Lecture 2 Flashcards
What is a planning system?
It is the set of actors (individuals, groups, organizations) and institutions (plans, laws, policies, informalities) which make up the configuration structuring spatial governance.
The focus on planning systems…
Emphasizes the features of governance arrangements, type of rules, distribution of power
Draws attention to issues such as the role and types of plans, and their characteristics.
Emphasizes the specific style of planning
Stresses the legal status of plans, their pro-active or reactive approach, or active/passive etc.
Locus of planning systems:
Macro level: broader phenomena, spatial and institutional challenges beyond the national level
Meso level: structural conditions of spatial governance on the national level
Micro level: spatial practices on the local level.
The locus of planning systems is mainly on the meso level
Key features of planning systems:
Open systems are influenced by interactions with other ideas, values, and common institutional setups: ’planning is always an arena of deliberation and knowledge production.’
Dynamic: ‘planning systems fluctuate between phases of stability and instability’
Context specific subject to various planning traditions, ‘governance characteristics such as centralization, devolution, and discretion’
Diverse: many planning systems continue to be quite distinct from each other and do not follow the same paths of change even though they address broadly similar issues and common challenges.
Problematizing/operationalizing planning systems:
Discourses: prevalent ideas, concepts and arguments in the frame of spatial planning (search for particular focus of evolvement and operate from planning systems)
Structures: A set of rules and laws that decide how planning systems can work and what they can do
Tools: control devices, monitoring and evaluation procedures and various forms of economic incentive (what are the means we have to control/steer planning practices)
Practices: manifestation of concrete forms of planning on local/regional level (the way discourse, structures, and tools are turned into practices)
Considerable variation of planning practices, even within the same planning system à planning cultures!
What is meant by planning culture?
Has sometimes been seen as equivalent to ‘the values, attitudes, mind sets, and routines shared by those taking part in planning’
The manifestation of locally and topic-related planning practices within structural framework conditions’ i.e. planning systems
The ways, both formal and informal, that spatial planning in a given multi-national region, country or city is conceived, institutionalized, and enacted.
and what does a focus on planning culture do
- Questions the neutral character of spatial policy-making and spatial planning.
- Emphasizes the context-dependent nature of planning
- Brings the greater interest in the embeddedness (or the equality of being firmly embedded in a place) of planning processes
- Refutes the idea of a universal definition of planning
- Leads to questions about the conditions that provide planning with its local and time-specific meaning
Four modalities of looking at planning culture:
Planning as cultural phenomenon
Planning culture as sub-culture
Planning as function of government
Societal culture and planning
Focus on cultural dimension:
Shared structures of meaning and their ontological function
Shared values toward legitimating action
Formal and informal rules, norms, routines for regulating behavior and interaction between actors
arguments for comparative spatial planning:
Understand the nature and working of spatial planning across various context
Stimulate interaction and cooperation between planning actors and institutions
Forster learning and improvement of planning practices
Generate (methodological) coherence and common standards
Increase the chances for effective policy transfers
Modes of learning for governance and planning systems
Learning from the past
Learning from other places (comparative learning)
Learning from experts and expert knowledge
Learning through dialectic engagement (discussion)
Scope of comparative learning
Design: of the whole planning systems, as shaping learning modes
Adaptation: of the planning system and its modes of transformation, as proxy for learning
Knowledge: forms of knowledge and knowledge integration in the planning system
Embeddedness: of the planning system in governance, in cultures, emphasizing embedding as shaping learning
