Raine Mäntysalo

Planning as agonistic communication in a trading zone: Re-examining Lindblom's partisan mutual adjustment

The article re-examines Charles E Lindblom’s theory of partisan mutual adjustment (PMA), by reflecting on the recent ideas on cross-cultural cooperation and communication, developed in sociological studies of science and technology. While the critical arguments of the so-called communicative (or collaborative) planning theorists on PMA are well known and well placed, they may have overlooked the complexities of planning communication. Especially Peter Galison’s concept of ‘trading zone’ offers a fresh outlook on these complexities. In the article, Lindblomian bargaining and compromise-seeking are re-interpreted in terms of creating a local trading zone between the stakeholders representing different cultures of meaning and value. This approach challenges two assumptions that have become commonplace in the planning theoretical debate around PMA: firstly, that trading between interests would not necessitate mutual dialogue and generation of a realm of shared understandings, and secondly, that approaching planning communication as trading between interests would mean adopting the political ideology of (neo)liberalism.

Between Input Legitimacy and Output Efficiency: Defensive Routines and Agonistic Reflectivity in Nordic Land-Use Planning

The article describes tensions generated in land-use planning practices in Norway, Finland and Sweden, due to the shift towards New Public Management in actual governance practices, while the ideals of deliberative democracy in planning discourses and legislation have been retained. These tensions are studied empirically by making comparative observations of planning systems and practices in each country. The theoretical approach is developed by combining democracy and legitimacy theories with double bind theory and organizational learning theory. Based on this theoretical work, the article offers insights for reflectivity on the tensions. The Nordic ideal of deliberative democracy, expressed in the primary aims of our planning laws, may prohibit open acknowledgement of the uneasiness which follows from the fact that liberal democratic values (rights of landownership, free enterprise, etc.) are also secured. Thereby planners act and speak in terms of mixed messages, potentially habituated into defensive routines that may prohibit metacommunication on the basic tensions. The idea of agonistic reflectivity is offered as an approach to planning, which would acknowledge the tension between input legitimacy and output efficiency as a legitimate condition in itself, requiring ongoing political debate where the tension has to be continually discussed without actually ever being resolved.

Private Influence Preceding Public Involvement: Strategies for Legitimizing Preliminary Partnership Arrangements in Urban Housing Planning in Norway and Finland

Neoliberal ideas have inspired new forms of public–private partnerships in urban development. Early preliminary agreement on planning goals and related investments change the possibilities for public participation while offering a privileged position for developers. The aim of the article is to investigate the way power is used in these processes and how such power is legitimized. A new framework for empirical analysis is developed applying theoretical categorizations of power and democratic legitimacy. Housing planning in Norway and Finland is studied and compared. Lukess three dimensions of power allows the structural power relations embedded within habitual planning practices and legal frameworks to be identified, while authority and manipulation are observable empirically in case studies involving conflicts. As the study reveals, output legitimacy is emphasized, and discussion of procedural aspects of the cases is avoided.

Legitimacy of Informal Strategic Urban Planning-Observations from Finland, Sweden and Norway

Abstract In Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian cities and urban regions, strategic approaches in urban planning have been developed by introducing different kinds of informal strategic plans. The means of improving the strategic quality of urban and regional planning have thus been searched from outside the statutory land use planning system, determined by the national planning laws. Similar development has also taken place elsewhere. When strategic plans are prepared outside the statutory planning system, these processes also lack the legal guarantee for openness, fairness and accountability. This is a serious legitimacy problem. In this article, the problem is examined theoretically and conceptually by combining democracy- and governance-theoretical perspectives. With this framework, four different approaches to legitimacy are derived: accountability, inclusiveness, liberty and fairness. The article concludes that strategic urban planning must find a balance between the four approaches to legitimacy. Concerning political processes, this requires agonistic acknowledgement of different democracy models, excluding neither deliberative nor liberalist arguments. Concerning administrative processes, it requires acknowledgement of the interdependence of statutory and informal planning instruments and the necessity of developing planning methods for their mutual complementarity—thus avoiding the detachment of informal strategic planning into a parallel planning “system”.

Legitimacy of urban climate change adaptation: a case in Helsinki

Abstract While there is general agreement on the necessity for local adaptation, there is a wide range of different understandings of what type of adaptation is seen as legitimate. It is often contested who should actively steer and take part in local adaptation, for which reasons and based on what kind of mandate, and with which methods. Planning theory can serve as a helpful reference point for examining the sources of legitimacy for adaptation in an urban context. From a planning perspective, adaptation is concerned with climate change as one out of many issues planning has to respond to. The layered co-existence of planning paradigms in practice suggests diverse, sometimes contradictory sources of legitimacy for urban planning and—as we claim here—also for climate change adaptation. This study examines the legitimacy of adaptation from a planning theoretical perspective in Helsinki, drawing on semi-structured interviews and social network analysis to show how adaptation is commonly understood from a rationalist perspective as an apolitical activity with local authorities’ experts designing and implementing adaptation. Nevertheless, some of the central actors understand adaptation as a communicative activity and a common deliberation of solutions. The co-occurrence of disparate paradigms results in ambiguous legitimacy that can impede the successful implementation of local climate change adaptation.

Coping with the Paradox of Strategic Spatial Planning

In their opening article in this issue, Albrechts and Balducci identify critical features of strategic spatial planning. The articles and commentaries that follow their contribution express support, but also doubts, counter-arguments and some rather cynical lessons from the world of practice. My attention, in turn, is drawn to how this identification of strategic spatial planning features should be made. Should it be made through negation, by identifying the aspects of statutory land use regulation that strategic spatial planning should stand against? The discussions on strategic spatial planning in this issue put forth several distinctions suggesting what is and what is not strategic spatial planning, such as: • legal rights vs. spatial quality • formal rigidity vs. informal flexibility • securing land property investments vs. opening the “spectrum of possibilities” • legal certainty vs. “working with uncertainty” • essentialist zoning vs. relational planning One is inclined to agree that strategic spatial planning should be characterized by its focus on spatial quality, informal flexibility, opening spectra of possibilities, working with uncertainty and on a relational approach to urban complexity. Accordingly, the opposite sides of the above distinctions can be seen to characterize statutory planning. Some of the commentaries to Albrechts and Balducci article, however, stress that in strategic spatial planning, it is necessary to acknowledge the statutory planning side of the distinction, too. As van den Broeck observes, there are multiple uses and users of our plans: the courts require legal clarity and certainty to rule on appeals, the investors and land-owners require security in land and real estate value development, the planners themselves require legal consequences to their plans to commit third parties. On the other hand, statutory planning processes, while being rigid, hierarchical and regulative, also provide a law-based guarantee for certain inclusiveness, impartiality and accountability in planning. This assures a procedural “infrastructure” for legitimacy in statutory planning, which is lacking in the informal planning tools and processes that have been introduced in the name of enhancing the strategic character of planning. The possible detachment of strategic spatial planning from the statutory planning system into a parallel “informal system” would pose a serious legitimacy problem. Thus, we may end up in an impossible choice between a legitimate rigidity of statutory planning and an illegitimate flexibility of strategic planning. These observations suggest the necessity of acknowledging the interdependency of the opposite sides of the distinctions listed above. Isn’t it indeed our management of these interdependencies at the heart of strategic spatial planning? Instead of suggesting a two-track approach by detaching strategic spatial planning from statutory planning, I propose a different way of approaching the distinction – leading to a different way of identifying the concept, and indeed the practice, of strategic spatial planning. From the perspective of set theory, distinctions are considered logical paradoxes (Wilden 1980: 183–186). By creating a symmetrical negation (either–or), a distinction also creates a frame of a higher logical order, establishing this negation as a relationship (both–and). A distinction is not only a “figure” separated from its “ground”, it is also the boundary establishing the whole figure-ground relationship on a higher level of abstraction. While a distinction is an act of separation, it is at the same time an act of framing the setting of separation itself.1 To illustrate this, let me use Bateson’s (1987: 188–189) analogy to an empty picture frame that is hung on the wall. Now, the portion of the wallpaper seen inside the picture frame is perceived differently from the surrounding wallpaper. The picture frame instructs the viewer to perceive it as a picture of wallpaper. As a picture of wallpaper, it emerges on a higher level of denotation, where the picture denoting wallpaper both is and is not wallpaper. The picture is paradoxically saying both “I am wallpaper” and “I am not wallpaper, but a picture of it”. A distinction both is and is not what it denotes. By framing reality, distinctions create paradoxes between different logical types. Through making distinctions, we identify ourselves and the objects and issues around us. They are dialectical operations of both separating and framing the separation itself. In identifying strategic spatial planning, we would thus Coping with the Paradox of Strategic Spatial Planning

Defensive routines in land use policy steering in Finnish urban regions

Land use planning practices in different municipalities and urban regions in Finland vary substantially, as do attitudes towards land ownership and land use policy. Consequently, inter-municipal cooperation in strategic land use planning is often weak, despite central government efforts such as the introduction of the PARAS Act in 2007, which exhorts municipalities in the urban regions to consolidate or cooperate. However, governmental steering has been vague on most sensitive and pragmatic land use policy issues such as planning and policy tools to control dispersed development patterns leading to urban sprawl. This article examines the challenges of consistent steering of land use practices by presenting observations from follow-up studies of five Finnish urban regions, all in the first stage of implementing the PARAS Act. The analysis reveals that mixed messages and defensive routines are preventing effective political debate on core issues. These defences are fostered by the vagueness of central government policy. Since these core issues have not been brought up in the legislation, they are now being tackled – or ignored – at the local level in an unpredictable manner.

The paradox of strategic spatial planning: A theoretical outline with a view on Finland

Recently, the emphasis on the strategic dimension of spatial and land use planning has brought along new instruments of “soft” and informal planning. While these instruments may enhance the strategic quality of planning, more attention needs to be paid to how they relate to the existing statutory land use planning instruments. In the regulatory planning systems of continental Europe, the statutory planning instruments manifest non-strategic features, yet they cannot be ignored in strategic spatial planning. Therein lies the paradox of strategic spatial planning. The theoretical argument of the article is developed by drawing on Wildens distinction theory that builds on the notion of logical paradox. With a view on the Finnish planning system, the article explores practical implications by utilizing Schwarzs and Healeys ideas of scenario planning and strategic framing, respectively. In so doing, the article reflects on a few cases of strategic spatial planning in Finnish city-regions, and the Finnish governments aim to develop the strategic character of statutory local master plans.

Interplay of power and learning in planning processes: A dynamic view

We offer a novel conceptualisation of power relations in planning by bringing together Steven Lukes’ and Gregory Bateson’s frames. By studying ‘double-binds’, we can explain both the mechanisms of implicit ‘power over’ and the sources of reflective learning to transcend them and regain ‘power to’. We use the conflict over the Stuttgart railway station to illustrate how the interplay of power and learning suits the analysis of power dynamics in planning processes. In this contentious case, the opposition against the ‘Stuttgart 21’ learnt to frame and resist the large-scale traffic infrastructure and urban renewal project, initiated by the German railway company Deutsche Bahn. The power of the opposition seems to have coincided with the shifts between the three dimensions of power (Lukes), and these shifts become well understood as three cross-cutting levels of learning (Bateson).

The “deliberative bureaucrat”: deliberative democracy and institutional trust in the jurisdiction of the Finnish planner

Abstract This article seeks to elaborate on Forester’s notion of the planner as a “deliberative practitioner”, aiming to add sensitivity to the institutional conditions of planning, focusing especially on Finland. In terms of trust, the concept of deliberative practitioner mostly focuses on interpersonal trust as a planner’s resource in mediating particular interests. Thereby, when applied to the Finnish context, institutional trust may be undermined as a key resource for the Finnish planner’s jurisdiction, justifying his/her proactive role and authority in bringing broader concerns to the planning agenda. This undermining prevents the acknowledgement of important institutional resources that the Finnish planner has in coping with the tensions between communicative ideals and neoliberal realities. A more context-sensitive and institutionally responsive theory of communicative planning is needed to help the planning professionals and other stakeholders conceive the deliberative ideals as supportive for the planners’ institutionally strong agency. Hence, the notion of the “deliberative bureaucrat”. The article seeks to develop an outline for such a theory by drawing upon studies of legal culture, the sociology of professions, deliberative democracy theory and the concept of trust.