Abstract
Everybody ambitious enough to theorize spatial planning makes an effort to explain what planners are doing, which features distinguish ‘a plan’, what the goals and instruments of planning are, and how planning affects our lives. Such explanations sometimes focus on the institutional settings (e.g. formal v. informal planning), the spatial level (e.g. local v. regional planning), or the strategies of planners to make their plans work (e.g. regulatory v. collaborative planning). Always, however, a theoretical approach to planning is looking for the driver behind planning. Many drivers have already been identified: the need to deal with uncertainty and complexity, the necessity to internalize social cost and coordinate individual land uses, the hope to include the general public and marginalized groups and individuals into the planning process, the wish to foster economic progress, sustainable development, the carbon-free society, and many others. Theorists who find their own explanations not quite adequate occasionally add a versatile ingredient to their explanations: culture. The power of culture is astonishing. Culture explains why women have less access to spatial opportunities, although legislators and policymakers accept gender equality as a fundamental policy idea. Culture explains why creating new jobs is a dominant planning goal, although statutory planning law emphasizes sustainability and environmental preservation. Culture explains why backroom negotiations, and not a formal planning process, determine the fate of proposed shopping malls, high-end residences, and infrastructure facilities. As an ill-defined and not really explicated element, culture in planning theory is just a piece of verbal whitewash, a plastic word. Since planners from different countries are keen, and sometimes compelled, to learn from each other, a theory of planning cultures would be very desirable and timely. This theory would have to help planners understand what culture explains, and how planners can benefit from cultural awareness.
The collection of chapters on planning cultures in Europe is the result of a research cooperation with partners from five European countries, funded by the European Union, and an international symposium at the HafenCity University Hamburg. The book starts with a preface that defines planning culture with the (specific or broader) cultural context of planning: planning culture, the editors Joerg Knieling and Frank Othengrafen assert, describes ‘the specific “cultural contexts” in which planning is embedded and operates’ (p. xxiv). Applied to European planning systems and the European integration process, planning culture refers to ‘the different planning systems and traditions, institutional arrangements of spatial development and the broader cultural context of spatial planning and development’ (p. xxiv). Circular definitions (culture = cultural context) express helplessness, but they can also be useful in the face of vagueness and ambiguity. What do the contributors to the book on planning cultures in Europe think defines culture? Implicitly, the contributors agree to one aspect: culture has nothing to do with theatres, concert halls, and museums! Hans Gullestrup (Chapter 1) thinks that culture ‘provides security and gives us a feeling of belonging’ (p. 4). Dietrich Fürst (Chapter 2) sees culture in planning as ‘a process of give-and-take which requires an attentive sensitivity to the sentiments of others’ (p. 33). Joerg Knieling and Frank Othengrafen (Chapter 3) develop a quotation-mark-approach to planning cultures. They consider an approach that
follows the aim to consider and decode cultural phenomena concerning planning not only on the visible surface but also on a ‘hidden’ level. By introducing the (analytical) dimensions of (1) ‘planning artifacts’, (2) ‘planning environment’, and (3) ‘societal environment’ [this approach] allows the systematic and comprehensive comparison of planning cultures (p. 58).
I am suspicious, as a reviewer as well as an avid reader of planning literature, of conclusions that wrap quotations marks around their keywords (see also p. 304). Are the keywords meant ironically? Or as a self-quotation? Or do the authors wish to add emphasis? Moreover, it remains unclear why any of the three definitions pertains to culture. The politics of belonging (Gullestrup), the listening actively to what others have to say (Fürst), or the awareness of hidden agendas (Knieling and Othengrafen) could be very well absorbed by a number of planning theories that do not emphasize – or resort to – culture. One obvious weakness of the three examples is the hugely limited view of planning. Fürst, Knieling, and Othengrafen focus on comprehensive regional planning, which is fairly insignificant to most landowners and other stakeholders on the ground. In Germany and other countries, comprehensive regional planning is the activity of a planning elite, which is small in number and has little impact on spatial practices. Certainly, it would have been more interesting to look at legally binding land use planning. It would then have been impossible to distinguish the Germanic tradition of a comprehensive integrated approach from the British tradition of land use management (pp. 46–47).The planning systems in the UK and Germany have common roots, as Sir Raymond Unwin illustrates with many examples in his Town Planning in Practice (1909). The most important of these common roots is the close attention paid by planners to land ownership and spatial development. Moreover, human rights law has thoroughly unified planning systems in Europe. As the European Court of Human Rights has often repeated in its extensive case law, planning in most European countries interferes with the right to private property. Each planning system must accommodate the principle of fair balance, first developed in Sporrong and Lönnroth v. Sweden (1982). With regard to this background, the editors’ vague assertion of a ‘hidden’ level neglects the fact that European planning systems have much more in common than is frequently acknowledged.
The theoretical chapters are followed by country case studies. Friedhelm Fischer (Chapter 4), examining the ‘twilight zones of clichés’ (p. 65), presents a thrilling analysis of ‘how German is it?’ and planning history. His chapter draws from a rich – and startling – treasure of examples of values and ideas relating to spatial developments in Germany. Certainly, it is worth buying the book for Fischer’s insightful analysis. Jens S Dangschaft and Alexander Hamedinger (Chapter 5) examine planning culture in Austria and the tensions between the grounded values of Red Vienna (Rotes Wien) and opportunistic planning approaches today. Planning that once had been grounded in socialist values eventually became a toy for strategic planners more interested in profits than values. Visualizing spatial policies in Europe, Stefanie Dühr (Chapter 6) questions planning maps as ‘value-free and unbiased representations of reality’ (p. 115). Her keen observation of ‘policy text and policy map … increasingly drifting apart’ (p. 133) should alert planners everywhere to the pitfalls of communication (even if it has little to do with culture). Chapters 7 to 12 deal with planning culture in Lithuania, Russia, Romania, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Susanne Prehl and Gül Tuçaltan (Chapter 12) present a delightful study on urban transformation in Istanbul. The gecekondu (a dwelling built in one night) as a response to the dire housing scarcity in the 1950s now is increasingly replaced by formal housing projects. The transformation replaces the ‘purpose value of gecekondu (as a shelter) by the exchange value (as a commodity)’ (pp. 225–226). Prehl and Tuçaltan, by describing the negotiation of values in Istanbul, capture quite well why culture is important to planning. Culture helps establish meaning and identity. A family dwelling in a gecekondu defines the value of their home differently than how a real-estate developer does. The difference is not like slight variations of economic value that the buyer and seller assign to a good (without these variations, no trade is possible). Rather, the family and the developer have entirely different kind of values in mind (a situation that Adam Smith, inaugurating modern economics, called the paradox of values). Use value, exchange value, territorial value, or environmental value are overlapping, yet distinct sets of value. Depending on which set of value a planner uses to determine the value of a proposed plan, she will achieve startlingly dissimilar results. Anthropologists, like Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, contend that in the face of polyrationality no single right answer exists. A planner who, while doing the analysis and design for her plan, neglects the diversity of values and rationalities, is likely to fail.
The accounts of ‘Europeanization’ of planning culture (Chapter 13), INTERREG (Chapter 14), or territorial cohesion (Chapter 15) focus on EU policies and put forward a rather managerial view of planning culture. Dominic Stead and Vincent Nadin (Chapter 16) assert that ‘spatial planning systems are embedded in wider models of society, and that the notion of planning cultures sits between the two’ (p. 284). Based upon typologies of the welfare state, they propose various country clusters and assign labels to each cluster. Cultures are not merely labels, however, and to call a planning system Anglo-Saxon or Nordic explains very little about the quotidian practices of planning. Moreover, the decision to adopt a certain welfare state model does not explain the decision to adopt a certain planning systems. Presumably, both decisions reflect upon the preference for public policy that, for want of other words, we call (political) culture. Stead and Nadin still make an important observation. Planning culture is about to win the first prize in a competition for planners’ favourite excuses. Anybody can raise the objection that a plan does not sit well with planning culture (other favourite excuses deplore social disparity, the loss of jobs, or climate change). Planners often ignore that their choices are the consequence of earlier decisions and will have consequences for situations that are neither properly anticipated nor deliberated in the planning process. Planners never operate in vacant spaces (even if they start with a fresh GIS spreadsheet or do not show the present uses on their planning maps). Many of the existing constraints or opportunities may seem, from a certain angle and in a certain light, as if the planners ‘are embedded in wider models of society’ or engulfed by planning culture. These circumstances should be addressed in detail, however, not swept under the rug of (planning) culture.