Enjoyable life: Planning, amenity and the contested terrain of urban biopolitics

This article explores the connections between urban planning and a particular form of biopolitics. These connections are investigated by looking at the emergence of enjoyment as a planning concern in late 1960s Halifax, Nova Scotia. This new concern, the article suggests, emerged as a result of a political struggle involving activist groups, a newly formed state agency, and elements of the post-World War II political establishment. Wedded to this concern were two essential planning policies: the promotion of amenity (especially in the downtown) and the introduction of structured citizen involvement in planning decisions. Together, these two policies inaugurated a new form of planning and biopolitics. The promotion of amenity aimed to create a more enjoyable life through the alteration of prevailing conditions of life, while citizen involvement routed planning decisions - including the precise meaning of amenity - through liberal practices of government. Most importantly, the new policies were shaped by the enactment of normative divisions within the population, a characteristically biopolitical effect. The result of these divisions was a highly unequal process of citizen involvement and a correspondingly uneven terrain of enjoyment: a terrain whose development and use would provide enjoyment for normative populations, while leaving pathological populations unaffected or worse.