Transport planning is the set of state-led practices that seek to improve (using) mobility, with reference to an idealised future imaginary. A feature of these imaginations is how key actors delimit their understanding of neighbourhood, district, city, metropolis, or region according to predetermined boundaries, thus shaping the range of actions available to them.

In this research, I characterise how scale is deployed in practices of transport planning, with a focus on the Melbourne (Australia) and Toronto (Canada) urban regions between 2000 and 2015. Using a framework developed from the post- Foucauldian governmentality literature, I draw upon core and ancillary transport planning documents, and semi-structured interviews with key planning actors, from each of the urban regions.

The findings demonstrate how scale and territory are actively wielded in each city-region, forming a core feature of the arts of government of transport planning. Territory is a precondition of other features of the arts of government of planning, enabling techniques of forecasting and the construction of future imaginaries through the setting of boundaries around their analyses, and it works to influence and shape electoral rationalities, as decision-making in each city-region is conducted with reference to multiple political boundaries.

Finally, in reshaping and extending the boundaries of the city-region, transport planning is also an act of rescaling, which may have broader socio-political implications. Transportation needs transformation, and in furthering our understanding of scale as a technology of power, this work can provide the new thinking spaces needed to face incipient social and environmental transformations.