This book uses an international perspective to look at the sources of conflict and cooperation between the different landscapes of knowledge driving contemporary urban change, and the rise of new technocracy in urban governance.

Mike Raco is Professor of Urban Governance and Development in the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London.
Federico Savini is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies.

Part I: Conceptual framings of technocracy
The rise of a new urban technocracy ~ Federico Savini and Mike Raco
Planning, knowledge and technocracy in historical perspective ~ Michael Hebbert
Part II: Public planning and bureaucracies in contemporary urban development politics
Dealing with tensions: the expertise of boundary spanners in facilitating community initiatives ~ Ward Rauws and Martine de Jong
Plurality of expert knowledge: public planners' experience with urban contractulism in Amsterdam ~ Tuna Tasan-Kok & Martijn van den Hurk
Local government in the face of crisis: changing public management of urban projects in Amsterdam ~ Thijs Koolmees and Stan Majoor
Captured by bureaucracy: street-level professionals mediating past, present and future knowledge ~ Nanke Verloo
Part III: Corporate knowledge and the land and property development sector
Anticipatory knowledge: how development consultants see the future ~ Rachel Weber
Towards an 'information technocracy': discourses of London's post-referendum real estate markets ~ Nicola Livingstone
Finance as technocratic agent in urban development ~ Sabine Dörry
Planning professionalism in the face of technocracy: ethics, values and practices ~ Susannah Gunn
Part IV: private consultants and the delivery of public policy
Professional lobbying in urban planning: depoliticization or REpoliticization? ~ Aino Hirvola and Raine Mäntysalo
Advocates, advisors and scrutineers: the technocracies of private sector planning in England ~ Gavin Parker, Emma Street and Matthew Wargent
Localism and the reconfiguration of planning's publics in the landscapes of technocrac ~ Sue Brownill
The politics of new urban professions: the case of urban development engineers ~ Jonathan Metzger and Sherif Zakhour
Part V: New constellations of actors and the management and governance of contemporary cities
Smart cities, algorithmic technocracy and new urban technocrats ~ Rob Kitchin, Claudio Coletta, Leighton Evans, Liam Heaphy and Darach Mac Donncha
Planning by numbers: affordable housing and viability in England ~ Antonya Layard
Transnational design and local implications for planning: project flights and landings ~ Davide Ponzini
Researching the best-practice: academic knowledge production, planning and the post-politicisation of environmental politics ~ Samuel Mössner and Catarina Gomes de Matos
Conclusions: The technocratic logics of contemporary planning ~ Federico Savini and Mike Raco