Organising regions: spatial planning and territorial governance practices in two Swedish regions

Abstract

In some European countries, sub-national regions are important geographical arenas for spatial planning. However, in Sweden, statutory regional planning is rather limited and the regional level is often described as having a weak position in the spatial planning system. In this article, we investigate territorial governance practices in two Swedish regions, with a focus on their interaction with the EU and the national level, and with the local level, as well as how these regions function as organisations and arenas for coordination of different policy fields. The study is based on semi-structured expert interviews and document analysis. The results show that spatial planning is practised both through statutory planning and soft planning approaches, and that these practices in different ways coordinate sectoral policies i.e. transport infrastructure and regional development. Both cases also illustrate difficulties not only of external coordination between different institutions and policy fields but also internally within organisations. It is also highlighted that spatial planning at the regional level focuses on coordinating actors and policy fields but that spatial planning is also an instrument to implement regional policies. In conclusion, it is argued that the organisation and territorial governance practices within a given institutional arrangement and the perception of spatial planning are crucial in determining how regions might function as multi-level coordination actors and policy arenas within spatial planning.

Positioning regional planning across Europe

“…However, we concur with van Straalen and Witte (2018) that both formal and informal arrangements, specifically at the regional scale or even those that transcend the regional from above or below, are critical for our understanding and for the practice of (strategic) regional planning. Sometimes, they coexist in isolation, which may imply frictions and contestations (Zimmermann, 2017), but there are also examples in which they complement each other (Smas & Lidmo, 2019) by forming hybrid forms of governance (Mäntysalo & Bäcklund, 2018).…”

“…In Sweden in general, there has been a shift towards strengthening the policy-making competencies at the regional level (e.g., with regard to regional development policy), which was part of a regional reform process that initially aimed at strengthening the regional level and establishing larger territorial units but ended in minor readjustments and harmonization of responsibilities for the regional development policy (Smas & Lidmo, 2019). But in terms of formal regional planning, the system has been rather stable, except for the example of Skåne, and planning as such is more or less the exclusive responsibility of municipalities.…”

Soft Spaces as a Traveling Planning Idea: Uncovering the Origin and Development of an Academic Concept on the Rise

“…In order to avoid tensions resulting from overlapping jurisdictions and ambiguous relationships between soft and hard spaces, several Nordic countries are in the process of reforming their planning laws, among other things with the intention for emerging new planning spaces to “find their place” in the regulatory systems. While anchoring city regions in the planning law is currently being debated in Finland, Sweden has recently allocated additional responsibilities to county councils, giving, for example, the—formerly soft—Stockholm regional plan a statutory mandate (Smas and Lidmo 2018). Through these reforms of planning regulation, we can observe a (potential) rescaling of competences in the Nordic countries.…”

“…While the neoliberal turn in state spatial politics is clearly a pan-European trend (Brenner 2003), it arrived in the Nordics relatively late (Galland 2012). Therefore, it was only during the 2000s when neoliberal spatial strategies materialized as policy reforms and sparked the conceptualization of urban regions as soft spaces in Denmark (Galland 2012; Olesen 2012), Finland (Luukkonen and Sirviö 2019), and to a limited extent also in Sweden and Norway (Smas and Lidmo 2018; Tolkki and Haveri 2020). Luukkonen and Sirviö (2019) describe the transformation of spatial strategies in Finland as follows:The Christallerian imagery of a decentralised national territory of the 1990s has been replaced by the post-structuralist imagery of soft spaces in which the state territory consists of a rhizome of significant urban agglomerations and the connecting development corridors between them.…”

National Support Initiatives in Nordic Spatial Planning

“…That is especially true with respect to sustainable urban development. Spatial planning plays a related role as a tool for policy coordination, which may take place horizontally across sectors or vertically across levels of government (see, for example, Stead & Meijers 2009;Nadin & Stead 2008;Nadin et al 2021; see also Smas & Lidmo 2018). That is normally explained in terms of the comprehensiveintegrated planning model, which is also typically used to describe planning systems in the Nordic countries.…”