National Planning Systems Between Convergence and Incongruity: Implications for Cross-Border Cooperation from the German–Polish Perspective

Abstract

Convergence of national planning systems in Europe has become an important issue in the context of transnational and cross-border planning, which in turn plays a key role in the policy of creating a cohesive European space. Converging trends concerning planning styles and structures may undoubtedly be detected and also include new European Union (EU) member countries. Yet, by a minute's inspection of the (long-established) German and of the (created in the run-up to EU membership) Polish planning system from a cross-border planning perspective, it becomes obvious that similar structures may not coincide with a similar idea of what spatial planning is about. As highlighted by two chosen examples—cross-border twin-city and metropolitan planning—this results in significant hindrances for planning cooperation in its own right. The article concludes that any convergence of planning systems—if it was to have a constructive impact on cross-border planning—needs to be based on the acceptance of joint planning standards, objectives and values.

Notes

Research on these various aspects of cross-border cooperation is abundant (see, e.g. in the German–Polish context Dürrschmidt, 2006; Stryjakiewicz and Tölle, 2009; Dolzblasz and Raczyk, 2010; Knippschild, 2011).

For the purpose of this article the German planning system will just be accepted as an example for an established planning system in an EU country. The question of how beneficial an integration of German planning understanding into European planning models would or would not be will not be discussed (see, e.g. the critical assessment of Faludi, 2004).

The description of the two planning systems is to a large extent based on Ebert et al. (2011).

To make the logic behind the two planning systems understandable it is in this case necessary to apply a more sophisticated—sometimes literally, sometimes explanatory—way of translating key planning terms into English than commonly used, even if this means to deviate from somewhat established planning terms in English-language literature about planning in both countries (about the general dilemmas attached to the translation of national planning terms see: Dühr et al., 2010).

In this article, the term of regional planning has been used as a generic term to describe planning on the Polish voivodship and on the German federal state level. To distinguish it from the specific German term of “Regionalplanung” for parts of a federal state territory, the latter is termed regional planning (in italics).