Practice-Based Politicization: Planning Reports as Actants in a University–Community Partnership

Abstract

We look at a yearlong university–community partnership’s potential to create more equitable planning practices through an analysis of the sub-genres of student-generated planning reports. Using an actor–network approach to identify four different kinds of reports (manual, boundary object, framing, catalyst), we find that both the content of these reports and their translational work in existing practice-based networks can influence student learning and planning practices—what we term practice-based politicization—by defining, aligning, enrolling, and mobilizing. Ultimately, the relational context of these partnerships is essential to their effectiveness, suggesting that longer term engagements between university programs and their community partners are more likely to support mutual learning and deepen students’ pedagogical exposure to both an agonistic and collaborative approach to planning practice.