Comprehensively examines the promise which planning offers. Demonstrates how people involved with planning, deal with discrepancies between what it promises and what is done. Offers insight into the varied outcomes of planning.

List of figures Acknowledgements Notes on contributors Chapter 1. Elusive promises: Planning in the Contemporary World An Introduction Simone Abram and Gisa Weszkalnys Chapter 2. Utopian Time and Contemporary Time: Temporal Dimensions of Planning and Reform in the Norwegian Welfare State Halvard Vike Chapter 3. Hypercomplexity in collective planning: a case of railway design Åsa Boholm Chapter 4. The Invaded City: Structuring an Urban Landscape on the Margins of the Possible (Peru’s Southern Highlands) Sarah Lund Chapter 5. Tenure Reformed? State, society and the landless in South Africa Deborah James Chapter 6. Redeeming the Promise of Inclusion in the Neoliberal City: Grassroots Contention in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil John Gledhill Chapter 7. Even Governmentality Begins as an Image: Institutional Planning in Kuala Lumpur Richard Baxstrom Chapter 8. Making a River of Gold: Speculative State Promises and Personal Promises in the Post-Liberalisation Governance of the Hooghly Laura Bear Bibliography Index

“This is a much needed contribution by anthropologists to a sustained and broad treatment of planning as a socio-cultural process, utilizing multiple case studies from multiple perspectives and theoretical frames. Some very insightful analyses can be found in the chapters, particularly regarding the vast differences between places and people around the world, and their efforts to organize reality through what would commonly, but perhaps inaccurately, be subsumed under the term ‘planning.’”  ·  Juris Milestone, Temple University