Abstract
Encountering cities as complex systems has been pictured as both an intellectual challenge and an urge to reconceptualise planning practices accordingly. Statutory planning in Finland, like in many other European countries, is built on the principles of hierarchical three-level zoning and area reservation codes. The zoning system reflects two historical tasks: the industrialising society’s need to separate uses and the post-war desire for hierarchical administrative structures. Both these demands are rapidly losing their importance. The article focuses on current urban planning practices and planning rules, discussing their limitations to cope with urban complexity and self-organised dynamics, and aiming to develop new rules that could potentially turn complexity into an asset. Evolving digital technologies provide completely new opportunities for developing urban planning into a more transparent and interactive tool. In this framework, we set out to study the development potentials of planning rules in Finland, where the drafting of a new Land Use and Building Act is currently underway calling for a reassessment of the operative role of the planning system.
Introduction
In the age of information and rapid urbanisation, land use planning is forced to redefine its role and find new approaches to guide transformation processes. Polarisation to the regulative intentions of the welfare state on the one hand and neoliberal laissez-faire policy on the other has lost much of its relevance. Instead, the task of urban planning has increasingly turned to nurturing the economic vitality and regenerative capacity of cities, a major challenge being to internalise and harness the externalities of multiple self-organising processes. While the underlying rationalities of planning, questions of legitimacy and power are recurring topics of political planning debates, and planners continue to deal with decades-old themes (e.g. equality, democracy, efficiency), new conceptualisations as well as reconceptualisations of old theories have become matters of urgency (cf. Batty and Marshall, 2009).
The aim of this article is to discuss the potentials of urban planning and planning rules to turn complexity and self-organised actor dynamics into an asset. The need for a re-assessment of the operative role of the planning system has become acute in Finland, where the drafting of a new Land Use and Building Act is currently underway. For decades, the Finnish debate has revolved around the alleged rigidity of the planning system, which is deemed inefficient to respond to development impulses in a timely manner. While claims for the simplification and relaxation of regulations have been raised (e.g. Kurunmäki and Lehtovuori, 2013), it has become clear that not only the underlying rationalities of planning but also the idea of flexibility would require a critical inquiry and a thorough cross-examination with the notions of bottom-up dynamics. Hence, in more specific terms, the Finnish land use planning system currently lacks the necessary capacity to guide emergent and non-linear urban dynamics. For instance, it does not offer municipalities adequate support when they tackle current challenges using various adaptation mechanisms. Recent research on regional development, however, suggests a redirecting of the strategic foci from controlling the transformation comprehensively to supporting communities to find their own unique ways to adapt to inevitable changes. This lack of flexibility is largely due to the tradition of zoning and hierarchical top-down practices.
Taking the Finnish planning system as a case, we set out to observe the knowledge base and novel practices required to govern land use in the future. The aim is to justify and reinterpret the rationalities of planning practice, building on the emerging scientific knowledge of cities and governance as complex systems. Complexity sciences and resilience theories have proved a powerful theoretical base for rethinking spatial processes and redirecting planning practices accordingly. The opening question for the inquiry concerns how rules and norms could be used to frame the development in a flexible manner. The arguments for flexibility may, however, prove over-simplistic and therefore misleading, raising the need to reframe flexibility in the context of actor dynamics. The overall research questions can be formulated as follows: How could the current planning legislation be reformed in order to better identify, support and evaluate self-organisation? How to strike a balance between stability and constant change? The study draws on and elaborates the results of the recent research project entitled ‘Renewal of Plan Regulations and Plan Symbols (KAMMI)’, conducted in Tampere University (formerly TUT) and WSP Finland Ltd, funded by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment (Jama et al., 2018). The aim of the project was to develop new regulations and a normative framework for an ‘enabling planning system’, that would help to turn the Finnish Land Use and Building Act into a more adaptive and strategic legislative tool. The project consisted of a critical study of the hierarchical planning system and its underlying concepts, and resulted in suggesting more transparent regulations, application of incentives and a proposal for a new land use guidance system.
We begin with a brief history of the Finnish zoning system, identifying transient processes in planning and policy-making, justifying the need for a new system of governance. After outlining the framework from complexity studies, we discuss the weaknesses of the conventional plan-led approach. Then we introduce the concept of robust rules and accordingly develop a proposal for a new planning system and planning regulations. We conclude by reflecting on the proposal to the questions and discuss how the new system could improve overall spatial planning. In spite of the national context of the study, we believe that the results may be applicable to a certain degree also in other European planning systems.
From the ‘traditional’ zoning system towards post-zoning era
The Finnish zoning system: State-of-the art
The foundation for the Finnish zoning system dates back to the 1920s and the drafting of the Town Planning Act (enacted 1931). The very essence of the Act was in engendering a planning system where a site is reserved for one particular function to the exclusion of all other functions. In other words, all activities that are not explicitly allowed in a local detailed plan are prohibited. Promoting the zoning of private land, the Town Planning Act was intended to enact the reorganisation of property rights for the common good in support of urban growth. The Act, however, failed to prevent the development of new unplanned and unstructured settlements even in areas unsuitable or undesirable for habitation (HE 91/1954) partially due to already outdated conceptions of a city as a strictly limited municipal unit (Nupponen, 2000: 79, 97–98).
The second reform, The Building Act (1958) was intended to curb unplanned out-of-town development. By creating a three-level zoning system (regional plan–local master plan–local detailed plan), the Act revealed the post-war urge for hierarchic administrative structures, supported by strategic theories of warfare (Pakarinen, 2002: 7). The third reform of the law, the current Land Use and Building Act (1999) emphasised a more open and interactive zoning process in which governmental control is partially replaced by stakeholder surveillance, thus echoing a communicative turn in planning (Taylor, 1998) and resonating with the liberal tendencies of the era. Like the earlier laws, the Land Use and Building Act was also justified by the densification of urban settlements (HE 101/1998). Nevertheless, the three-level planning hierarchy and zoning regulations remained effectively untouched in the Act.
The Land Use and Building Act, while emphasising participation and sustainable development, reflects the themes of the standard narrative of planning (Healey, 2005; Mäntysalo et al., 2013; Taylor, 1998). Statutory planning rests on the values of a strong welfare state and democratic decision-making. However, these concepts have been recently if not questioned, then at least reassessed and reframed. The reorganisation of both territorial relations and governance reflects the shift to flexible and dynamically evolving networks, refuting assumptions of rigid hierarchical relations, central control mechanisms and state of equilibrium. Underlying the new narrative is the notion of a strong civil society taking over the role of the welfare state in the provision of social well-being with the help of digitalisation (cf. Uusiutumiskykyinen ja mahdollistava Suomi, 2015).
Zoning and post-zoning
The current policy-making reflects the narrative of urbanisation, the geopolitical growth of cities and the diminishing role of nation-states. Picturing city-regions as autonomous economic and political agencies (Moisio, 2018) also implies a pivotal role for them in the enactment of sustainability policies (Acuto et al., 2018). Sustainability themes like resilience, resource-efficiency and low-carbon economic transition are increasingly presented as urban questions, even though their operationalisation in planning practices is still underway (Lehtovuori et al., 2017). In essence, zoning is a mechanism created to prevent emerging (spatial) conflicts in the industrialising society (Serkin and Macey, 2013: 307), and it does not help municipalities to deal with the above-mentioned urban challenges.
State-of-the-art zoning practices based on the separation of uses in order to prevent negative externalities are considered inefficient in guiding unpredictably emergent positive dynamics arising from actors’ interactions, altered consumption and production modes or accumulated serendipitous outcomes (Marshall, 2009; Rantanen and Joutsiniemi, 2016; Wilkinson, 2012). The current regulations drawing on the blueprint tradition represent areas reserved for specific activities in static end-states simplified to spatial objects and patches (Rantanen and Joutsiniemi, 2016). As Serkin and Macey (2013: 306) point out, ‘zoning persists and remains faithful to its original goal: separating incompatible uses of land’.
The implications for the reform of the planning system would entail greater responsibility and a more powerful mandate for citizens, civic actors, NGOs and firms. Together these trajectories clearly speak for a more flexible post-zoning planning system, which should make it possible to capture emergence without reducing significant information on real-world complexity. Many current planning processes already consciously incorporate self-organisation but they are in many cases initiated or conducted in collaboration with research institutions, reflecting the municipalities’ willingness to refresh planning procedures through experimentation. Changes at the statutory system level would help to scale the success of tentative projects and to institutionalise new innovative practices. In other words, spatial flexibility requires legal certainty (Moroni et al., 2018).
The term ‘post-zoning’ dates back to a symposium held in Brooklyn Law School in February 2012. The symposium was concerned with alternative forms of public land use controls. However, the term is seldom used and lacks a broadly accepted definition. Been and Infranca (2013), among the first users of the term, actively avoid a definition. Nevertheless, for them, post-zoning means, if nothing else, a much more flexible planning tool than the ‘traditional’ zoning apparatus.
Indicating relational properties and spatial–temporal cross-scale dynamics would require rules and codes beyond conventional mapping techniques. Also, the aim of the new regulations should not primarily be the eradication of norms for short-term economic competitiveness. Instead, the emphasis of regulation and planning rules in the post-zoning era should be on advocating the evolutionary resilience of social-ecological systems, and helping to accomplish a socially just transformation of communities while harnessing emergence (cf. Rauws, 2016; Wilkinson, 2012).
Complex operative environments (with a variety of agencies, multiple and simultaneously active individual strategies and potentials, self-regulating and self-organising mechanisms constantly adapting and seeking equilibrium, and non-linear systems behaviour paralleling linear approximation behaviour) have actually very little to do with the means afforded by ‘traditional’ zoning. Thus, the term post-zoning is understood here literally to refer to the rejection of dividing land into zones with different uses and replacing it with a completely new set of urban planning tools.
Self-organising dynamics have changed the focus from the local level to the levels of city-regions and systems of cities, and hence, beyond the reach of the hierarchic planning system. Instead, unofficial planning tools, that is, non-statutory strategic processes and public–private contracts, have been on the increase in many countries (Kanninen, 2017; Lehtovuori et al., 2019). Informal tools may reflect the growing complexity of society but, more precisely, they indicate an incoherence in the legal planning system regarding the actual behaviour of social–spatial systems – a mismatch between the ‘system of rules’ and the ‘order of actions’ (Moroni, 2010: 139). In practice, informal processes serve to compensate for the inefficiency of the legal apparatus. It has been argued that neither statutory planning systems nor the parallel strategic development tools have succeeded in satisfactorily tackling city-regional problems (Kanninen, 2017).
Complexity, self-organisation and robust rules
Complexity and self-organisation in urban planning
In the academic planning discourse, the concept of self-organisation is used to refer to the typical behaviour of complex systems, where emergent order, patterns and organisation arise without external guidance from multiple un-orchestrated interactions between the agents in the system (e.g. de Roo and Rauws, 2012). Such a spontaneous urban transformation implying qualitatively novel and irreducible, upper-scale systemic features is intrinsically non-linear and unpredictable, and hence non-manageable with traditional hierarchical tools. Governing spontaneous processes would also require identifying two distinct yet related categories calling for different planning tactics: that of self-organisation, defined as emergence arising from (inter)actions, and self-governance, referring to citizen-initiated developments (Rauws, 2016). Also, since self-organisation implies the autonomy of actors and utmost operative freedom from authoritative orders, it is not to be conflated with top-down participatory methods (Anttiroiko, 2016; Boonstra and Boelens, 2011; cf. Moroni, 2010).
Conceptualising cities as complex adaptive systems has helped researchers to reveal their inherent self-organising nature and thus to understand phenomena previously considered to be anomalies.
While complexity sciences have allowed for theorisation, analysing and modelling of cities as self-organising systems with sophisticated methods, this has not influenced planning and design practices to the same extent. Also, seen from inside the planning discipline, the mechanism of self-organisation has appeared as something that the planning system cannot absorb (cf. Boonstra and Boelens, 2011), and hence as controversial, even as a threat to the underlying ideals of urban planning (Savini, 2017). Furthermore, complexity theory is an umbrella term for a variety of approaches; it affords no unitary theoretical framework for planning.
However, a common understanding of the underlying premises for operating within complex environments has been achieved. For one, it assumes that instead of trying to steer urban development, planning needs to adjust to the inherent unpredictability and prepare for unintentional accumulative effects emerging both because and in spite of planning. For another, challenging the assumptions of linearity and rationality of conventional planning, such a view requires more strategic, adaptive and evolutionary tools to guide land use (e.g. Bertolini, 2010; Portugali, 2011; de Roo and Rauws, 2012). Nonetheless, even strategic approaches promoting flexibility tend to reduce complex social systems to simple orderly systems. As Stefano Moroni (2010: 142) points out: ‘The idea of flexible planning is not a refutation of the whole-coordinating top-down view of planning, but rather a version of the same […]’. Moreover, not only flexibility but also certainty is a relevant feature for actors to frame their decisions. Somewhat paradoxically, complex systems require simple rules (Moroni et al., 2018).
Self-organisation and emergence may not be ‘controlled’ by planning but instead need sophisticated monitoring techniques to evaluate possible pathways and to detect trajectories of unjust polarisation and mono-functionality (Haasnoot et al., 2013; Rauws, 2016). Moreover, successful guidance of emergence would require facilitation of trust and peaceful communication between stakeholders (Cozzolino et al., 2017: 51; Rantanen and Faehnle, 2017)
Robust rules for emergence and spatiality
In order to contest the mono-functional order of the zoning system, we address the need for robust rules, planning rules that do not determine (stringent) functions or spatial configurations. The idea is compatible with the ‘from planning rules to framework rules’, approach introduced by Cozzolino et al. (2017). In short, the framework rule advocates openness to allow emergence from agent interactions, which is supported by the generic nature of the plan to adapt to changing conditions.
In the literature, robustness is often related to (but also distinguished from) resilience (e.g. Haasnoot et al., 2013; Pavard et al., 2008). The two terms are often used in parallel, yet their definitions and interrelatedness remain debated. Generally speaking, robustness refers to the ability of the system to maintain its functionality despite the perturbation, whereas resilience refers to the ability of the system to reorganise after a perturbation. While robustness commonly suggests unaffectedness to a perturbation, Walker et al. (2013: 956) read it as an ability to ‘perform satisfactorily under a wide variety of futures’. What we refer to here is solutions that advocate flexibility and support resilience. By robust rules we refer to special properties of rules and ruling systems (regulations, policies, plans), rather than the systems behaviour that they are meant to guide. In other words, the code per se is not resilient but it enables resilience (adaptation and transformation of agents, networks, systems, the varied performance of institutional planning). Planning deals explicitly with social–ecological (or evolutionary) resilience, which emphasises the capacity to respond to change (adaptability), underscoring continuous learning and transformability to change the direction of development (Davoudi, 2012; Folke et al., 2010). Flexibility, on the other hand, is often associated to spatial resilience (Kärrholm et al., 2014), but can be thought of as a resilience-enabling property of the system.
The principle of the framework rule (Cozzolino et al., 2017) and robustness suggest that flexibility is not only a normative goal of planning but, ideally, an emergent pattern, allowing for constant adaptation, evolution and rules that themselves evolve. The ‘flexibility for flexibility principle’ would imply that the primary aim of a planning process is not to allocate definitive activities (as in blueprint planning) but more likely to sustain and create conditions for greater diversity (intra- and cross-scale), paving the way for serendipitous interactions, innovations and evolutionary trajectories. The goal would not only be to design diversity but to allow for its emergence, which in turn would create more diversity – a mechanism identified as inherent in urbanity (Jacobs, 1969). Thus, emergent flexibility implies actor dynamics which evolves over time, changing operative modes (such as technologies). Planning would enable activities, users (human and non-human), investors and developers, first, to benefit from and create new synergetic relations, and second, allow for modal variations. For instance, within the perimeters of a city block, actors (residents, retailers, operators) and activities may change over time (along with the customers, demographics, economies, consumption behaviour, user values, etc.), but the block remains economically viable, or resilient, both socially and environmentally.
A robust policy or plan is therefore open and amenable to changing uses and orders. Examples of robust approaches at different scale levels of spatial production (strategic, detail and construction plan levels) include cross-sectoral strategies (rather than sub-optimisation), changing and shared uses (instead of mono-functionality) and hybrid projects (Rantanen and Joutsiniemi, 2016). Openness would also imply that rather than programming action, planning can provide ‘breeding grounds’ for self-organised activity, catalysing agents’ interaction (Rantanen and Faehnle, 2017) through governance support, such as facilitation, technical and financial support (Saad-Sulonen and Horelli, 2017) and generative spatial conditions, such as connections, critical functional and spatial diversity across scales (Rantanen and Joutsiniemi, 2016). The provision of flexible and transformable spaces for temporary uses, sharing and peer-to-peer processes come into question (Lehtovuori, 2010). A robust planning system would make it possible to apply programmes, initiatives and other strategic means deviating from traditional plan maps. Instead of conventional top-down dissemination of information from authorities to citizens, contemporary digital planning tools enable developed participation, collaboration and self-governance. Action-planning, co-creative platforms (Duvernet and Knieling, 2013), living labs (Puerari et al., 2018) and tactical urbanism (Silva, 2016) can be combined with formal plans, feeding each other through iterative feedback loops while emphasising learning and incremental transformation.
Apart from openness, boundaries (or boundary conditions from the environment) are considered equally important, enabling self-organisation to occur (inner conditionality, Fuchs, 2003). The idea underlines path-dependency: as the process evolves, it establishes certain patterns and rules for future projects – what is feasible and acceptable and what is not. It is noticeable that self-organising systems are not chaotic but obey innate orders based on interaction and value capturing within given social–spatial and legal boundaries. Actors assess the suitability of sites on the basis of value creation and return on investment. Behavioural rules emerge, first, from the unorchestrated interaction of the system’s agents and their adaptation to each other’s strategies, clustering or dispersing, in competition or co-operation. Spatial patterns, inertia and lock-ins conversely frame the behaviour. Rules evolve along with the emergence of new properties within the system. This unconscious rule underlies the evolution of cities. However, the prevention of negative externalities, such as the development of systemic lock-ins leading to polarisation and monopolisation, is crucial for sustaining the critical diversity needed for continuous evolution (Iltanen et al., 2014; Rantanen and Joutsiniemi, 2016). Tracing cross-scale transitions, dynamic path-dependencies and being able to weigh on corrective actions would require adaptive policies with developed evaluation and scenario tools (Haasnoot et al., 2013).
Towards a new planning system: An enabling non-hierarchical normative framework
As stated earlier, the problems identified in the current zoning system (exemplified by the Finnish case) relate, first, to the hierarchical levels, regulative rules and zoning symbols, which not only reduce information on the spatial–temporal reality but fail to represent dynamic relations and processes. They also constrain the emergence of novel orders from spontaneous interactions between agents, as these continuously adapt to changed conditions and goals (e.g. new uses, technologies, crises). Second, although spatial interventions are place-based, urban processes (or metabolism) are not embedded to particular locations but transcend hierarchical zoning scales. Independent of scale, digital plans help to seize knowledge from various systems simultaneously and identify part–whole relations, i.e. the relation of a particular location or project to larger and smaller systems. In addition, the plans on the lower hierarchical level can replace the higher-level plans only partially. Different goals and resolutions lead to multiple alterations to plans and may cause unequal territorial steering (Jama et al., 2018: 60). Such systemic inefficiency incurs administrative costs (Moroni et al., 2018: 2).
One of key ideas of our proposal was to direct strategic interest towards spatial agency, physical space and urban morphology as an active agent. Zoning could be replaced with catalytic spatial rules, which are general in nature. Generality of planning rules enables actors to adapt their behaviour to the environment using their particular knowledge and means (Moroni et al., 2018). Rules such as ‘functions’ are not relevant, being due to change, but the spatial framework is more persistent and has the capacity to guide potential transformation patterns. Spatial qualities, such as accessibility, centrality, visibility and public/private, catalyse or constrain interaction, providing ‘option space’ for feasible activities (e.g. traffic modes). They may serve as spatial ‘nudge’ tactics (Thaler, 2015) encouraging actors to change their behaviour themselves.
Building on these assumptions, the proposal introduces a non-hierarchical two-level regulation and guidance system, as opposed to the current hierarchical three-level system (see Figure 1, top left and top right). The proposed model embraces a systems approach, building on the idea of constant system–environment interaction, communication between agents, between multiple levels and scales and between strategic and operative planning. As such, the proposal promotes a dynamic and irreducible worldview, drawing insights from a wide range of sources and reaching across substantial and procedural levels. Compared to the conventional planning system, the model proposed emphasises a strategic rather than a regulative approach, and reflexivity and reciprocity rather than linearity between different levels and stages of planning. The aim of the proposal is to enable a legitimate shift from conventional blueprints to guidance in land use and experimenting with novel strategic plans. Instead of representing parcels of land at end-states (project view), the key contents would be to represent desired social–spatial and social–ecological qualities (preferred conditions) and pay attention to the various mechanisms, interactions and adaptive loops (resilience) that could potentially (but not deterministically) add up to those qualities (process view), and which would also be evaluated. The goals may be pursued by guiding with generative tools, such as generative typologies, to support the possible emergence of qualitative goals. Actually, such a system could result in much simpler plans (e.g. Binckhorst, Hague, Netherlands, see: http://wonenindenhaag.nl/en/neighbourhoods/binckhorst/).

Top left: The current three-level hierarchical planning system creates overlapping and partly contradictory procedures with regard to regulating goals and rights. Both regional plan and local master plan are usually area-reservation plans, yet with a strategic emphasis. National land use objectives are written goals and highly strategic in nature. Local master plans and regional plans are mainly strategic plans. Local detailed plans are often tailored for individual projects. Top right: The proposed land use planning system replaces a hierarchical structure with a reciprocal system. National and regional land use objectives serve as written goals transmitting values. Areal Guidelines is a tool for assembling the main planning ideas for larger areas at the municipal level. Up-to-Date Plan is an implemental and constantly updated data model and a 3D-tool guiding building processes with obligations and incentives. Bottom left: The Up-to-Date-Plan is available as a 3D-model and can be viewed and commented online. Codes can be read by clicking the blocks and colours (Jama et al., 2018: 72). Bottom right: A draft for a new simplified land use planning system by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment presents the planning system as a two-tier system. National and regional land use objectives include national interests and regional strategies and form a framework for actual land use planning in mostly strategic city region plans and legally binding municipal plans (Keskustelupaperi Maankäyttö- ja rakennuslain uudistamisen suuntaviivoiksi, 2018).
Proposals for new types of plan symbols and definitions were elaborated at the general and detailed level, aimed at digital interface development aligned with the EU INSPIRE directive and transparency policies. Today’s digital operative environment and open GIS data make it possible to convert plans into elaborate scale-independent data models. Each spot on the map encapsulates all relevant information linked to that particular location, for example, property data, environmental information, historical data, as well as information on relational and dynamic properties (e.g. mobility patterns, economic, social and biophysical features). The model also includes information on statutory planning, design and construction, regulations and policies, while supporting participation, enabling citizens’ engagement and the emergence of co-creative practices. A developed data model would make it possible to link planning support systems, for example simulation tools for evaluation, or facilitation tools for peer-to-peer planning.
However, a data model alone is not – in the conventional sense – a plan, which implies intentionality, strategic prioritisation and implementation tactics. The proposed land use code includes three important features that contribute to a strategic and open planning system. First, the system introduces a multi-layered planning information system based on relational and open data supporting the linking and co-production of data across scales and sectors. Second, rules/regulations are primarily qualitative rather than quantitative. Thus, they signify strategic goals and values rather than intended land use in its end-state. The aim is neither to predefine the allocation of functions, nor to prohibit or draw boundaries between them, but to indicate the frames and limits, conditional orders and incentives that activities have to accommodate to while adjusting to each other’s strategies. Third, the system would have to include constant evaluation of the development using indicators that help to measure evolutionary qualities, synergies, multi-functionality and fractality, thus indicating catalytic potential.
Areal Guidelines and Up-to-Date plan
In practice, a more strategic and flexible regulative code could be achieved by using a written language-based plan, inspired by A Pattern Language (Alexander et al., 1977) and referred to as Areal Guidelines. Area in this context alludes to a geographically defined territory similar to master plans and partial master plans, but it may also refer to bigger and smaller settlements or characteristic neighbourhoods. Areal Guidelines are always fitted into the specific planning site (embracing situated knowledge). They include at least the following topics: common areal profiling, public space, transportation, building and environmental protection, natural environment and climate strategy. Guidelines form a solid structure for design and project development: freedom of choice is retained within the framework.
The overall goals for land use would be outlined in municipal development strategies and city-regional collaboration in cross-sectoral and inclusive learning processes. The dual task of this context is, first, to guide local level planning and, second, to communicate intentions bottom-up to national and regional land use objectives. Areal Guidelines are guided by city-regional goals and developed in mutual communication with unofficial strategic planning and envisioning, real estate development and legislation. These intentions and conditions together frame the institutional ‘option space’.
While Areal Guidelines are not prescriptive, they nevertheless guide a more delicate and exact planning instrument named Up-to-Date Plan (or Up-to-Date Code), a digital data model and 3D-coded plan (Figure 1, bottom left). Its purpose is to give accurate instructions on building density, building volumes and architectural form. With the help of digital 3D features, the traditional zoning parameters, such as FAR (floor area ratio), can be defined more flexibly. For instance, it would let the planner assess, justify and indicate preferable locations, heights and relations of blocks to their surroundings and communicate the proposals to the public. A developed tool could also define ranges for building volumes and ratios. Up-to-Date Plan also provides specific instructions for implementing Areal Guidelines. It is constantly updated and available on the municipality’s website. Even if Areal Guidelines are supposed to cover a larger area than Up-to-Date Plan, they are not hierarchically related. Instead, each time an Up-to-Date Plan is composed, Areal Guidelines are also checked and adjusted if necessary.
Discussions of the new planning system
The proposal for the new planning system explained above describes a tentative model. At a preliminary stage of development, the system reveals apparent challenges and limitations which need to be addressed. For instance, an obvious challenge in using Areal Guidelines would probably be in finding suitable spatial entities that could have common guidelines. Furthermore, a major challenge and key task would be the accessibility, clarity and generality, hence, the simplicity of rules – which is not the same as laissez-faire (Moroni et al., 2018: 3, 7) – to help avoid fuzzy interpretations, among other things.
An assessment made by Finnish planning experts and authorities during the project raised further questions. First, legitimate concerns were expressed about the role of public space in the 3D-coded Up-to-Date Plan, which focuses exclusively on buildings, not the space between them. Second, the legal relationship between Areal Guidelines and Up-to-Date Plan was unclear. The solution to this would be that in case of contradictions, the more precise plan (Up-to-Date Plan) would take precedence. Third, a suggestion was made to combine Areal Guidelines and Up-to-Date Plan into one scalable plan. Fourth, flexibility was, once again, raised as one of the most important qualities for future planning.
The last two points were actually included in the discussion paper presented by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, proposing that only one scalable planning level combining local master plan and local detailed plan would suffice for municipalities. Furthermore, the paper stated that ‘the procedures linked to planning processes could be flexibly tailored’ (KeskustelupaperiMaankäyttö- ja rakennuslain uudistamisen suuntaviivoiksi, 2018). The suggestion is a fairly radical one, setting aside the hierarchical planning system at the municipal level. Furthermore, the Ministry of the Environment proposed a new planning level, a strategic City Region Plan, which would have a restricted legal effect (if required and on specific issues only). This implies a first step towards a non-hierarchical land use planning system in Finland (see Figure 1, bottom right). Consequently, the proposal raises the question as to whose mandate it is to govern the planning process according to the new non-hierarchical system. Considering the long history of municipal zoning monopoly in Finland, for the time being, we would suggest retaining the authority for planning at the local level within municipalities. If they so wish, municipalities could in certain cases delegate the plan-making right to an outside party, such as private developers. Regardless of the operative liabilities, transparency in planning may be secured and improved by new digital tools open to all citizens and stakeholders and legislative actions towards better transparency policy and developed monitoring practices.
Conclusion
We addressed the future role and tools of planning systems in guiding land-use transformation. As a starting point, we took the Finnish planning system as an example. The statutory planning system in Finland continues to be organised as a three-level hierarchical zoning system, legitimising property rights and functional separation, representing land use as area reservations and planned (ideal) end-states (Rantanen and Joutsiniemi, 2016). Despite systemic changes, planning techniques have remained the same. The regulation symbols and codes in local detailed plans have not significantly changed since the Town Planning Act (1931).
We argued that while a certain amount of flexibility is a necessary condition, similarly, reliance on planning guidance is of paramount importance. We also argued that top-down hierarchical guidance and the principles of the ‘traditional’ zoning make the planning system incapable of adequately harnessing self-organisation. In order to overcome earlier identified problems in the current zoning practice, we proposed a new post-zoning era planning model, which is able to catalyse novel qualities by enabling actors to generate synergetic benefits and which is robust enough to allow emergence and urban evolution. The model is developed primarily for Finland, but it can be applied also in other European countries.
The observation implies, however, that the notion of flexibility as a goal for planning is not unproblematic. When seeking a balance between stable rules and constant unpredictable changes, flexibility is often seen as an obvious solution. However, empirical studies suggest the reverse: one of the main outcomes of planning processes is a degree of certainty for economic dynamics (Muñoz Gielen and Tasan-Kok, 2010: 1129). In addition, and as a rule, not only imperative planning, but also flexible planning, is less useful when the social system becomes more complex (Moroni, 2010: 146). Therefore, even if flexibility is needed to ensure the robustness of planning codes, it should be accompanied by a framework ensuring a sufficient level of certainty and clarity. This is the very idea of boundary conditions that enable self-organisation, or as Moroni et al. (2018: 7) state: ‘[…] dynamic and plural social-spatial systems […] require a stable set of abstract and general rules that enable society itself to be effectively flexible (Moroni, 2007, 2015)’.
In conclusion, a detailed analysis of the constitutive properties and co-operative goal setting together with political discourse on the preferred futures remains at the centre of planning, also in the post-zoning era. Yet the proposed system enables the emergence of strategies, drawing on diverse pools of dynamically self-organising and transdisciplinary up-to-date information, opening up as yet unforeseeable opportunities for the use of algorithmic tools in generating information from human and non-human sources. While the proposed model relies heavily on digital resources, it brings to the fore the need for discussion on the emerging challenges of the digitalisation in urban planning. For instance, from the democracy point of view, discussion is still needed on the increasing role of technology firms in the development work of planning tools. Nonetheless, rather than merely turning the existing hierarchical system into bit maps, digitalising planning systems should embrace the profoundly transformative potential embedded in the interactive and reflective digital interfaces. Otherwise, the danger exists that we will lose the momentum for a radical turn towards more just and evolutionary urban planning.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Professor Panu Lehtovuori for his valuable comments to the first versions of the manuscript.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding provided by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment.
