Abstract

The importance of visionary planning has increased in urban and regional contexts as the production of visions has become a central tool in, for example, the management of city-regional growth through future-oriented governance. Thus, visions have become important terrains of political struggle and influence. This article analyses visionary planning from the perspective of depoliticization. Depoliticization is interpreted not as the foreclosure of the political in planning, but as a forceful mode of pursuit of a specific economized city-regional politics. These dynamics are scrutinized empirically through a case study of the Oulu City Centre Vision 2040 project, and they are connected methodologically to the construction of a spatial–political imaginary.