Planning with Machines: Historical Technologies, Futures of Calculation, and the Political Economy of Planning

With Eleni Papagiannaki & Vinit Ravishankar & Sascha Gander & James Macumber

This project investigates how empirical and historical planning experiments are shaped and constrained by the technologies available for economic calculation, coordination, and control. Rather than treating planning as a purely theoretical or institutional problem (Groos& Sorg Eds. 2025), the project examines planning as it was actually practised, mediated by concrete technologies such as early input–output (I-O) tables, statistical systems, cybernetic models, analogue and early digital computing, and logistics architectures developed in both civilian and crisis contexts.