The Participation Paradox and Infrastructure Planning: A Story About Gaslighting

Participatory planning exists as a paradox. In this paper, I draw from feminist and political philosophers writing on structural gaslighting to consider the paradoxical relationship between government commitments towards just planning and the increasing socio-spatial injustices that contemporary forms of participation can maintain within infrastructure planning. By exposing the structural gaslighting emerging inside infrastructure planning, my aim is to contribute to a conversation about enlarging the prefigurative possibilities for participation: that which is being performed at the edges of infrastructure planning and possessing the power to inspire hope for future practice.