Legitimacy of Informal Strategic Urban Planning—Observations from Finland, Sweden and Norway

Abstract

In Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian cities and urban regions, strategic approaches in urban planning have been developed by introducing different kinds of informal strategic plans. The means of improving the strategic quality of urban and regional planning have thus been searched from outside the statutory land use planning system, determined by the national planning laws. Similar development has also taken place elsewhere. When strategic plans are prepared outside the statutory planning system, these processes also lack the legal guarantee for openness, fairness and accountability. This is a serious legitimacy problem. In this article, the problem is examined theoretically and conceptually by combining democracy- and governance-theoretical perspectives. With this framework, four different approaches to legitimacy are derived: accountability, inclusiveness, liberty and fairness. The article concludes that strategic urban planning must find a balance between the four approaches to legitimacy. Concerning political processes, this requires agonistic acknowledgement of different democracy models, excluding neither deliberative nor liberalist arguments. Concerning administrative processes, it requires acknowledgement of the interdependence of statutory and informal planning instruments and the necessity of developing planning methods for their mutual complementarity—thus avoiding the detachment of informal strategic planning into a parallel planning “system”.

Notes

1 The legitimacy problem of informal strategic planning is identified also at the international level (see Albrechts & Balducci, 2012).

2 A more common distinction has been made between “government” and “governance”, but we choose to use Healey's (2007) terms (bureaucratic/managerial governance) as more illustrative, and more appropriate in using the term “governance” as a higher-level class of different governance types, not to signify a certain governance type in itself.

3 The Finnish Land Use and Building Act aims “to ensure that everyone has the right to participate in the preparation process, and that planning is high quality and interactive, that expertise is comprehensive and that there is open provision of information on matters being processed” (1999/132, p. 1.2 §). In Norway's Planning and Building Act it is stated in §1.1: “Planning and decisions pursuant this Act shall secure transparency, predictability, and participation from all affected interests and authorities.” In Sweden's Planning and Building Act, Section 1 goes:This Act contains provisions on the planning of land and water areas as well as building. The provisions aim, with due regard to the individual's right to freedom, at promoting societal progress towards equal and good living conditions and a good and lasting sustainable environment for the benefit of the people of today's society as well as of future generations.

4 Conversely, the accountability of the government is improved by introducing participatory methods of deliberative democracy (Sager, 2013, pp. 4, 10). Here we refer to “compliance-based” accountability which, according to Sager (2013, p. 165) requires rule-based processes to enable the checking of whether an agency works in conformity with process regulations. This type of accountability can be distinguished from managerial accountability that is rather “performance-based”, including the use of quantifiable criteria of desirable outcomes and holding the actor answerable to its superiors, and subject to sanctions, if those criteria are not met (Sager, 2013, p. 165).

5 This is, of course, a liberal conception of fairness. An egalitarian or a communitarian conception, for example, would surely differ from the one presented here.

6 On their website under the heading “plans and guidance” the planning and building authorities in Oslo lists both formal plans and informal plans/guidance/studies. They list nine formal “part comprehensive plans” “kommunedelplan” in use (e.g. green structure plan) and eight old in less use. Furthermore they list 11 formally adopted guidelines (e.g. requirements for parking). The number of informal plans/studies/programmes are also high, a total of 20 (e.g. programs for developing transport nodes). https://www.plan_og_bygningsetaten.oslo.kommune.no/omradeutvikling_og_planer/omrade_og_planprogrammer.

7 In Norwegian “områderegulering” which is a public plan with rights for appeal as opposed to “detaljregulering” which is a private plan transformed to a public when decided to be displayed for public inspection.

8 A concept introduced by Hajer (2006, p. 53).

9 This may lead to inverse processes where the planner is faced with the role of rationalizing afterwards the political-economic elite's decisions that deviate from the pre-existing planning strategy, as was found by Flyvbjerg (1998) in his famous Aalborg case study.