Where to meet?

Munken, Pirsenteret

Karlheinz Knickel – “Planners make plans and wait for somebody else to implement them” – the role (and limitations) of planning as a governance approach sessions

  • Working Group Session 1 Wed 09:00 – 10:30

Authors

Karlheinz Knickel1, Carlos Pina2, Alexandra Almeida2, Maria Pia Casini3, Massimo Rovai4,
Marina Knickel4, Bernd Gassler5, Kerstin Hausegger-Nestelberger5, Lisa Bauchinger6, Reinhard Henke7, Hans Vulto8, Henk Oostindie9, Ulla Ovaska10, Tamás Lahdelma11 & Jesse Heley12

1 Policy Research & Consultancy (PRAC), Frankfurt/M., karlheinz.knickel@gmail.com
2 Comissão de Coordenação e Desenvolvimento Regional de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo (CCDR-LVT), Lisbon
3 European Planning Coordination, Province of Lucca, Lucca
4 Pisa University, Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment (DAFE), Pisa
5 Regional Management of Metropolitan Area of Styria, Graz
6 Federal Institute for Agricultural Economics, Rural and Mountain Research, Vienna
7 Regionalverband FrankfurtRheinMain, Frankfurt/M.
8 Municipality of Ede, Ede-Wageningen
9 Wageningen University, Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen
10 Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), Helsinki
11 City of Helsinki, Urban Facts and Executive Office, Helsinki
12 Aberystwyth University, Research Group ‘New Political Geographies’, Aberystwyth

Keywords: urban, peri-urban, rural, development, governance, planning, policy, case studies

Abstracts

A key challenge for decision-makers, developers, planners and administrators involved at different governance levels and in different policy domains is to foster a more balanced, sustainable and spatially integrated development. Well-designed multi-level and multi-actor governance arrangements play a central role in orchestrating the interplay between different spheres, activities, actors and interests.

In this contribution we are examining the role of planning in strengthening beneficial relations between rural, peri-urban and urban areas. Can more beneficial territorial relations be planned? Related to the efficacy of planning instruments and their contribution to higher-level strategies, drawbacks are often resulting from insufficient implementation. Are we more interested in constructing plans than implementing them?

In this paper, we examine the strengths and the limitations of spatial, regional and land use planning, as well as the connections with territorial development and programming.

The real-life cases that we analyse, show that more beneficial relations between urban, peri-urban and rural relations cannot simply be planned. Instead, they need to be accompanied by strategies and instruments that foster mutually beneficial relations between different actors across spatial levels and the urban, peri-urban and rural interfaces. Also, the planning process as such, might need to be revisited.

Go back to the workgroup WG 20
Go back to the program