ABSTRACT
Traditional spatial planning in Europe has adopted a passive approach that generally aimed at controlling the use of land through zoning system and regulations (Albrechts, 2006b). However, since the 1960s and 1970s, the socio-economic changes, increasing concerns about rapid development, the problems of fragmentation as well as the growing strengths of the environmental and social movements have emphasized the need for a strategic approach to planning. As a consequence, by the end of the 1990s, the formulation of spatial strategies for cities, city-regions and regions became quite fashionable in Europe (Healey et al., 1997; Faludi, 2001; Albrechts et al., 2003; Martinelli, 2005; Healey, 2006a; Healey, 2006b). As remarked by Albrechts (2006b) and Scott (2001), the new spatial planning strategies embraced an agenda that was wider than the traditional regulatory approach to land-use management. In other words, they attempted to create an integrated policy that would more effectively link strategic and local planning:
Strategic spatial planning creates solid, workable long-term perspectives and it creates strategies at different levels, taking into account the power structures – political, economic, gender and cultural – uncertainties and competing values … It is about building new ideas and processes that can carry these structures, content, etc. forward, thus generating ways of understanding, ways of building agreements, and ways of organizing and mobilizing for the purpose of exerting influence in different arenas. Finally, strategic spatial planning, both in the short term and the long term, is focused on framing decisions, actions, projects, results and implementation, and it incorporates monitoring, feedback, adjustment and revision in its efforts to accomplish these aims. (Albrechts, 2006b: 1491)
Nevertheless, the critics underline that the normative conception of strategic spatial planning makes demands that actors may not be able to fulfil because they are not sufficiently reflexive or they are calculating opportunities in order to take action that will serve planners’ interests (Newman, 2008). In other words, instead of seeking ‘transformative’ planning, actors may have more modest or even different ambitions (Healey, 2006a). Therefore, some authors propose giving more attention to the ordinary politics of planning and challenges, opportunities and incentives necessary for collaboration instead of focusing on the ideal norms of strategic spatial planning that are not applied in reality (Lowndes, 2005; Parker, 2007; Newman, 2008).