City/future in the making: Masterplanning London’s Olympic legacy as anticipatory assemblage

Abstract

To understand how the legacy of urban regeneration promised by events like the London 2012 Olympics is constructed, the masterplanning process is analysed as an assemblage of heterogeneous elements that construct futures as knowable and actionable objects in the present. Building on recent applications of actor-network theory to planning studies, the value of the concept of ‘anticipatory assemblage’ is demonstrated. The example of London 2012 masterplanning underlines how masterplanning as an anticipatory activity is performed through networks which are formed through the circulation of expectations and visions as networked ‘intermediaries’. Through these intermediaries, ordered processes are set in motion, and requirements for subsequent activities established. Further, it is shown how this use of concepts of anticipatory assemblages can help understand the political significance of masterplanning in the present, which depends on how organised forms of anticipation re-order social and material relationships in the present, including some actors as participants within anticipatory assemblages and excluding others.