Busi-Governance: The changing face of urban planning and urban governance

Busi-Governance: Who Plans Your City? For most of the 20th century in Canada and the UK, urban planning was managed by public sector planning departments, guided by elected officials, and informed by public input. However, this traditional model is being increasingly replaced by a broader range of actors, especially private sector players, who are now taking a leading role in urban planning and governance. Land developers, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and multinational tech companies like Google, Uber, and Airbnb are all actively involved in the planning of our cities. With the shift from public- to private-sector-led planning, concerns have arisen about the drive for profit overriding the need to deliver public good outcomes. The question of who plans your city is an increasingly important one. This shift from public to more private influence over urban planning processes shapes the form of our cities through housing and infrastructure projects. While the private sector has always played a role in urban planning, their increasing involvement, scale, and influence in the process and its outcomes is changing the nature of that role. For elected officials, civil society organizations, and community members, this change is difficult to transparently identify. This lack of transparency can impede the development of urban planning governance responses that advance the public interest. To identify urban governance systems that work, our research asks: What successful urban planning governance interventions have emerged in response to the rise of privately planned cities to uphold the public good? Our team will conduct a scoping review of literature focusing on governance interventions designed to mitigate the influence of private sector actors in urban development projects in Canada and the UK. The review will focus on articles published from 2014-2024, and include both academic research and grey literature. The data will be analyzed to identify patterns and themes related to the success or failure of these governance interventions, with the goal of identifying research gaps and informing future urban planning practices. The findings will shed light on how private sector interests are reshaping urban governance structures, housing, and infrastructure, while also offering insights into emerging interventions that aim to strengthen planning in the public interest. Ultimately, this research will provide valuable insights into how cities can navigate the complexities of private sector involvement in planning by, first, identifying the mechanisms through which private control is being exerted; next, evaluating the urban governance interventions that have been developed in response; and, finally, identifying the research gaps that present barriers to more effective urban governance. Our research team seeks to build on our findings by addressing these gaps in a future multi-country research project.