Assemblage Theory in Urban Governance

Assemblage Theory offers a relational framework for understanding urban governance as an emergent effect of heterogeneous elements—people, infrastructures, policies, technologies and discourses—woven together through dynamic interactions. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s insights and later elaborations by scholars such as DeLanda, this perspective shifts attention from fixed institutions to the fluid processes of territorialisation and deterritorialisation that produce governance outcomes. Urban governance, through this lens, is not the sole product of formal authorities but arises within socio‐material assemblages in which state agencies, community groups, private actors and technical systems interact. These assemblages are shaped by coding practices—norms, regulations and narratives—that channel relations, while lines of flight introduce possibilities for innovation and transformation. This approach has illuminated how neighbourhood initiatives, infrastructure projects and policy measures co‐construct one another, revealing the multiplicity of scales, temporalities and power relations at play. Globally, assemblage thinking has provided new ways to compare diverse governance contexts, from participatory food networks in dense metropolitan areas to large‐scale transport or green‐infrastructure schemes. By foregrounding emergent capacities rather than static structures, it offers urban planners and policymakers a toolkit for responding to complexity, encouraging adaptive strategies that harness the creativity of heterogeneous actors and materials.

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Assemblage Theory in Urban Governance publication trend

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Technical terms

Assemblage: A heterogeneous ensemble of human and non-human elements whose dynamic relations produce emergent capacities.

Territorialisation: Processes that stabilise an assemblage by consolidating boundaries, norms and identities.

Deterritorialisation: Processes that disrupt or transform established relations within an assemblage.

Coding: Mechanisms—rules, discourses or designs—that organise and regulate interactions within an assemblage.

Lines of flight: Creative pathways or trajectories through which assemblages evolve, escape constraints or generate novel configurations.

References

1. Food democracy and the right to the city: Re-assembling urban food environments in East-Central London. Cities (2024).
2. A road scheme, the state, and the détournement of urban space: Henri Lefebvre and competing publics in postwar Hyde Park, London. Political Geography (2023).
3. Working the urban assemblage: A transnational study of transforming practices. Urban Studies (2021).