Planning Cultures in Transition: Sustainability Management and Institutional Change in Spatial Planning

Abstract

This paper aims to critically review current discussions on the "reinvention" of spatial planning, postulating an all-encompassing and unproblematic shift towards new rationales, scopes, actors and instruments in planning practice. Buzzwords are, among others, "governance", "collaborative planning" and the "communicative turn". To overcome the somehow normative bias of these terms, the term "planning culture" is introduced to define a complex, multi-dimensional and dynamic institutional matrix combining formal and informal institutional patterns. Used in an analytical sense, it can help to better understand institutional change in spatial planning. Referring to recent conceptual debates about institutional transformation, the paper presents a six-stage model for institutional change in spatial planning, supporting it with an example from the Cologne/Bonn metropolitan region in Germany. The latter serves as an example for illustrating the institutional dynamics, but also the rigidities of planning cultural change. The paper concludes that a more thorough, "fine-grained" and empirically-grounded investigation of institutional transformation in spatial planning is necessary.

Mapping and Assessing Green Infrastructure Connectivity in European City Regions

“…In this manner, we address different societal and cultural backgrounds that affect planning practices. In recent planning research, the concept of planning cultures was used to analyse and understand the relationship between cultural imprints and determining the ways planning is done, i.e., beliefs, attitudes, and ideas constituting a set of collective meaning or "web of belief" [16] shared by planning professionals in a certain time and space, and the physical outcomes of planning, i.e., urban patterns reflecting a certain planning philosophy [17]. Understood as "the sum of specific localized planning practices that emerge as a consequence of the interplay of institutional cognitive frames and behavioural patterns of actors involved in planning processes" [18], planning cultures in a given spatial and temporal context can be seen as a major defining element on how the physical setting of urban green infrastructure manifests in the urban realm [19].…”

A Dynamic Model for Construction and Demolition (C&D) Waste Management in Spain: Driving Policies Based on Economic Incentives and Tax Penalties

“…The model proposed here presents the analysis of a potential incentive versus a penalties policy offered by the government. This policy consists of, on the one hand, compensating the companies for the cost difference that may arise between using material made with the mixture of C&D waste/natural aggregate and 100% natural aggregate (external incentives offered for using treated C&D waste) or, as an alternative, punishing the absence of use of C&D waste by increasing the initial cost of quarried aggregates with a specific tax (non-recycling tax) [32]. The novelty of this approach is that it shows the effects of these policies in the EMS system and how this stakeholder's behavior is influenced over time.…”

Planungskultur als Sinnsystem. Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel kooperativer Stadtgrünentwicklung in Düsseldorf

“…Um Planungskultur(en) empirisch zu untersuchen, bedarf es geeigneter analytischer Modelle, welche ein Verständnis von Planung in entsprechende Betrachtungsebenen und Betrachtungselemente übersetzen, also operationalisieren, sowie Sinnzusammenhänge sichtbar machen. Verschiedene theoretisch hergeleitete Modelle wurden in den letzten Jahren erarbeitet, die Planungskulturen strukturell und prozedural erklären (Othengrafen 2012;Reimer 2013;Hölzl/ Nuissl 2015). Diese Ansätze haben ihren epistemologischen Ursprung in kulturwissenschaftlichen Ansätzen, beispiels-weise zur Untersuchung von Organisationskultur (vgl.…”