Planning with the people for the people. Theories of practice, planning coalitions and the gathering places of drug and alcohol addicts in Kiel-Gaaden

Abstract

This article analyses, how publicly accessible places like the gathering places of street drinkers and drug addicted are being shaped and defined by practices as banal and mundane as the collective consumption of alcoholic drinks.

In a classical view it is the role of spatial planners on different scales to design these places and to specify how they can be used. In scientific as well as societal debates planning processes are therefore usually located in administration offices or plenary halls of the government.

On the contrary this article proposes a different understanding of spatial planning. Following current practice-theoretical debates the practices of planners as well as the practices the members of the drinking community perform are conceptualised as a constitutive part of the planning process. As a consequence the planning process itself does not only take place in offices and plenary halls. Instead the site of planning shifts (at least partly) to the gathering places in public space and the street drinkers themselves become planners, who shape their places through the performance of collective drinking-practices.