Urban Planning and Religious Practice: Three Challenges
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manouchehrifar-bmanouch-phd-dusp-2022-thesis.pdf
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Thesis PDF
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Author(s)
Manouchehrifar, Babak
Advisor(s)
Sanyal, Bishwapriya
Date Issued
September 2022
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Religion in urban planning is conventionally viewed as a non-spatial, pre-theoretical, or extra- legal phenomenon. This view has been questioned recently by research in religious and pluralism studies and by the increasing religious diversity and activism in Western and non-Western cities. Yet, the challenge remains that urban planners usually don’t understand how to address religious concerns and practices of urban communities without compromising their statutory and political responsibilities. In this dissertation, I take up three aspects of this challenge.
First, I analyze the conceptual and practical connections between religion, secularism, and urban planning in liberal democracies to argue that understanding religion in urban planning entails understanding religion’s constitutive other: secularism. This paper questions the assumption of religious indifference as an adopted disciplinary ethos in planning, arguing that this assumption has made it more difficult for planners to confront the ways that the spatial structures of cities are getting reshaped by religious and deep cultural differences. It has also prevented planners from addressing the consequences of a secular process of power for the organization of social life in urban communities.
Second, I evaluate the conception of “religion” incorporated in past international development initiatives. I analyze developmental efforts led by the United States in the Philippines (1898), Albania (2003), and Iraq (2003) to argue that Protestantism has been viewed as the normative template or the “gold standard” against which other religious practices are measured as free, modern, and civil. This view has dragged North American planners working on international development into the age-old missionary conceit of “good vs bad religion” and drifted their attention away from working with local communities to address developmental challenges.
Third, I recognize that religion and urban planning intersect with each other on firm ground, rather than in thin air. I thus propose a theory – i.e., a “weak theory” – of how urban planners can approach religion as lived and experienced in the dynamic interplay of everyday practices, i.e., as “lived religion,” rather than as mere belief, pathology, or ideology. This approach, I argue, invites planners to employ ethnography and examine the actual lived situations (in courtrooms, planning offices, or public meetings) wherein competing conceptions of “lived religion” surround specific substantive planning issues, e.g., zoning or public health deliberations.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
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