New urbanism/smart growth in the Scottish Highlands: mobile policies and post-politics in local development planning, Urban Studies

The paper draws on recent theorising on policy mobility and post-politics to investi-gate the planning of a New Urbanist settlement, Tornagrain, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, and designed by Andres Duany. It details Duany’s role as an influential ‘persuasive guru ’ of New Urbanism and his signatory charrette as a parti-cipatory method for engaging local citizens into the New Urbanist model of place-making. Nonetheless, the Tornagrain case raises non-trivial questions about this model, not least the faith being placed in a globally mobile policy evangelist becom-ing, in effect, a doctrinal conduit for convening local democracy. The paper then contributes to recent debate on post-political planning, particularly in terms of how latent expressions of dissent in local planning processes often appear to be deampli-fied through endeavours to forge a post-political consensus, in part to masquerade rent hikes and profiteering on behalf of powerful landowners, glitzy architects, con-sultants and other associates. While it has been an uphill struggle, there are many successes worth celebrating in the [New Urbanist] fight against sprawl. Federal agen-cies and local civic groups are promoting smart growth. Architects are creating pedes-trian-friendly, transit-oriented neighborhood plans. Traffic engineers are rewriting their once-destructive standards. Planners are throwing out their sprawl-generating land use codes. Economists are identifying the real costs of suburban sprawl and recording the financial success of new traditionally designed neighborhoods. A new breed of developer is emerging, committed to building commu-nity, not just product (Duany et al., 2000, pp