LAUSR

Finally, there was a tendency in this book to read space in a homogenous manner, denying the multiplicity of experiences and understanding of space today, and likely in the ancient past. Doreen Massey’s (1991) seminal work on ‘a global sense of place’, for example, neatly unpacks the contingent and multiple understandings of space, and by extension the contingent way in which culture and symbolism can be read by planners or anyone else. It also helps unpack the multiple claims being made through space about the rights of citizens and what constitutes citizens’ rights. History tells us that citizenship was not given by enlightened individuals; it was taken, reworked, fought over by many and by whole societies (Southall, 1998). The interplay between both context and history, object and subject, is what is missing from Mazza’s analysis. Citizenship is a thoroughly historical and contingent concept, and planning – both in concept and practice – is necessarily shaped by prevailing social, economic and political forces. This was acknowledged at the beginning of the book in Mazza’s discussion of the concept of spatial governance, yet this insight does not inform the analysis in subsequent chapters. This book was a difficult read, but certainly should open an interesting debate on the connections between planning praxis and citizenship.