Possessory politics and the conceit of procedure: Exposing the cost of rights under conditions of dispossession

Rights are central to the theory and practice of planning, and to the practice of struggles for those who are marked by conditions of dispossession and displacement. Those rights are often articulated through planning as property ‘rights in’ and procedural ‘rights to’. Yet when struggles against the dispossessory tendencies of planning become articulated through these rights-based discourses in planning, the potential arises for their immediate limitation and co-optation. This article takes two particular modes of dispossession – Indigenous dispossession under the ongoing processes of colonialism, and displacement as a result of urban regeneration – and exposes why a persistent stance of critique to the promise of rights is so critical.