Using practice theory to conceptualise balancing and values in urban planning

ABSTRACT

Despite its importance, balancing has received limited attention in planning research. Emphasising the significance of balancing in achieving planning outcomes, we argue that this lack of research hinders the comprehensive analysis of balancing as the basis of planners’ work. This practice review aims to demonstrate that balancing, especially the interplay between balancing and values, is a major element of planning processes from the conceptual perspective of practice theory. Further research on balancing may lead to an enhanced understanding for both scholars and practitioners of how values are invoked in planners’ day-to-day work.

KEYWORDS:

• urban planning
• balancing
• planning practice
• values and valuation
• practice theory

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editor as well as the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. This paper has also benefited from the assistance and support of Nicole Reiswich and Sophie-Marie Weidig. We acknowledge financial support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and TU Dortmund University within funding program Open Access Costs.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In our literature research, we searched for both ‘balancing’ and ‘weighing’ as key terms. According to our understanding, both terms are understood similarly and used synonymously in the field of urban and regional planning. In the international context and especially in the Anglo-Saxon area, ‘balancing’ seems to be predominant when looking at different land-use interests or claims, or at the consideration and evaluation of planning alternatives. Against this background, we utilise the term ‘balancing’ in this article.

2. We mainly concentrate on the conceptualisation of practice theory elaborated by Shove et al. (2012). Further approaches are based especially on Schatzki (1996) and Reckwitz (2002), who provide important contributions to contemporary research on social practices.

3. Based on our research in Germany, we have aggregated our previous findings into a fictitious example; however, we assume that similar issues are being discussed in other EU countries and that the example is therefore also transferable to planning and balancing processes in other European countries.

4. All German cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants were contacted. Cities that do not currently have 100,000 inhabitants but have regularly had over 100,000 inhabitants in recent years were also included in the survey. A total of 85 cities were contacted. Of these, 47 cities answered the questionnaire in full (response rate: 55%).

5. In the survey (n = 47), the planners named conflicts with regard to urban density (32%), the compatibility between redensification and urban green space (25%), and noise conflicts (17%).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Project No. 463567980.