Daniel Galland

Is regional planning dead or just coping? The!transformation of a state sociospatial project into!growth-oriented strategies

How is regional planning transformed in increasingly changing socioeconomic and political contexts? How are regional planning policies and practices ultimately shaped and why? With this paper, the author proposes and applies an analytical model based on notions of state theory, state spatial selectivity, new planning spaces, and policy discourses to examine how regional planning has evolved in the course of the past four or so decades. On the basis of an analysis concerned with the history and evolution of Danish regional planning, he argues that regional planning has shifted away from being a sociospatial and welfarist state project towards being a domain characterised by growth-oriented strategies that stand for neoliberal political agendas. In examining this process the author suggests that hierarchical forms of governance and the statutory mechanisms embedded within them have been largely substituted by emerging soft spaces of governance and flexible policies intended to destabilise formal planning arenas. Finally, he discusses the fact that the ‘classical–modernist’ steering role of regional planning that once sought to tackle socioeconomic disparities has been replaced by a facilitating role that promotes competitiveness through growth-oriented policy instruments.

The Roles of Planning in Waterfront Redevelopment: From Plan-led and Market-driven Styles to Hybrid Planning?

Abstract This paper delves into the different styles and roles that planning adopts in contemporary waterfront redevelopment. Traditionally, waterfront redevelopment practices have consisted of an array of plan-led and market-driven planning styles upon which the derelict areas of post-industrial cities have been transformed. Typical examples from North America and Europe generally tend to focus on the successes that these processes have generated in connection with large-scale and emblematic projects. However, less attention has been devoted to the efforts of a more recent generation of cities undergoing waterfront redevelopment, which often features different planning rationalities, forms of governance, and competing interests. While the precise character of this newer generation does not yet seem defined, the rise of planning practices that combine previous planning styles has been key in allowing these cities achieve their redevelopment aims. In adding to this emerging generation, this paper examines the nature of waterfront redevelopment processes in Aalborg, Denmark, wherein hybrid planning styles characterized bysituation-dependent and relational planning processes have increasingly substituted former practices. The paper concludes that planning adopts different roles depending on the determinants that qualify each redevelopment case, and that hybrid planning may be subjected to public interestdilemmas given its capacity to adapt to certain political and socioeconomic patterns.

Understanding the Reorientations and Roles of Spatial Planning: The Case of National Planning Policy in Denmark

Spatial planning commonly adopts a diversity of functions and logics in contributing to the handling of growth and development. Being influenced by an array of contextual driving forces that result in specific institutional practices and policy agendas, spatial planning seems to be constantly reoriented in terms of its purposes and reasoning. This article sets out to explore the diverse orientations and roles that spatial planning has assumed in Denmark over a 50-year period. In doing so, the article examines the evolution of national planning policy by means of a multi-disciplinary framework comprising analytical concepts drawn from planning theory, state spatial theory and discourse analysis. Based on an in-depth study, the article then attempts to qualify, illustrate and synthesize the diverse roles that spatial planning has assumed in Denmark throughout that timeframe. The article concludes that spatial planning initially assumed a steering role, which has been either supplemented or substituted by balancing and/or strategic roles over the course of the past two decades. As a whole, this case is thought to contribute to current discussions regarding how spatial planning is shaped in different parts of Europe.

Analysing contemporary metropolitan spatial plans in Europe through their institutional context, instrumental content and planning process

Abstract This article sets out to propose and apply a qualitative framework for thinking about how to analyse and compare metropolitan spatial plans in a milieu of divergent spatial planning traditions and discretionary planning practices. In doing so, the article reviews and develops an understanding concerning the institutional context, instrumental content and planning processes associated with four contemporary metropolitan spatial plans in Europe, namely those of London, Copenhagen, Paris and Barcelona. Through the results of a multiple case study and a subsequent cross-comparative analysis, the article stresses that contemporary metropolitan spatial plans tend to merge the characteristics associated with project-based and strategy-based spatial plans, thus contrasting with the typical land-use character of municipal plans and the often strategic, growth-oriented pursuit of regional plans in Europe. In this sense, the metropolitan scale is treated less explicitly as a planning scale per se; rather, it tends to emerge as a “concealed” scale between municipal and regional scales and also between local and regional knowledge in planning. Moreover, the analysis suggests that while metropolitan plans seem to converge in terms of their general themes, they cannot be ultimately “typified” in view of ad hoc variations related to their institutional contexts, instrumental contents and planning processes.

Land administration, planning and human rights

The people-to-land relationship is dynamic and changes over time in response to cultural, social and economic development. Land policies, institutions and land administration systems are key tools aimed at governing this relationship. Such tools will normally include the means for allocating and controlling rights, restrictions and responsibilities in land – often termed RRRs. Each of the rights, restrictions and responsibilities encompasses a human rights dimension that should be seen and unfolded as more than just political rhetoric. This article attempts to analyse the aspect of human rights in relation to land administration systems with a special focus on less developed countries struggling to build adequate systems for governing the rights, restrictions and responsibilities in land. In doing so, the article conceives planning as a key function and means of land administration systems by which human rights should be underpinned in solving concrete land issues.

Redefining Territorial Scales and the Strategic Role of Spatial Planning

Abstract This paper argues that spatial planning systems tend to redefine and reinterpret conventional territorial scales through the dual adoption and articulation of legal instru- ments and spatial strategies at different levels of planning administration. In depicting such redefinition, this paper delves into the cases of Denmark and Catalonia through an analy- sis concerned with: i) the strategic spatial role attributed to each level of planning; and ii) the redefinition of territorial scales as a result of changing political objectives and spatial rela- tionships occurring between planning levels. The assessment pertaining to the strategic roles of spatial planning instruments as well as the evolving redefinition of territorial scales in both Denmark and Catalonia suggests that the conventional, hierarchical ‘cascade-shaped’ ideal of policy implementation is superseded. While both cases tend to converge in their alignment with strategic spatial planning, the implications stemming from rescaling processes radically diverge, as illustrated by the opposing fates of the regional scale and the distinctive means to reassure a ‘vertical spatial anchor’ for the stability and permanence of power structures.

The dark side of aeromobilities: Unplanned airport planning in Mexico City

Abstract Land-use conflicts, noise and health problems, local air pollution, decreased urban quality and affected liveability are considered amongst the core impacts and consequences associated with global airports, all of which have largely been individually documented. Through a case study of Mexico City International Airport (MCIA), this article argues that a more integrated focus that brings such various issues and perspectives together is needed in order to widen the understanding of the existing relationship between socio-spatial and environmental effects, increased aeromobility, airport siting conflicts, airport urban surroundings and globalization. The present study of MCIA suggests that local players and airports are not just passively influenced by processes of globalization and aeromobilities, but also that such processes disentangle a wide array of socio-spatial and environmental consequences that depend on ad hoc local contexts. Hence, the article follows the argument that a much stronger focus on the planning process of airports is needed at local and regional scales, while a larger debate regarding the regulation of increased global aviation ought to be raised in national and international contexts.

The conversion of spatial planning in Denmark: Changes in national and regional planning policies and governance structures

ntaciones nestructurales, funcionales y conceptuales durante las ultimas dos decadas. El nmarco jerarquico de administracion en el que las politicas y las practicas del ordenamiento nterritorial solian llevarse a cabo fue ampliamente modificado despues de una reforma ndel gobierno local implementada en 2007. Dicha reforma propicio la revocacion del nivel nregional, lo que indujo el reescalamiento de las politicas, las funciones y las responsabilidades ndel ordenamiento territorial a los niveles municipal y nacional. A traves del analisis nde estos cambios estructurales, este articulo se sumerge en la reorientacion de las politicas nde ordenamiento territorial a diferentes escalas, en la evolucion del rol de la ordenacion ndel territorio en la gestion del crecimiento y del desarrollo, y en los cambios de las estructuras nde gobernanza asociados a la ordenacion del territorio en Dinamarca.

A “Field” Under Construction: The State of Planning in Latin America and the Southern Turn in Planning

Abstract This special issue takes a point of departure on the “southern turn in planning” with an emphasis on Latin America and seeks to contribute to the current wave of debates around international comparative planning. Its objective is to target the “state of the art” of planning interventions as well as contemporary forms of planning knowledge and academic scholarship across the region. In doing so, a number of key themes are identified through rationales ranging from the emergence of planning policies, practices and discourses to gaps between theory and practice, and then moving on to the state of planning education and the exchange of planning knowledge across different countries within the region. Based on these themes, the substance of the issue embraces inputs by academics with planning knowledge and expertise from Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Brazil and Peru. The conclusion to the issue presents a cross-comparative analysis and synthesises a series of research axes aimed at designing a research agenda concerning planning in Latin America.

Procesos y estilos de planificación en la rehabilitación urbana : el caso de Dinamarca

Este articulo plantea que los procesos de rehabilitacion urbana en contextos escandinavos consisten tanto en desarrollos regidos por planes como en desarrollos gobernados por mercados. Tomando como ejemplo la regeneracion de muelles urbanos, se argumenta que dichos procesos de planificacion son el resultado de la interaccion de diversos factores, entre los que destacan politicas urbanas locales, acuerdos institucionales, aspectos relacionados con la propiedad de la tierra, asi como ciertas condiciones del mercado. El articulo concluye que los procesos de regeneracion urbana en el contexto especifico de la transformacion de muelles tienden a evolucionar en funcion de un enfoque que aqui se denomina ‘sitio por sitio’, que muestra como diversos estilos de planificacion urbana determinan la configuracion de los procesos individuales de transformacion.