Spatial Planning Systems and Practices in Europe

A Comparative Perspective on Continuity and Changes

Mario Reimer, Panagiotis Getimis, Hans Blotevogel, Mario Reimer, Panagiotis Getimis, Hans Blotevogel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415727242
• eBook ISBN: 9781317919094
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Ideal for students and practitioners working in spatial planning, the Europeanization of planning agendas and regional policy in general Spatial Planning Systems and Practices in Europe develops a systematic methodological framework to analyze changes in planning systems throughout Europe. The main aim of the book is to delineate the coexistence of continuity and change and of convergence and divergence with regard to planning practices across Europe.

Based on the work of experts on spatial planning from twelve European countries the authors underline the specific and context-dependent variety and disparateness of planning transformation, focusing on

• the main objectives of the changes,
• the driving forces behind them and the main phases and turning points,
• the main agenda setting actors, and
• the different planning modes and tools reflected in the different "policy and planning styles".

Along with a methodological framework the book includes twelve country case studies and the comparative conclusions covering a variety of planning systems of EU member states. According to the four "ideal types" of planning systems identified in the EU Compendium, at least two countries have been selected from each of the four different planning traditions:

1. regional-economic (France, Germany),
2. Urbanism (Greece, Italy),
3. comprehensive/integrated (Denmark ,Finland, Netherlands, Germany),
4. "land use planning" (UK, Czech Republic, Belgium/Flanders),

along with two additional case studies focusing on the recent developments in eastern European countries by looking at Poland and in southern Europe looking at Turkey.

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SPATIAL PLANNING SYSTEMS AND PRACTICES IN EUROPE

A comparative perspective

Mario Reimer, Panagiotis Getimis and Hans Heinrich Blotevogel

1 Introduction

Spatial planning aspires to be an interdisciplinary and cross-cutting coordinator of sectoral policies and decisions with spatial impacts, including those concerned with the environment, infrastructure and regional economic promotion. It is generally institutionally anchored on at least two spatial levels (municipal and national). In addition, there are greatly varying forms of organization on the regional planning level in different countries. Spatial planning as such is subject to constant pressure to adapt. In the course of ever-changing social and spatial challenges, it has to continually reposition itself, proving its social value and long-term capacity to function and solve problems. Thus, for instance, Friedmann states that “within any given setting, planning must continuously reinvent itself as circumstances change. In contemporary societies, politics, institutions, economies, technologies and social values are all subject to continuous, often radical, change, so planners often feel beleaguered, their profession perpetually on the brink of an existential crisis” (Friedmann, 2005, p. 29).

This need for spatial planning to “continuously reinvent” itself necessitates that its institutional setting is capable of innovation. This refers to both the formal and the informal institutions that determine planning practice. The formal institutions include particularly the legal and administrative fundaments of spatial planning, while the informal institutions primarily comprise the cognitively anchored patterns of perception, beliefs, shared values and behavior of the actors involved. With this in mind, it becomes clear that a critical consideration of the tendencies of change in spatial planning may not be reduced to a purely legal and administrative perspective. Indeed, this is a criticism directed, for instance, towards the “classical” research on European planning systems (Newman and Thornley, 1996), research that aims to construct typologies and families of planning systems and so is always implicitly searching for commonalities in spatial planning. Such a perspective is problematic as it displays little sensitivity for differences between and within the various systems and thus subordinates aspects of divergence and heterogeneity to those of convergence and homogeneity.

It is clear that a comparative analysis of the adaptability of planning systems and practices in Europe requires a solid theoretical and conceptual basis. This introduction presents an approach to the comparative analysis of planning systems and practices, the particular potential of which lies in the bringing together of structural and action theory perspectives, thus allowing the “blind spots” of comparative research into planning systems to be avoided. We first discuss methodological considerations of previous comparative research into planning systems. Drawing on the debate about the Europeanization of spatial planning, we then present our understanding of a contextualized or context-based analysis of spatial planning, before turning to a discussion of several theses concerned with the development of European planning systems and practices.

We propose that, as argued by comparative research on spatial planning in Europe, convergence tendencies can be identified. However, at the same time very specific adaptation mechanisms and practices can be detected in the individual countries under investigation (Healey and Williams, 1993; Davies, 1994), but these cannot be attributed to a unitary logic. This book and the chapters it brings together aim to tease out the specific relationship between change and continuity in the planning practice of each of the individual countries under consideration and thus direct attention towards the “diversity of spatial planning systems and practices” (Stead and Cotella, 2011, p. 13).

2 Comparative spatial planning research revisited: some methodological remarks

Comparative approaches have a long history in the research of (European) planning systems (see Newman and Thornley, 1996; CEC, 1997; Booth et al., 2007; Nadin and Stead, 2008). Attempts to create typologies and classifications of national planning systems have been greatly valued, as is the case with the work of Newman and Thornley (1996), which today continues to be well known and much cited in the planning sciences. From the perspective of comparative research into planning systems, their work demonstrates impressive strengths, but it also repeatedly lays itself open to criticism. There is no dispute over their observation of a close relationship between legal and administrative framework conditions that have evolved over time and the individual planning systems. The social status of planning is thereby derived not only from the legal and administrative tradition but is also dependent on individual “models of society,” as “ideal types used to generalize about the diverse values and practices that shape relationships between the state, the market and citizens in particular places” (Stead and Nadin, 2009, p. 283). Therefore, spatial planning systems are not exclusively dependent on the legal–administrative systems, but also on the different socio-economic, political and cultural structures and dynamics prevailing in each country. Historically, different domestic structures and internal dynamics have developed in each country; these comprise economic modes and cycles (growth, recession, crisis), state traditions (Loughlin and Peters, 1997; Loughlin et al., 2011), welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990), political cultures (March and Olsen, 1989; Lijphart, 1999), governance modes (Sorensen and Torfing, 2007; Heinelt, 2010) and actor constellations (Adams et al., 2011a). Reference is thus made here to the complex interaction of societal cultures, planning systems and location-specific planning practices.

It cannot be denied that “classical” research into planning systems has focused on comparing institutional frameworks and structures relevant for planning. This has been associated with a clear overemphasis on constitutional and legal framework conditions, leading to a disregard of the particular, the exceptional and the “micro practices” (Healey, 2010) within these frameworks. In this context Nadin (2012, p. 3), for instance, argues that “a focus on formal description may hide as much as it reveals,” and Reimer and Blotevogel (2012, p. 10) emphasize that “it remains a matter of dispute whether planning reality is in fact fundamentally determined by its basis in law.” Indeed, Newman and Thornley (1996, p. 39) themselves point out that, at least with reference to Europe as a whole, the equating of legal framework conditions with actual planning practices entails a certain degree of risk:

So far an assumption has been made that if a country has a set of legal and administrative regulations that relate to planning then these will shape and control the way in which planning is carried out … The appropriateness of this assumption, though, varies throughout Europe.

In light of the above, it becomes clear that comparative research into planning systems has – to draw on the term “territorial trap” coined by Agnew (1994) – fallen foul of a “structural trap.” Conclusions about planning practices inherent to the system cannot be drawn from a comparison of legal–administrative framework conditions alone. Furthermore, it has thus far been assumed that the national level of analysis is suitable for the comparative consideration of planning systems. However, this “methodological nationalism” fails to recognize that national planning systems are differentiated at different scales. This is particularly true for federal systems such as that in Germany, where national framework conditions are more concretely defined at the level of the federal state and the organization of, for instance, regional planning varies greatly.

This recognition has led to recent calls for a multi-scalar and relational perspective (Getimis, 2012), one that sheds light on the complex interaction of structural framework conditions and localized practices in spatial planning. Furthermore, a multi-scalar comparative analysis, without neglecting the importance of institutional contexts, focuses on changes emerging in a concrete period, in actor arenas and “knowledge orders” (Zimmermann, 2009) at different scales of planning practices (at the local, urban, regional and cross-border level). Of particular interest in this context are the “intrinsic” logic of place and the overlooked aspects of actor networks, knowledge and policy styles (Getimis, 2012, p. 26). A focus on specific actor constellations is necessary in order to demonstrate the mechanisms of the inclusion and exclusion of actors and their interests. Furthermore, key actors have particularly prominent positions as gatekeepers to certain resources (positions of power, financial funds, strategically important contacts and networks). Actors are also carriers of specific knowledge (e.g. scientific/expert, steering/institutional, local/milieu knowledge) that is fed into the planning process or indeed deliberately withheld. The specific interaction of actors and interests in turn characterizes specific “policy styles,” understood as “policy making and implementation style, reflecting deep-rooted values” (Getimis, 2012, p. 34). This underlines the importance of contextualized research in the planning sciences (Sykes, 2008).

In addition to the overemphasis of structural framework conditions and the distinct research focus on a national scale, it is noticeable that in the past static descriptions of the state of planning systems dominated. These were unable to capture dynamics or directions of development:

Comparative studies on spatial planning systems in Europe have highlighted important differences and similarities in spatial planning traditions, typologies and ideal types. However, they tend to emphasize different aspects of the institutional, legal and administrative contexts at one scale of analysis, mainly the national level, during a specific period. Thus, comparative analysis remains static and does not allow an understanding of the ongoing transformations of planning systems and the important role that actor constellations play in dynamic terms.

(Getimis, 2012, p. 26)

Questions concerning patterns of transformation of individual planning systems have attracted research attention only in recent years. In particular, the stepwise extension of the European Union has led to investigation of the ability of individual planning systems to react and adapt (see Adams, 2008; Stead and Cotella, 2011; Giannakourou, 2012). In this context, discussion about the influence of European spatial development policies on individual planning systems is also relevant, although the notion of a Europeanization of spatial planning seems somewhat exaggerated. Only a differentiated assessment of the mechanisms and effects of European spatial development policies can provide an accurate picture (Böhme and Waterhout, 2008).

Within comparative research into planning systems to date, there has also been a certain degree of neglect of the significance of cultural contexts for planning action. Planning culture has sometimes been seen as equivalent to “the values, attitudes, mind sets and routines shared by those taking part in planning” (Fürst, 2009), but the question of how, for instance, such an understanding of planning culture fits into the concepts of social cultures, planning systems and concrete planning practices described above has not been answered. Although recent comparative studies on planning cultures highlight important cultural aspects of planning (Knieling and Othengrafen, 2009), they lack operational and systematic methods of comparative analysis and remain at an abstract level. It is the exception to find integrated analytical perspectives that use the concept of planning culture to compensate for the aforementioned weak spots in the “classical” research of planning systems (see, for instance, Stead and Nadin, 2009; Othengrafen, 2012; Reimer, 2012).

The weaknesses in past comparative planning research discussed above are, in our view, striking and require new theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches to a research object (planning systems) that is itself often ill-defined. Thus, Janin Rivolin (2012, p. 64) points out that “the lack of clear definition of the subject of comparison seems however to be the ultimate obstacle to more fruitful observations and evaluations.” With this criticism in mind, we interpret planning systems as

dynamic institutional technologies which prescribe legal and administrative structures for spatial order and structure, for securing land uses and for development within a specific defined area and which are manifest at various different tiers, i.e. national, regional and local. Accordingly, they define corridors of action for planning practice which may however nonetheless display a good deal of variability.

(Reimer and Blotevogel, 2012, p. 14)

Two aspects are thus the key to an understanding of planning systems. First, they are in principle adaptable and they can react to external challenges. It should nevertheless be noted that the degree of flexibility depends on the context and, essentially, on the maturity and functionality of the system itself. Thus, existing structures can exhibit pronounced persistency that can only be broken up with considerable effort on the part of actors. Planning transformations are dependent on certain actors of change. If these have active support from facilitating institutions and political forces, then planning reforms can take place. In contrast, if there is a lack of supportive facilitating institutions and politicians hesitate to embark upon the high political cost of planning transformations, then an advance preparation phase of persuasion and bargaining may be necessary. Second, the planning system context – that is, the legal and administrative structures – does not define planning activities completely. At most, it specifies corridors of action within which planning practice can move.

3 Europeanization of spatial planning: convergence or divergence? Or both?

The research on Europeanization has contributed new insights and explanations on the relationship between agency and change and on the impact of supra-national politics and policies on domestic institutions (Risse et al., 2001; Giuliani, 2003). Europeanization, understood either as governance, institutionalization or discourse, introduced different mechanisms and modes of governance: hierarchy, bargaining and facilitated coordination (Radaelli, 2004). How domestic institutions assimilate new challenges driven by Europeanization and whether there are convergence or divergence trends are open questions depending on the specific country, the relevant policy sector and the time frame.

European planning systems cannot be understood as static and immobile sets of formal regulations for planning activities, but are rather socially negotiated, adaptive and dynamic constructs. In light of this understanding, we agree with Janin Rivolin (2012, p. 69) who defines a planning system as a “specific social construct featuring the establishment and application, in certain institutional contexts in time and space, of certain techniques of social order and cooperation directed towards allowing and ruling the collective action for the use of space.”

The “institutional contexts” addressed here refer primarily to the “domestic institutions” (Börzel, 1999) of individual countries that in a situation of increasing Europeanization are subjected to great pressure to adapt. The idea of a European spatial development policy, as followed particularly by the strategically oriented documents of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) or the Territorial Agenda of the European Union (TAEU), generates a complex “catalyst environment” (Morais Mourato and Tewdwr-Jones, 2012) within which national planning systems must position themselves. It is to be expected that the reactions (adaptation mechanisms and/or resistance) of the individual planning systems will differ greatly from one another. Three ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Spatial planning systems and practices in Europe: a comparative perspective
• 2 The Danish planning system 1990–2010: continuity and decay
• 3 The recent development of the Finnish planning system: the city of Vantaa as an executor, fighter and independent actor
• 4 Dutch national spatial planning at the end of an era
• 5 Spatial planning in Germany: institutional inertia and new challenges
• 6 France, drifting away from the “regional economic” approach
• 7 The modernization of the Italian planning system
• 8 The evolution of spatial planning in Greece after the 1990s: drivers, directions and agents of change
• 9 Spatial planning in Flanders: serving a bypassed capitalism?
• 10 Spatial planning in the United Kingdom, 1990–2013
• 11 Changing planning in the Czech Republic
• 12 Spatial and strategic planning in Turkey: institutional change and new challenges
• 13 Spatial planning in Poland between European influence and dominant market forces
• 14 Conclusion: multiple trends of continuity and change
• Index