BEYOND THE PARALYSIS OF THE POST‐POLITICAL? The Micropolitical in Post‐Political Participatory Planning in Copenhagen, Denmark

Participatory planning is widely used for the purpose of democratizing urban governance. Yet, the literature on post‐politics largely depicts participatory decision‐making contexts as spaces devoid of the ‘properly political’. Scholars critical of post‐politics find this lens paralyzing, as the approach may disregard political moments arising within participatory settings. The lens is useful for diagnosing a decision‐making context as post‐political on a broader level, but there is a tendency to paper over the significance of the micropolitical landscape operating inside institutional participatory decision‐making settings. Revealing this landscape, as is done here for a case of urban renewal in Copenhagen, can help us move beyond the analytical straitjacket of post‐politics and defy a simplified image of it. Taking localized political acts seriously, I analyze the actors and practices that emerged during participatory processes used to create two new public parks during a large‐scale urban renewal project in the Nørrebro neighborhood in Copenhagen, Denmark from 2001 to 2012. The findings include: conceptually, a dialectical relationship between post‐politics and re‐politicization; empirically, the construction of a post‐political police order, the mechanics of (de)politization, and how opposition interacts with these factors; and, more generally, how voices are reclaimed from noise and the significance of these political moments.