Governing the City
Strategy seemingly provides the answer to the challenges cities face, this includes human concerns.
Strategy is actively involved in the constitution, or re-definition, of problems in advance of offering itself
as a solution to them’. It has transformative socio-political power as men’s actions are guided by the
‘tact of judgment’, and tact is sufficient for action. Strategy is a political technology that helps, as he puts
it, convincing others. It does so through framing issues, making people speak, dividing events into causes
and effects, devising solutions and evaluating their implementation.
- Strategy reties power and truth: it links the domain of science, where one quietly listens to ‘facts’ and
tries to make them speak for themselves, with the domain of politics, where one discusses ‘values’ in a
cacophony that echoes the lack of universal ethical guiding principles. The traditional problem of urban
planning lies in this tension between politics and science, democracy and expertise > theory + theology =
strategy.
- Planning fails everywhere it has been tried. The failures of planning are not peripheral or accidental.
Planning falied because, in its attempt to be based on science, it did not understand its relationship with
politics and power. And planning includes changing not only inanimate objects but also people, it means
exercising power.
- Strategy has to harbour a deeply theological spirit. Its spirit expresses itself in the aesthetic form of the
big picture. The big picture is a representation of a desirable future. In so doing, strategy provides the
script and the props for a convincing performance of the future in the here-and-now. In this sense it is
strategy that makes the strategist, not the other way round. It does not convince through logic but
seduces through aesthetics.
- Strategy’s power lies in the fact that it operates theoretically while simultaneously seducing
theologically. Only because strategy combines a theory of how things work, and a spiritual expression of
what the future will hold, is it able to offer itself so successfully as a solution to the complexities that
organizations, including cities, face. Strategy reconceptualizes the relation between time and space; it
casts the city as an aesthetic phenomenon; it reinvents the public; and it marshals political will. First,
strategy enacts the future in the present. It talks about the desired future, and the process that leads
towards it. Strategy transcends the present and envisions a promised land where the conflicts of the
hereand-now are resolved and obstacles are overcome. Therein lies the power of strategy: through
envisioning a future that shapes the present, it creates the conditions for its own verification in the
present. Second, strategy extends space. Thirdly, strategy works like a billboard; it does not convey
information but persuades. In this sense, it mobilizes the public.
Conclusion
As opposed to planner experts, strategists have one foot on the ground and one in the library,
reassuring both those who know and those who have to act that there is a vague yet. Strategy opens up
a new epistemological space in which the problem of extension (How far does the public’s knowledge
reach?) and the problem of legitimacy (How can expert solutions be legitimate in a democracy where
every voice counts the same?) can be addressed simultaneously in one and the same process. Strategy
represents the big picture and uses it as legitimate reason for action in the present. In short, strategy is a
Strategy seemingly provides the answer to the challenges cities face, this includes human concerns.
Strategy is actively involved in the constitution, or re-definition, of problems in advance of offering itself
as a solution to them’. It has transformative socio-political power as men’s actions are guided by the
‘tact of judgment’, and tact is sufficient for action. Strategy is a political technology that helps, as he puts
it, convincing others. It does so through framing issues, making people speak, dividing events into causes
and effects, devising solutions and evaluating their implementation.
- Strategy reties power and truth: it links the domain of science, where one quietly listens to ‘facts’ and
tries to make them speak for themselves, with the domain of politics, where one discusses ‘values’ in a
cacophony that echoes the lack of universal ethical guiding principles. The traditional problem of urban
planning lies in this tension between politics and science, democracy and expertise > theory + theology =
strategy.
- Planning fails everywhere it has been tried. The failures of planning are not peripheral or accidental.
Planning falied because, in its attempt to be based on science, it did not understand its relationship with
politics and power. And planning includes changing not only inanimate objects but also people, it means
exercising power.
- Strategy has to harbour a deeply theological spirit. Its spirit expresses itself in the aesthetic form of the
big picture. The big picture is a representation of a desirable future. In so doing, strategy provides the
script and the props for a convincing performance of the future in the here-and-now. In this sense it is
strategy that makes the strategist, not the other way round. It does not convince through logic but
seduces through aesthetics.
- Strategy’s power lies in the fact that it operates theoretically while simultaneously seducing
theologically. Only because strategy combines a theory of how things work, and a spiritual expression of
what the future will hold, is it able to offer itself so successfully as a solution to the complexities that
organizations, including cities, face. Strategy reconceptualizes the relation between time and space; it
casts the city as an aesthetic phenomenon; it reinvents the public; and it marshals political will. First,
strategy enacts the future in the present. It talks about the desired future, and the process that leads
towards it. Strategy transcends the present and envisions a promised land where the conflicts of the
hereand-now are resolved and obstacles are overcome. Therein lies the power of strategy: through
envisioning a future that shapes the present, it creates the conditions for its own verification in the
present. Second, strategy extends space. Thirdly, strategy works like a billboard; it does not convey
information but persuades. In this sense, it mobilizes the public.
Conclusion
As opposed to planner experts, strategists have one foot on the ground and one in the library,
reassuring both those who know and those who have to act that there is a vague yet. Strategy opens up
a new epistemological space in which the problem of extension (How far does the public’s knowledge
reach?) and the problem of legitimacy (How can expert solutions be legitimate in a democracy where
every voice counts the same?) can be addressed simultaneously in one and the same process. Strategy
represents the big picture and uses it as legitimate reason for action in the present. In short, strategy is a
