Regional Planning as Mediation: Inside Minnesota's Metropolitan Twin Cities Regional Plan Implementation

Abstract

Regional planning has long struggled with how to address problems that extend across jurisdictional boundaries. With reduced political support in the USA for regional governance since the 1980s, studies of collaborative and voluntary approaches emerged with little reference to the literature on remaining regional government institutions such as the well-known case of the Twin Cities, Minnesota Metropolitan Council. This paper uses interviews and a first-person narrative to tell a more complex story of an institution known for strong regional governance powers. The Council institutionalized communicative planning and new regionalism undergirded by civic coalitions, government incentives, institutional power, and the strategic opportunities provided by legal ambiguity. This paper argues for further understanding of how imperfect power combined with direct provision of infrastructure services may provide conditions for more effective regional and collaborative planning practice than might be possible through either regulatory or voluntary approaches alone.

Pathways to legitimacy

“…Conflict continues as regional planning occurs through adversarial review of local governments’ plans and projects—a process they have every incentive to resist or subvert. Although the Council was established through the efforts of a bipartisan civic elite coalition, and council members and staff have sometimes built coalitions around projects (see Pinel, 2011), it has not nurtured an enduring external support coalition. Absent sufficient input, output, or throughput legitimacy to articulate regional goals independent of state and local actors, the Council has avoided conflict by minimizing the prescriptiveness of its planning policies.…”