Measuring and comparing planning cultures: risk, trust and co-operative attitudes in experimental games

Abstract

Cultural impacts in planning increasingly receive attention from both academics and practitioners around Europe. However, comparative planning cultures studies face the challenges of lacking systematic comparison and empirical evidence, especially at the micro level of planning actors' behaviour in interaction. This article aims to fill these gaps by (1) operationalizing the concept of planning culture; and (2) measuring and comparing it. We base our operationalization on the culturized planning model (Knieling, J., & Othengrafen, F. (Eds.). ( 2009). Planning cultures in Europe: Decoding cultural phenomena in urban and regional planning. Farnham: Ashgate). We complement its explanatory power by building a link between planning culture and planning outcome through attitudes of planning actors. This article focuses on three attitudes: risk, trust and co-operation. To measure and compare these attitudes, we adopt three experimental economic games and conduct an experiment with public and private planning practitioners in three European countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway. Both cross-country and public-private differences in these attitudes are tested in the experiment. Our experimental findings suggest that Dutch planning actors value risk aversion and trust; Norwegian planning actors value cooperation; while (French-speaking) Belgian planning actors do not value these variables that much.

Prioritizing behaviour alongside regulations in Amsterdam’s planning projects

“…Some interesting approaches exist in the body of literature focusing on planning cultures. Li et al (2020Li et al ( , 1118, for instance, develop a concrete link between 'planning culture and planning outcome through attitudes of planning actors'. They argued that micro-level analyses of planning actors' behaviour should focus on attitudes of risk, trust and cooperation (Li et al 2020).…”

“…Li et al (2020Li et al ( , 1118, for instance, develop a concrete link between 'planning culture and planning outcome through attitudes of planning actors'. They argued that micro-level analyses of planning actors' behaviour should focus on attitudes of risk, trust and cooperation (Li et al 2020). While providing valuable insights into actor behaviour, Li et al's focus on drawing conclusions on national planning cultures in a comparative perspective is incompatible with our argument on institutionally fragmented, project-driven urban development.…”

Limits of Negotiable Developer Obligations

“…Second, the global financial and economic crisis caused many municipalities deep financial trouble, as the direct consequence of their active land policies: while they had invested up-front substantial amounts of money in land acquisitions and public infrastructure provisions, the crisis caused a dramatic decrease in demand for new housing and consequently of private developers' demand for serviced building plots. Municipalities lost a lot of money on their development projects, became much more risk-averse in their land management strategies [33], and moved away from active land policy. Third, in the same time period new residential development shifted from a dominant greenfield development model towards a grey-/brownfield development model, with the latter more complex and riskier in terms of active land policy.…”

Subnational and Dynamic Conceptualisations of Planning Culture: The Culture of Regional Planning and Regional Planning Cultures in Finland

“… 2. Li et al ( 2019 ) recently attempted to operationalise planning cultures through measuring and comparing planners’ attitudes towards risk, trust and co-operation in three European countries. …”