European Union narratives in city-regional planning: an attempt to legitimize soft planning scales?
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Date
2016
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AESOP
Abstract
Planning practice today is increasingly dealing with new planning scales that have emerged outside the formalized, statutory planning system. These “soft spaces” (Haughton & Allmendinger, 2007) are based on functional areas rather than administrative entities and cut across municipal, regional and national boundaries if needed. Through their fuzziness, they are able to address the real geographies of challenges and problems, and through their inherent flexibility, they offer an alternative to the rigidity, bureaucracy and inflexibility of the traditional sphere of planning.
However, the democratic legitimacy of soft spaces and soft planning remains contested (Faludi, 2015). Due to the lack of a legal and institutional framework, accountability of politicians as well as inclusive and fair modes of participation in the planning process cannot be ensured. Moreover, the ambiguous relationship between statutory, hard planning and informal, soft planning poses a serious problem if planners end up in an impossible choice between legitimate rigidity and illegitimate flexibility (Mäntysalo, 2013). While statutory planning is based on formal authority and legal rights, informal approaches derive their legitimacy from considerably different sources, typically relying on processes rather than legal acts. This is often manifested as “storytelling”, aiming to produce legitimacy through metaphors, common understanding and persuasion (Hajer, 2006; Healey, 2007; Throgmorton, 1996).
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Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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