From Iraq to Katrina and Back: Bureaucratic Planning as Strategic Failure,Fiction, and Fantasy

Bureaucratic planning is a complex sociocultural process rife with vested interests, contradictory aims, and internal conflicts. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the US occupation of Iraq, contemporary media discourses on planning have downplayed this complexity and diverted attention away from a more nuanced understanding of planning as a sociological process. In this article, I show how policy and press debates regarding bureaucratic planning in Iraq and New Orleans are rooted in technocratic and rationalist perspectives, constituting a kind of modernist faith. These contemporary discourses are often one‐dimensional, failing to consider the conflicts, contradictions, and counter‐intuitive outcomes that are inherent in planning in complex situations, including urban reconstruction, military occupation, and disaster response. I show how flawed approaches in the present are deeply linked to the past, connecting Iraq and Katrina to a detailed ethnographic case study on failed urban planning in colonial Zanzibar. Even though the three cases of Iraq, Katrina, and Zanzibar differ across time, context, and conditions, they reveal that bureaucratic planning is best understood as a multidimensional strategic practice that is intrinsically shaped by sociocultural forms. Plans may ostensibly fail in one sense and yet still produce quite enduring effects. They may remain ‘fictions’ at one level but still wield real impact. And even if they are informed by fantasy, bearing little utility from a functional perspective, plans still serve as performative and persuasive acts, informed by political ends.