Spatial planning in cross-border regions: A systems-theoretical perspective

World society

Responses of planning scholars to the perceived problems of spatial planning in the 21st century often revolve around the demise of modernism and its technocratic planning tradition, that is a government-led, science-backed, bureaucratic-procedural planning tradition. The necessary involvement of non-governmental actors, new environmental considerations, and the “networked” character of contemporary society, leads scholars to argue for approaches that tackle “complexity” or “relationality.” We argue that this view is partly inward-looking, seeing the problems of the planning profession from within the planning profession itself with an aim of solving them. Much literature, indeed, after sketching the “transitional” situation of the planning profession, follows on to argue for specific ways forward, for example, associative democracy (Boelens, 2009, 2010), performance-based planning (Hillier, 2008), or collaborative planning (cf. Allmendinger, 2009), a general tendency of the scholarship, even in the few cases dealing explicitly with cross-border spatial planning (e.g. Dabinett, 2006; De Vries, 2008; Knippschild, 2011). The problem, however, is that these approaches fail to conceptualize “the environment” of planning, that is, the societal conditions that make planning (im)possible. So what if we look at planning from the outside in, starting from a theory of society rather than from the experiences within a policy sector in crisis? To this end, we borrow from sociology and political geography, that is, disciplines lacking any straightforward connection to a national field of public policy. To be more precise, we will take our starting point in the thesis of world society (Helmig and Kessler, 2007; Luhmann, 2012; Stichweh, 2000), that is, the notion that societal complexity is no longer—or perhaps has never been—contained by the boundaries of nation-state territory.

According to the thesis of world society, posited by Luhmann (2005) and his contemporary followers (other examples are Albert, 1999; Stichweh, 2007a, 2007b; Thyssen, 2007), the emergence and spread of dissemination media, such as writing, printing, and the electronic media (Luhmann, 2012: 187) have led to the gradual realization of a global reach of communication and, therefore, of a world society. Even though regional differences, for example, in cultural customs and local histories, can always be found, major frames of understanding are shared worldwide. Language differences tend to keep alive the general feeling that society is something national, for example, that there is inherently something Dutch or German, but proponents of world society argue that language differences are only superficial. Once translation occurs, the frameworks of understanding appear to be very similar. Even the idea of a “western society” fails to account for our current situation, because even in China, there is science, economy, politics, and so on following largely the same logics as those in “the west.” Moreover, isolation from world society is virtually non-existent. The notion of “the national” still has a function—one could describe this function as cultural—but it no longer explains our current situation and the problems of contemporary society (Luhmann, 2012: 10, 2013: 289).

The most convincing example is probably the discrepancy between national politics and the global dynamics of the economy. Faced with a global financial crisis, there appear to be no national solutions. Similarly, spatial planning for economic growth only seems to work when the economy is already growing or, at least, when it is backed by state investments. The smoothly planned spaces of the Dutch landscape cannot convince global businesses to settle in the Netherlands when economic variables, such as labor costs, favor other options. The differences between such spheres as politics and the economy indicate what Luhmann has termed the “functional differentiation” of world society (Schack, 2000; Luhmann, 2013: 87). Rather than society being subdivided into nations, we are faced with various global function systems, each operating on the basis of its own logics. Think of the economy, which aligns communication with profit-making, science, which is oriented towards the code of true/false, and politics which—everywhere in the world—aims at collective decision-making and therefore revolves around being in power/not in power. The organization of politics, however, is necessarily restricted by the need to establish boundaries in space, thereby prolonging the popular image of national containers of all things social. But from a systems-theoretical perspective, what we have is a political system unconvincingly trying to constrain and control things in such imaginative containers (cf. Helmig and Kessler, 2007).

Regional differentiation

The way in which the political system differentiated itself on the basis of spatially bounded regions has to be understood as a transformation in society (Kratochwil, 1986; Luhmann, 2013). Rather than the logical outcome of the historical process where tribes, inhabiting specific lands, were replaced by kingdoms, shifting and changing boundaries as a result of imperialism, colonialism and war, and ultimately by nation-states with stable territorial boundaries, the regional differentiation of politics needs to be understood as a result of inherent necessities of organizing the political process. These are, for instance, the need to make collectively binding decisions, which depend also on the construction of legitimacy (King and Thornhill, 2003). For this, one needs to establish a certain threshold of inclusion, that is, not everyone can be part of this “collective.” In addition, where many of these decisions lead to or are aimed at interventions in the physical environment, it becomes even more important to establish boundaries. It is clear that the development of laws, partly coupled to ownership of land and property, supports and facilitates the regional differentiation of politics.

The boundaries of “political regions” then become the stable reference points which enable the build-up of internal complexity within the systems of law and politics (cf. Helmig and Kessler, 2007). In other words, where sovereign spaces have been constructed and a principle of territorial sovereignty to secure the stability of these spaces, the reach of politics, in terms of what themes can be politicized, can be enlarged and the “thickness” of law increased. That is, political decisions can be translated into laws and there are laws covering ever more ground. This process of formalization is often self-fulfilling, in the sense that laws lead to unintended consequences—because, for example, the economy operates according to a different logic and reinterprets law into its own terms—and bylaws may be created to deal with these “side effects.” In any account, past political and legal decisions always play a role in the path-dependent evolution of the political and legal function systems.

The occurrence of the so-called cross-border regions—of which Euroregions are a well-known example—should not lead to the easy conclusion that they represent a further step in this process of regional differentiation of politics (Jacobs and Varró, 2014). In the first place, it is important to stress that differentiation is not a progressive or teleological process. It a systems-theoretical observation of the way society has evolved. There are neither predictions nor any logical endpoints to these processes (Luhmann, 2012). But second, it is of major importance to pin down the political process, that is, the making of collectively binding decisions translated into law, in these cross-border regions in order to see if we are actually dealing with further regional differentiation in politics. As we have shown elsewhere, this is not the case (Jacobs and Varró, 2014). Euroregions make decisions but often they are “declarations of intent”—of more cross-border cooperation, for example—or they pertain to the attribution of European subsidies. In addition, no Euregional decision-making is translated into law binding the inhabitants of Euroregions in some way or another. Border regions, therefore, seldom or never build up the internal complexity that facilitates actual governance, including forms of spatial planning which are backed by a network of (political) organizations and (legal) rules and procedures.

Steering and self-steering

If one accepts the thesis of world society and its functional differentiation, it is necessary to explicate in what way this restricts and enables forms of steering (Schirmer and Hadamek, 2007). Just to remind us, functional differentiation, here, should not be thought of as embodying the containers in which societal conduct can take place but, rather, as modes of communication that embody specific logics individuals and organizations can apply in communication and thought and which, in the process, necessarily evolve. These are logics that are embodied by many organizations and interaction systems (Luhmann, 2012: 227–230) and not monopolized or contained by specific organizations, for example science and the university, or politics and the state. Such an understanding of functional differentiation would be too narrow and instrumental. It is important to understand even function systems as modes of observation, that is, perspectives on the world and ourselves, that are available as a result of (long) co-evolution, and among which we can switch, revealing the world differently from each of these perspectives.

One of the main consequences of functional differentiation, according to Luhmann (1990) and underlined by many others, for example Foucault, is the lack of a coordinating center for society. Whereas earlier societies had known stratification as primary form of differentiation, “power” could be exercised hierarchically, with princes, kings, and emperors as all-encompassing rulers, functional differentiation entails a heterarchic starting point. The common-sense understanding of the political system as “ruler” points to the difference between self-description, or the way politics is described within society, and the way it actually works, as observed from a social systems perspective (Kessler and Helmig, 2007). A good example is our demand of politics to solve economic crises. When the economy, however, is seen to be differentiated from politics, functioning on the basis of its own codes and programs, such control of the economy is illusionary (Brans and Rossbach, 1997; Luhmann, 1990, 2000a). It will be hard to establish the causal links between economic policy, tax changes, budget cuts, and the actual performance of the economy itself. Often, policy will not lead to the intended outcomes. Therefore, we can describe the interdependency as reciprocal observation. Politics observes, on the basis of its own logics, the economy and vice versa. Political decisions (policies and laws) are re-interpreted by economic communication and the behavior of markets is re-interpreted by political communication. The quotation is not linear but involves irritation and irritability (sensibility of the system to what happens in its environment) and resonance (Buchinger, 2007).

Our understanding of politics as the steering center of society is incorrect. Even when the function of politics, including planning, seems to lie in the making of collectively binding decisions, the way in which and to what extent these decisions actually bind collectively remains a matter of empirical observation. And indeed, just as political scientists and the media observe political decision-making and its successes or failures, politics itself observes its own decision-making and the impact thereof (Brans and Rossbach, 1997). However, with the impossibility of any neutral mode of observation, these observations are necessarily guided by politics own codes and programs, and its own orienting forms are used in this process. In this way, observation and understanding of how society responds to political decisions will always be associated with the decision-making actor, for instance, the state. But one understands by now that the idea of the state is invoked here in order to attribute effects of political communication (and decisions) to someone and thus create (legal) accountability (Luhmann, 1990).

From the perspective of systems theory, spatial planning should be considered as a form of steering (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008) firmly rooted in politics and law. Arguably, much of this steering is geared at financial investments either by individuals or businesses—building and buying of property—and, therefore, at the steering of the economy. By means of political decision-making, it attempts to influence economic decision-making. As we have argued above, this entails a translation. First, for any spatial plan to have an impact, it should arouse irritation in the targeted system; in our case, businesses would have to experience a loss of profit as a result of some kind of political decision, and/or they would have to “smell” opportunity for investment. Second, this irritation needs to be conceptualized within the economic system to come to understanding and action. Steering can never happen directly but depends on translation (Brans and Rossbach, 1997). In the end, social systems can only steer themselves (Luhmann, 1997; Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008). Planning policy can be changed by means of political decision-making; businesses can adapt their market strategy. All this depends on mutual irritation.

The planning system

Using the same concept across different vocabularies can be somewhat confusing. To speak of the planning system is to say nothing much without the necessary specification of what one considers to be the system. Usually, speaking of the system falls well in line with common-sense understandings of politics, nation, and state, so that associations are easily made and the use of the term “system” does not require any clarification. In our case, however, the system concept is much more sophisticated and the idea of a “planning system,” therefore, much more problematic. It seems necessary to elaborate on this difference. Where we discuss the planning system, we denote the co-evolution of regionally differentiated politics and law and the multiple, reciprocally oriented organizations involved in the organization of space (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008), where regional differentiation has to a large extent resulted in differences that separate the Dutch from other such planning systems.

However, the use of such a “national” notion of planning system is pragmatic rather than extensive. It is much too simple to speak of a planning system if only to indicate a difference between regions (e.g. nation-states). Organizations involved in spatial planning form the actual object of research. The organizations involved in spatial planning are uniquely equipped to observe each other, thereby forming a highly irritable web of communications, with decisions in the one system easily leading to decisions in the other. Because of the apparent entanglements, an assemblage perspective would be tempted to speak of one system (one assemblage). However, this is problematic from the perspective of systems theory, because the organizations involved are operationally closed (cf. Seidl, 2005). The common achievements, in terms of actual impacts in the organization of space, that are the result of such webs of organizations’ operations, serve as a common reference and orientation point for spatial planning, so, when useful, one can refer to the planning system as doing all this work. Obviously, this entails an actor-based perspective that cannot be upheld in systems-theoretical analysis. Therefore, we must understand the planning system as a constellation of organizations that incorporates the necessary perspectives, where an organization, moreover, should be understood as a communicational process rather than an actor (Luhmann, 2000b; Seidl, 2005). The set of organizations involved in the planning system changes continuously.

There is always a difference between the description a system maintains of itself and the actual autopoiesis of that system (Masuch, 1986), that is, the operations of the system as observed from a second-order, systems-theoretical perspective, in which these operations can only be communication (Luhmann, 1995). In the case of the planning system, which, as explained above, is not really a system but a constellation of structurally coupled organizations, a description of the planning system can still be maintained, functioning as the basis for structural coupling (see Luhmann, 2013: 108). The different organizations, that each carries its own functional role, orient themselves by means of such self-descriptions, that is, a general self-description for the planning system and a more specific self-description for the individual organization. Self-descriptions or images of self are internally produced, for example, to guide interactions with clients, competitors, and government, in the case of a business organization, and they do not necessarily reflect the features of its autopoiesis. To quote Van Assche et al. (2011),

[t]he distance between image and reality can cause problems, but, just like in the case of the system/environment boundary, distance creates flexibility (Bakken and Hernes, 2003; Seidl, 2005). There is only one autopoiesis in a system, but the fact that this is partly beyond the grasp of its own interpretive machinery allows for a flexible construction of images of self. This, in turn, opens the door to a wider variety of developmental pathways (as with Greif, 2007; North, 2005; Ostrom, 2005). An organisation can see itself as focused on scientific nature conservation, while in practice it has evolved in such a way that most decisions revolve around economic and political lobbying, or law enforcement or land management. This opens up more pathways than either a law enforcement organisation or a scientific conservation organisation would face.

Another dimension of self-description—and organizations’ front stage appearance (Fuchs, 2001a)—is obviously a point of orientation for other observers. Science offers a familiar example, where both self-description and other-description, most notably common-sense understandings of science, point to the idea of objective knowledge. In our case, we are concerned with the self-description of spatial planning, which is less straightforward. That is to say, self-description and common-sense understanding of science appear relatively stable over a longer period of time, whereas planning emerged more recently and has development pathways that are different across the political regions of the world. In comparison to science, spatial planning has experienced a turbulent evolution with changing self-understandings and role attribution within the wider political context. As touched upon in the introduction, planning in the Western world has never solely been a sector of public policy. One notices the interconnections between, on the one hand, planning policy and law and, on the other hand, planning education and scholarship (Davoudi and Pendlebury, 2010). The locus, especially of the latter two, is also variable. For instance, the Dutch government employs a planning knowledge center, that is, a “scientific” council for the support of spatial policy-making. Much scholarship also originates here and overlaps with research done in universities. The self-description of spatial planning, as a result, greatly varies over time, where the policy process and its impact are almost immediately scrutinized by scholars, and then accompanied by new self-descriptions or, often, guidelines of what planning should and should not be about.

Despite the turbulent evolution of planning’s self-description, it should be emphasized that not all organizations are transformed when their semantics change. Dutch and all other planning systems bear the legacies of their own institutional history (cf. Nadin and Stead, 2008). Indeed, “hidden cores” will always remain there to safeguard at least the legitimacy of planning (cf. Luhmann, 2012: 217). Many self-understandings no longer need to be repeated in communication but function as assumptions that participants expect each other to share. Some of these assumptions are probably not even actively considered by participants and, therefore, function more like presumptions, that is, they are generally taken for granted. One may notice the “buffered” character of the system, which enables flexibility in the margins and rigidity in the core (Luhmann, 2012: 226). The front-stage performance of the planning system and its organization is easily adapted, while the need for planning as such is seldom discussed. This applies to all organizations that are involved in planning; otherwise, their involvement would become problematic.

Organization as system

Besides the continuous operation and importance of the legal (formal) planning “actors,” for example, planning departments at various administrative levels, particular cases or planning projects involve project organizations, committees, working groups and so forth. Systems theory allows for a conceptualization of all these phenomena as “organization,” as it considers them as processes of communication, rather than as actors. Organizations thus consist of communication and they can only unfold themselves through communication and thus by taking time (Luhmann, 1995). An organization does not need to exist formally, for example by having statutes, in order to make a difference. The characteristics that mark organizations, as understood in systems theory, are that they (1) are marked by and orient themselves through decisions, (2) integrate various logics or societal perspectives (owing to the functional differentiation of society), and (3) establish membership—some actors are included, others are left out (Andersen, 2003). All points very much relate to the functional differentiation of society. For example, expropriation and investment issues, tightly coupled to agreements that are legally valid, involve the economic function system. Decisions made in the planning process, at the same time, are necessary to provide the synthesizing moments that can be checked and held against the light of law and legal procedure. They, therefore, serve to immediately “legalize” (make structural couplings with the legal system) the planning process. Much is done in order to guarantee that the outcome of the planning process is legally sound, including agreements among actors. The role attribution of actors in planning processes follows an exact legal logic. For example, public participation needs to be organized and a distinction in roles is established between decision-makers and public participants, where both can be held legally accountable with reference to these roles.

The systems-theoretical concept of organization entails the inversion of the common-sense understanding that sees people making up an organization. When organizations are conceptualized as consisting of communication, different persons may come to be included according to constructions of roles occurring in the process of communication (Luhmann, 1995). When this organization “system” consists only of its own communications, “people” fall outside the system or, in other words, are part of the environment of the system. In the process of its communicative operations, the system selectively observes those people in their very specific roles. One can say that communication constructs its participants, human beings, which are observed by the systems as addresses of communication. The apparent a-humanism of such an organization (and system) concept has been criticized as being cold, insensitive to “agency,” or even technocratic. Arguably, however, systems theory is especially fit to understand the role of human beings, as it does not pretend to know what they are, and resists the temptation of building grand social or theoretical designs on implicit notions of the human being (cf. Albert, 1999: 241; Fuchs, 2001b).

The life of organizations is marked by decisions (Luhmann, 1995; Seidl, 2005) which form, as it were, an evolutionary path. An organization can emerge spontaneously (bottom-up) or can be the result of a political decision (top-down). In any case, when there are sufficient degrees of self-determination, its communication can become self-referential. Decisions made within that organization then come to refer to earlier decisions in that organization (Seidl, 2005). In the course of the organization’s communicative operations, a need for decision arises because it requires a clear point of reference for itself as well as for other systems. One can therefore regard decisions as the moments where foregoing communications condense or are, as it were, synthesized (cf. Andersen, 2003). This reduction of complexity marks the progress of the organization, and whatever it stands for but, at the same time, sacrifices many options that had existed before the moment of decision. The results of decisions, therefore, are never ideal. An organization observes the world after the decision, but only from its own perspective, and arrives yet at another moment of decision which can be understood as a re-interpretation of earlier decision(s) in the face of changing circumstances (Seidl, 2005).

Taking the sequential and self-referential nature of organizations as a point of departure, it is also possible to re-interpret the notion of path-dependency from a systems-theoretical point of view (Van Assche et al., 2011). Decisions made by organizations depend on earlier decisions, not in the sense of being determined by them, but in the sense of the necessity of re-interpreting them. This is especially so because decisions usually have a formal dimension—they can be documented for reasons of legal validity. Institutionalization, including formalization, offers ways for organizations to increase their self-referentiality, usually at the cost of flexibility. But it means that it becomes easier for organizations to “cooperate” with each other, because expectations are being stabilized in this process. It also means that it will become harder for an organization to change (self-transform, e.g. Seidl, 2005). Given that societal circumstances do not radically alter very frequently, a planning system, understood as a constellation of organizations that observe each other and respond to each other in terms of their decision-making, may emerge with a high degree of institutionalization. Path-dependency can surface as rigidity (cf. Van Assche et al., 2011) when two or more of such systems are confronted to tackle the same problem.

Polyphony in organization

Society’s functional systems, for example the economy, science, politics, and so on, do not make decisions. They are there to offer basic perspectives for observing and interpreting the world; looking at the world economically is not the same as looking at in terms of love (Fuchs, 2001a; Luhmann, 2012). The functional perspectives, however, need to be embodied or acquire form in interaction systems—based on co-presence of humans—or in organizations (Luhmann, 1995, 2012). For this reason, organizations can be considered as social systems in their own right and, on the other hand, also embody the manifestation of function-systemic communication, thereby reproducing the functional differentiation of society (Andersen, 2003). Whenever an organization communicates economically, based on the code of payment/no payment, and bases a decision on it, both the organization itself and the economic function system are reproduced (Albert, 1999: 252; Luhmann, 1994).

Furthermore, organizations always have to deal with various functional perspectives. A planning project, for instance, involves the establishment of who has authority over what and who can make what decision, the legal validity of the project, its internal budget administration as well as economic considerations as to how to seduce certain actors to invest, and perhaps even some scientific knowledge informing the planning project of what could be outcomes of certain scenarios. The organization, in this short sequence, goes through a number of function systems: politics, law, the economy, and science. Niels Andersen (2003) has termed this phenomenon “polyphony,” that is, speaking with many voices. A typical planning project is thus not only political. It involves various dimensions, which are all important to its success. Planning departments in universities, to name an analogous example, are not only scientific, they are certainly also economical, as they involve research budgets, and political, as far as funding for research may be the result of political decisions. Here, again, decisions come to the fore as the key moments shaping the autopoiesis of organizations. Whereas organizations are almost always polyphonic, and thus have a function of integrating society’s various functional perspectives, it is their decisions that count as “synthesizing” moments.

One can consider contemporary planning episodes as being marked by the participation of a diversity of actors (Albrechts, 2001; Boelens, 2010) as compared to the technocratic planning tradition of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the “many voices” of polyphony refer not to actors but to the involvement of various rationalities connected to the functional systems of society (Andersen, 2003). It may be the case that particular individuals are included in a planning project because they are seen to represent the government, business, or “the public,” but the success of the project, in this case, does not merely depend on the agreement among the participants. Inclusion of such “representatives” may lead to successes for another reason, namely the capacity of different participants to bring in different logics that should be taken into account by the planning project. For instance, entrepreneurs may bring economic considerations into planning decisions, government officials may bring considerations of political power into planning decisions, and citizens may highlight certain legal consequences, that is, nuisance, issues of property, and so on, that become incorporated in planning decisions.

Path-dependence and interdependence

Let us look in more detail at the processes of institutionalization in the planning system. Each planning system carries along its own legacy in terms of formal and informal institutions that it has acquired in the course of its evolution, which means that in dealing with present challenges, it is restricted by path-dependency, defined as “rigidity in the development of an organisation, institution or society, that can be ascribed to legacies from the past” (Van Assche et al., 2011). Such types of rigidity can emerge when, for a longer time, organizations that make up the planning “system” mutually observe one another and adapt their identities and operations to each other. A stabilization of roles and expectations can take place. When, for instance, regional-level planning agencies are used to do their work on the basis of spatial schemes issued every 10 years by the central government, it may build on this regularity and formalize its operations as long as it lasts. In addition, laws may play a role in formalizing and rigidifying the process. To understand well the way in which spatial planning in one country differs from another, it does not suffice to describe the difference between these two planning systems, in an essentialist way (cf. Fuchs, 2001a). These are just the temporary outcomes of the highly complex dynamic of a web of organizations observing each other. One can possibly describe the path dependency at the level of national planning systems (e.g. Nadin and Stead, 2008), but we should look at “interdependence” at the level of the organizations. A planning project, as the most concrete and, at the same time, temporary form of organization in planning, floats, as it were, on this bed of organizations, that is, communicative operations, and will be very dependent on the ways things are done among those (Luhmann, 2012):

New institutions, e.g. new forms of environmental governance, can only take hold if they can be embedded in the web of interacting social systems that make up society, if they can be grasped by all actors in the present state of the system, and if they allow function systems, legitimate organisations and accepted actors to reproduce autopoietically. (Van Assche et al., 2011)

Social systems, such as planning organizations, are the product of past encounters with their environments (Luhmann, 1995; 2000a), and their path-dependencies resulting from this process can exist at the level of structures, elements, and procedures:

They can reflect adaptations to organisations and/or function systems. For example, an organisation can reflect former adaptations to competing organisations, but also to changes in the legal environment, in its decision-structures, its semantics (elements), its decision-style and procedures (procedure) (Seidl, 2005). (Van Assche et al., 2011)

One could call this a tradition of planning, but this seems too much focused on planning practitioners, in the light of the crucial wider embeddedness of planning in society (cf. Buchinger, 2007). So, rather, one could speak of a unique observational perspective a system has on its environment, that is, what it observes as an object for spatial planning (and what it does not), how it defines this as what kind of problem, and to what kind of solutions it is geared to look. As such, one expects differences across countries and each planning system will have its own blind spots. It is selective in what it deals with as being planning. This path-dependent selectivity takes place at the system boundary.

In countries where the evolution of the planning system provides institutional room for strategic spatial plans, one observes a rich legacy of spatial concepts (semantics) (Kooij et al., 2014; Zonneveld, 2010), including both general, for example campus, green heart, buffer, and so on, and specific concepts, for example Randstad, South Limburg, province, region, and so on. One applies specific abstractions (system-specific selectivity) of a delimited space in order to provide a guiding or integrating notion for specific interventions or projects. This may work successfully when the spatial concepts being deployed coincide with territorial boundaries, because one stays within a constellation of organizations that have coevolved. In planning, one will often find that spatial boundaries and the areas they delimit play a key role in providing the common reference point to the various organizations involved (cf. Luhmann, 2012: 87). It does not mean that all organizations deal with these spaces in the same way, but it does mean that they all deal with the same space. And on the basis of that, and as a result of co-evolution, they can complement each other in terms of what aspects they tackle and what roles they play.

In the organizational process, that is, an organization going through the various functional logics and internal decision-making process, the mix of structures, elements (semantics), and procedures will appear to be highly dependent upon the societal context, most notably the political and legal context (cf. Knippschild, 2011). Making successful use, for example, of the campus concept as an element in regional planning depends on the presence of a political discourse embracing such concepts as part of a search for economic innovation (see Kooij et al., 2014), because in that case, the political discourse drives the making and changing of laws and policies towards a direction favorable for the use of the campus concept, so that these come to stand “on planning’s side.” Even though world society is real, planning finds itself still restrained by a societal (politico-legal) context that is quite national (cf. De Vries, 2008). Planning organizations respecting existing territorial boundaries and doing a good job of integrating their contemporary (national) politico-legal contexts into their decision-making surely stand a bigger chance of being successful, that is, making a difference in terms of a transformation of the organization of space.

Integration of planning systems

As argued above, regional differentiation has resulted in differences that separate planning systems in different countries from each other. They are used to observing existing (national) territorial divisions and are embedded in wider societal contexts that make their operations possible. Spatial design and strategic spatial planning can be effective precisely because of such embeddings (see Buchinger, 2007). The result can be that the spatial organization of an existing territory, for example a national territory, becomes oriented upon itself, while disregarding the situation across the border (Eker and van Houtum, 2013). The most notable example concerns infrastructure; the network of roads and railways often has a very national orientation. Partly this is due to planning, partly also because of a history in which borders had known variable degrees of openness, where cross-border movement was sometimes restricted. At present, however, one notices an increased sensitivity for the peripherality problems of border areas, especially within the EU, where borders can be crossed freely. Looking at the map, one realizes the potential (Peyrony and Denert, 2012) of better integration of the spatial organization across the border, perhaps to invert the peripheral nature of the area. Common efforts to achieve better integration, however, depend on the integration (Nadin and Stead, 2008) of (at least) two different, and differently embedded, planning systems.

From the perspective of separate evolutionary paths of the planning systems involved, with resulting differences between structures, elements, and procedures, an encounter between different planning systems is expected to proceed on the basis of fundamental misunderstanding. That is, spatial planning cooperation takes place with a common object—cross-border space—but that object may be understood differently and, at the least, may be dealt with in a different way by each system. It is already historically unique that a development potential is observed from both sides of the border, but when it occurs, this may signal an opportunity for cooperation. Cooperation also has a chance because the self-understanding of planning concerns its task of steering the organization of space. It does not have the more sophisticated image of itself that, for example, a sociology of planning would have, which locates planning within its wider societal context, illuminating its conditions of possibility. A narrow self-understanding seems to make it possible that one teams up with colleagues across the border and exchanges the traditional planning territory for a new, cross-border one.

The problem of sketching alternative boundaries, for example to arrive at a binational planning territory, is the lack of embeddedness of these boundaries in a political and legal context (cf. Prokkola, 2011). Arguably, organizing a cooperation process that involves representatives of relevant (local and regional) governments who arrive at a consensus about more cross-border planning will bring about some political embeddedness, but the legal embeddedness is still missing—what is also referred to as actors’ institutional capacity (Knippschild, 2011)—as is the support or involvement of citizens who can identify with the new entity (Kramsch, 2008; Peyrony and Denert, 2012). The existence of Euroregions, in the case of the internal borders of the EU, certainly comes in handy as it supplies a common reference point and one does not need additional region constructs before discussing specific development potentials. They even suggest increased feasibility for common planning efforts, because they represent a certain degree of cross-border institutionalization (cf. Perkmann, 2007). However, also Euroregions have failed both in respect of providing legal embedding and involving citizens (Knippenberg, 2004; Kramsch, 2008). Planning then becomes a free-floating exercise which, by doing its design on the basis of non-embedded boundaries, risks isolation and, eventually, impact/implementation problems.

Could integration be realized by means of a higher authority? A quite recent discussion has been about planning discourse at EU level influencing national planning systems or contributing to integration of national planning systems (Dabinett, 2006; Dühr et al., 2010; Nadin and Stead, 2008; Waterhout, 2007). Obviously, one can still continue this discussion in the sense of a policy goal. However, empirical analysis does not show far-reaching or lasting integration. Now and again, one can see co-occurrence of semantics across planning systems, for example, when one adopts concepts originating in the European planning discourse, such as “polycentricity” (Davoudi, 2003). And also, legislation in other areas, for example, nature conservation and/or development, has prompted planning systems to consider the European but all this is a long way from integration and, in a systems-theoretical sense, merging of planning systems at the level of their organizations’ structures, elements, and procedures, which remain closely tight to national political and legal factors. Even the regional policies of the EU are more about funding than about law-making for Europe’s rural areas. One can expect, therefore, and this has happened, that actors will capitalize on those funds but, as much as possible, for their own purposes. So as long as the EU is not accepted as a super or federal state, there will always remain a possibility of funding cooperation initiatives but no means of fueling integration of the politico-legal context.

Finally, it seems that what is needed, from a systems-theoretical perspective, is the self-transformation—because transformation in social systems can only be self-transformation—of planning systems. For organizations, and members, operating with the self-understanding of spatial planning as “steerer” of the organization of space, there will be a possibility that misunderstanding or a different use of spatial concepts will lead to irritations that may cause the other to self-transform. However, local organizations, such as a cross-border planning committee or a development project, always find themselves split between arousal from innovative ways of seeing, brought along by cross-border partnerships, and its societal embeddedness with structures, elements, and procedures that provide a (relatively) stable set of expectations and routines. Therefore, self-transformation with lasting impact on the degree of integration between two or more planning systems is very improbable. Self-transformation of organizations towards a cross-border spatial planning largely occurs at the cost of becoming more isolated and having less impact, while, requiring more and more special (European) funding.