Assembling social innovations in emergent professional communities. The case of learning region policies in Germany

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we use the notion social innovation to shed light on the complex interrelations between the emergence and consolidation of new policy approaches and their geographical mobility. Empirically, the paper deals with learning region policies in Germany, which epitomize a shift of the main approach from ‘catching up’ to ‘reflexive experimentation’ during the 1980s/1990s in Germany. We highlight the nature of social innovations in spatial planning as complex assemblages of material, organizational and conceptual elements. These elements are not necessarily new themselves. Rather, the novelty lies in the unprecedented ways, in which these elements are re-combined. From an innovation perspective, the unfolding of the learning region policy model co-evolves with the growth and proliferation of a related professional community of practice. Longitudinal data covering the whole innovation process is analysed in combination with case study material from two recent instantiations of the respective policies: the REGIONALE 2016 Westmünsterland and the ‘Competition Impulse Regions’ in Saxony.

KEYWORDS:

• Social innovation
• policy mobility
• learning region
• spatial planning
• professional community

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Grant IB 95/6-1. The project was part of a bigger project consortium. Empirical work has been conducted with a similar research design and in close cooperation with Gabriela Christmann (PI) and Thomas Honeck (Grant CH 864/3-1 on ‘temporary uses’); Johann Jessen (PI) and Daniela Zupan (Grant JE 202/6-1 on ‘compact, mixed-use urban neighbourhoods’) as well as Uwe-Jens Walther (PI) and Oliver Koczy (Grant 1591/6-1 on ‘neighbourhood management’). See also Christmann et al. (2019).

2 It is important to note that in the German context the term ‘learning region’ is also used beyond the field of application we are concerned with here. For instance, an educational programme co-funded in 2001 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the European Social Fund for Germany (ESF) is called ‘Lernende Region’. It supports networks at the regional scale between different educational institutions in order to promote life-long learning. However, apart from addressing the regional scale it has little in common with the type of policies we are discussing bellow.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (IB 95/6-1).