In the 1990s a strategic approach to the organization of space at different levels of scale became more prevalent. Increasingly, it is being assumed that the solutions to complex problems depend on the ability to combine the creation of strategic visions with short-term actions. The creation of strategic visions implies the design of shared futures, and the development and promotion of common assets. Moreover, all of this requires accountability within a time and budgetary framework and the creation of awareness for the systems of power. Delivering on these new demands implies the development of an adapted strategic planning capacity and a shift in planning style in which the stakeholders are becoming more actively involved in the planning process on the basis of a joint definition of the action situation and of the sharing of interests, aims, and relevant knowledge. In this paper I aim to provide building blocks for such an ‘alternative’ strategic (spatial) planning approach. It is based on two different sources. The first source is critical planning literature and strategic thinking in business, which will be used to broaden the scope of the concept. The second source consists of European strategic planning practices.

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There is growing evidence that the problems, challenges and opportunities that our cities, cityregions and regions are facing cannot be tackled adequately by traditional spatial planning. One of the key challenges for planning in this respect is to analyse critically what type of planning is suited as an approach to deal -in an innovative/emancipatory and transformative way -with the problems and challenges developing and developed societies are facing. An expanding literature and an increasing number of practices all over the world seem to suggest that strategic spatial planning may be looked upon as a possible approach. But at the same time critical comments and reactions are raised on the theory and the practices of strategic spatial planning. This paper uses the theory and practices of coproduction to reframe strategic spatial planning. It first looks for a deeper understanding of the meaning(s) of coproduction as it emerged in different contexts and different intellectual traditions and then introduces coproduction as an immanent characteristic of a more radical type of strategic planning. Coproduction combines the provision of public goods/services needed with the building of a strong, resilient and mutually supportive community that could assure its members their needs would be met. This implies changing the perceptions and the approach of many professionals (public and private) about how plans, policies and public services are conceived and delivered, with the objective of enabling the (structural) change needed in an open and equitable way. The paper relies on a selective review of critical planning literature and the author's experience in practice.

Introduction: revival of strategic spatial planning In Australia the report by the Perth Metropolitan Town Planning Commission recognized the need for long-term strategic spatial planning as early as 1930. The StephensonĤ epburn plan of 1955 is considered by many in Western Australia as the first strategic plan in Australia. In the 1960s the accent shifted to new-look strategic structure plans to facilitate long-term growth. The latter part of the 1970s saw trend-based planning preoccupied with the coordination of land release and infrastructure investments (Freestone and Hamnett, 2000).In a number of Western European countries, strategic spatial planning evolved in the 1960s and 1970s towards a system of comprehensive planning öthe integration of nearly everything (see Perloff, 1980)öat different administrative levels. In the 1980s when the neoliberal paradigm replaced the Keynesian^Fordist one, and when public intervention retrenched in all domains (Martinelli, 2005), Europe witnessed a retreat from strategic spatial planning fuelled not only by the neoconservative disdain for planning, but also by postmodernist skepticism, both of which tend to view progress as something which, if it happens, cannot be planned (Healey, 1997b). Instead the focus of urban and regional planning practices shifted to projects (Motte, 1994;Rodriguez and Martinez, 2003;Secchi, 1986), especially for the revival of rundown parts of cities and regions, and to land-use regulations.The growing complexity, an increasing concern about the rapid and apparently random development, the problems of fragmentation, the dramatic increase in interest (at all scales, from local to global) in environmental issues, the growing strength of the environmental movement, the need for governments to adopt a more entrepreneurial style of planning in order to enhance city competitiveness, a longstanding quest for better coordination (horizontal and vertical), a reemphasis on the need for long-term thinking, and the aim to return to a more realistic and effective method all served to expand the agenda (

The environmental crisis, the energy crisis, the financial crisis, and the subsequent economic crisis—to name only a few of the crucial issues of our times—are causing an outcry for change, even structural change, in our society. Change is the sum of a great number of acts (individual, group, institutional) of reperception and behaviour change at every level. This takes decision makers, planners, institutions, and citizens out of their comfort zones and compels them to confront their key beliefs, to challenge conventional wisdom, and to examine the prospects of ‘breaking out of the box’. Not everyone (individual planners, groups, institutions, citizens) wants to give up the power associated with the status quo. Society is starting to reflect on new concepts and new ways of thinking that change the way resources are used, (re)distributed, and allocated, and the way the regulatory powers (market versus state) are exercised. As the call for change has been central to planning, one of the key challenges is to develop an approach to planning that will make these ideas and concepts ‘travel’ and that will translate them into an array of practice arenas, which in turn will transform these arenas themselves, rather than merely being absorbed within them. The spectrum for change cannot be so open that anything is possible, as if we could achieve anything we wanted to achieve. Conditions and structural constraints on ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ possible are imposed by the past and the present. These conditions and constraints have to be questioned and challenged in the process, given the specific context of time and place. So, in order to imagine the conditions and constraints differently, we need to deal with history and to overcome history. This defines the boundaries of a fairly large space between openness and fixity. Thus, change becomes the activity whereby (within certain boundaries) that which might become is ‘imposed’ on that which is, and it is ‘imposed’ for the purpose of transforming what ‘is’ into what ‘might become’. This differs from the established or traditional way of thinking, in which there is no choice and we are not even aware of other possibilities. In this paper I argue for a strategic planning approach that focuses, invents, creates, and is implemented—in relation to the context, and to the social and cultural values to which a particular place or society is historically committed—as something new rather than as a solution arrived at as a result of existing trends. It is only by working backwards (‘reverse thinking’, ‘back casting’) that planning is able to open up new perspectives and take other directions. Subsequently I reflect on the changing role of planners in this respect.