensions in the machinery of planning that ostensibly claim to support communities and place-making while concurrently impeding community desires by abstracting space. Hence, the framework furnishes those thinking about planning with a conceptual scaffold to explore how diverging politics of knowledge are mobilised and instantiated in different ways in the shaping of tradable spaces or the creation of affective places. [8: While attention to subjectification provides insight into how differential spaces emerge contemporaneously with their identity, it does not preclude the ultimate appropriation of the identity that has emerged by a conceived and abstracting ‘representation of space’. For example, many place branding exercises draw upon once bohemian movements that were incorporated into streams of capital accumulation and circulation that detach the spaces from the community-linked and emotionally invested activities that gave them their identity (e.g. the case of the Temple Bar ‘Cultural Quarter’ area in Dublin City not far from the location of the community gardens discussed in this paper).]

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