ABSTRACT
Although participation by the affected stakeholders is obligatory, the highly formalized character of SEA procedures provokes attitudes that are primarily oriented towards compliance with formal rules and much less capable of fostering interaction among actors and mobilizing them in a generative process of strategic thinking about sustainable development. Given this we propose to think differently about SEA, taking it seriously as a framework for better decision-making, rather than as a formal administrative procedure (Partidario 2000). From this perspective, we argue that SEA can learn from the evolution of the European debate on strategic spatial planning (Healey 2007; Albrechts et al. 2003; Salet and Faludi 2000; Wiechmann 2008). The notion of strategic planning has experienced a significant change over its history, from a hierarchical and rational-comprehensive model of structure planning
to a performance model of corporate planning, to a recent redefinition as a particular dimension of spatial planning practices that directs attention to the involvement of actors, to governance innovations and to the mobilization of different types of knowledge. The definitive transformation of this ambiguous, but at the same time powerful notion, is in the wider concept of strategy making, where the emphasis is on strategic thinking, on the process of strategy production and implementation, rather than on the production of formalized documents (defined strategic spatial plans). Strategic planning represents the result of a theoretical elaboration that has paid attention to the argumentative and communicative turn of planning practices (Healey et al. 1997), in which the exchange of different types of knowledge is crucial.
