Realizing the Transformative Potential of Experimentation in Planning

Experimentation allows planning to explore ways of “thinking, doing, organising” beyond the status quo, as if the world was a radically different one. However, there is limited evidence of its impact beyond the experiment. This paper claims that to realize its transformative potential, experimentation needs to be thoroughly embedded in a “prefigurative” mode of planning and aimed at “concrete utopias” in the here and now. Furthermore, experimentation needs to be embedded in a “multi-political” approach, connecting the prefigurative politics of experiments to the institutional politics of policy and planning and the contentious politics of social movements and political protests.