Reviving strategic spatial planning for the challenges ahead

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the future challenges of strategic spatial planning in Europe in the coming decades. The paper argues that one of the core challenges for strategic spatial planning is to regain its political legitimacy. Strategic spatial planning has increasingly lost its political support after the global financial crisis in 2007–2008 and a decade of austerity policies. Strategic spatial planning must make itself relevant again by addressing the most prominent challenges for contemporary urban areas, such as the current energy crisis. The energy crisis has demonstrated the need for an even faster transition to renewable energy sources, which requires large areas for energy infrastructures on land. The paper argues that strategic spatial planning could play an important future role in supporting the sustainable energy transition by identifying appropriate spaces of production and building support for such production facilities among local communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Strategic spatial planning
• energy transition
• legitimacy
• sustainable development
• energy crisis

Introduction

The role of planning in society has continually been debated since the inception of modern urban planning in the late 19th and early twentieth century. As Klosterman has noted ‘formal governmental attempts to plan for and direct social change have always been controversial’ (Klosterman 1985, 5). Whilst this statement certainly would ring true in many contexts, I would argue that the political support for planning tends to vary significantly from time to time (and from place to place). The role of planning in society and the importance of planning in managing societal challenges is not something that automatically can be assumed or agreed upon. The role of planning and its importance is rather something that continually must be fought for and earned. If spatial planning is to play a role in managing the societal challenges of the coming decades, spatial planning must make itself relevant – not just to the planners themselves, but to society as a whole.

The institutional conditions for and political legitimacy of planning have always been greater in times of economic growth and prosperity, whilst planning has struggled to maintain its political support in times of economic crisis. This is perhaps especially true for strategic spatial planning, which due to its strategic, experimental and often informal nature is perceived to be more relevant in times of economic growth, when decisions of where to guide urban development must be made. Strategic spatial planning seems to have less to offer in times of economic crisis and austerity policies. Consequently, we have seen a reduced interest in strategic spatial planning experiments and abolishment of formal strategic spatial planning in many European countries in the last 10–15 years following the global financial crisis in 2007–2008. The lack of political support for strategic spatial planning can also be understood as a result of increasingly neoliberal political climates in many European countries (see e.g. Allmendinger and Haughton 2013; Olesen and Richardson 2012; Waterhout, Othengrafen, and Sykes 2013).

While we arguably still live in the age of austerity, the last couple of years have perhaps more been a testament to that this decade will be characterized by multiple crises. In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world and forced many European countries to enforce lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus, leaving otherwise crowded and lively city centres deserted. In 2022 the Russian-Ukraine conflict, which had been ongoing since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, escalated into war as Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The war has sent large parts of Europe into an energy crisis due to increasing energy prices and many European countries’ ambitions of reducing their dependency on Russian gas.

In this time of multiple crises and increasing uncertainty, I will argue that there is a potential and need for reviving strategic spatial planning to effectively deal with many of society’s contemporary challenges. In particular, I want to argue that strategic spatial planning has an important role to play in managing one of the most pressing contemporary challenges, the current energy crisis. I will build up my argument in three steps. First, I will revisit how the political legitimacy of strategic spatial planning was built up in the revival of strategic spatial planning at the beginning of the 1990s, and how this eventually led planning into a dead-end. Second, I will demonstrate how strategic spatial planning can play an important role in supporting the transition towards sustainable energy and thereby contribute to solve the current energy crisis. Third, I will, using Denmark as an example, outline some of the ingredients of what a revived strategic spatial planning for the sustainable energy transition could look like.

The rise and fall of strategic spatial planning

Strategic spatial planning emerged in Europe in the beginning of the 1990s as a new way of doing and thinking about planning (Healey, Khakee, and Motte 1997). Planning had increasingly lost its political legitimacy in the 1980s as a consequence of the wave of neoliberal policies spreading from the UK to many other European countries at the time. Planning had become project-oriented and lost its former grand visionary aspirations. The move towards strategic spatial planning was seen as a way of reinvigorating the political legitimacy of planning and reorient planning towards the societal challenges at the time – most noticeably the growing complexity of urban development processes due to globalization and an increasing awareness of environmental issues promoted under the banner of sustainable development (Albrechts, Healey, and Kunzmann 2003). The many experiments with strategic spatial planning that emerged in the 1990s sought to combine the mid-twentieth-century welfare state-led strategic planning with new concepts imported from the private sector (most noticeably stakeholder analysis and SWOT analysis). The new strategic plans did not only produce grand future visions but did also set out short-term actions for how the strategies could be achieved (Albrechts 2004). The rationality of planning changed from being rooted in managerial attitudes concerned with creating frameworks for development towards entrepreneurial attitudes actively seeking to promote the desired development (Olesen 2020). In many ways, this transformation changed the planning discourse from whether to how to do planning (Kaufman and Jacobs 1987).

The shift towards strategic spatial planning also transformed the basis for spatial planning’s political legitimacy. Mäntysalo et al. (2015) have argued that the political legitimacy of strategic spatial planning is rooted in a different governance model (or culture) than statutory land use planning. Whilst the legitimacy of land use planning largely builds on the accountability of statutory planning processes, in which decisions are made by elected politicians, the legitimacy of strategic spatial planning is tightly coupled to liberal values of promoting freedom and opportunities and ideas about moving beyond state bureaucracy. This has resulted in an uneasy relationship between statutory land use planning and strategic spatial planning, especially when it comes to questions about how informal spatial strategies are translated into statutory planning, and where the legitimacy of planning lies in such situations (Mäntysalo et al. 2015).

This change in the basis for spatial planning’s political legitimacy was important for revitalizing the political interest in and support for strategic spatial planning in the 1990s, as it resonated with the dominant neoliberal political ideas at the time (Olesen 2014). In many ways, the rationality of planning was transformed from regulation to promotion of economic growth. When it came to aspirations of reducing urban sprawl and environmental degradation in line with the sustainable development agenda, strategic spatial planning often fell short due to its less regulatory scope and its weak ties to statutory planning (see e.g. Olesen and Richardson 2012; Oliveira, Tobias, and Hersperger 2018; Trygg and Wenander 2022). In many ways strategic spatial planning was unable to deliver on the promises it made, and commentators grew increasingly concerned about the gap between strategic spatial planning in theory and its implementation in practice (Newman 2008; Olesen 2014).

Whilst the new planning culture that emerged with the rise of strategic spatial planning initially succeeded in strengthening the political legitimacy of planning in 1990s, the success of strategic spatial planning wore off during the 2000s. The political legitimacy of strategic spatial planning was significantly weakened in the period following the global financial crisis in 2007–2008, as strategic spatial planning increasingly became unable to deliver on its growth ambitions. Consequently, the political support for strategic spatial planning was significantly reduced, and in several European countries the former aspirations of strategic spatial planning were reduced if not put on hold (Allmendinger and Haughton 2013; Olesen and Richardson 2012; Waterhout, Othengrafen, and Sykes 2013).

In Denmark, the geographical context that I know best, the Danish Government has been hesitant to use strategic spatial planning actively during the 2010s, and the statutory national spatial strategies published roughly every four years have been turned into routinized publications summarizing existing policies without any attempt to present a future-oriented spatial imaginary of Denmark (Olesen 2017, 2020). Consequently, the Danish Government proposed in its revision of the Danish Planning Act in 2022 that it will no longer be compulsory to prepare a national spatial strategy (Danish Government 2022a). The reactions to what most likely would mean the end of strategic spatial planning at national level have been modest in academic and professional circles, suggesting a sort of unspoken consensus that the loss might not be so great after all. This perspective reflects the view that the governments in the last decade or so have been unable (or unwilling) to use strategic spatial planning as a strategic tool to guide future urban development processes. One might even argue that the political support for strategic spatial planning today resembles the widespread planning scepticism of the 1980s, in Denmark – and I suspect in other European countries too.

The energy crisis and the need for reviving strategic spatial planning once again

With the history of strategic spatial planning and the current lack of political support in mind, it may seem naïve to suggest that strategic spatial planning could be on the rise again and play an important role in the near future. This is nevertheless the argument that I will develop in the rest of this paper. In doing so I adopt a normative perspective on strategic spatial planning. As I have argued at the beginning of this paper, one of the most important future challenges of spatial planning is to make itself relevant to the contemporary societal challenges. In this section, I will demonstrate how strategic spatial planning can play an important role in supporting the transition towards sustainable energy production and thereby contribute to solve the current energy crisis.

The global energy crisis, which was accelerated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has resulted in increasing prices of oil, gas and electricity for consumers. Many households have found themselves in a position struggling to pay the increasing energy bills, which has resulted in a new form of energy poverty. Adding to this, the increasing inflation has put significant increases in the general food prices. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many European countries feared being cut off from Russian gas, and as a result, started to develop policies of becoming independent from Russian gas. Their fears were partly justified with the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline (connecting Russia and Germany in the Baltic Sea) close to the Danish island of Bornholm, effectively closing one of the distribution lines from Russia. The energy crisis has resulted in a new urgency (or accelerated the existing urgency) for transitioning to sustainable energy sources.

This is also the case in my home country Denmark, a country which is usually considered one of the frontrunners in the sustainable energy transition. In 2021 43.7 pct. of the Danish electricity supply came from wind turbines (Danish Ministry of Interior Affairs and Housing 2022). In the most recent energy policy ‘Climate agreement on green electricity and heat 2022’, the Danish Government has set the ambitious target of quadrupling the current electricity production from solar panels and wind turbines on land towards 2030 (Danish Government 2022b). It is estimated that reaching this target would require additionally 36,000 hectares of land for energy production, corresponding to about 0.8 pct. of Denmark’s total size (Danish Ministry of Interior Affairs and Housing 2022).

One of the biggest challenges in the transition towards a more sustainable energy production has so far been finding appropriate spaces and developing local support for the construction of energy production facilities and the corresponding infrastructure (see, e.g. Ellis et al. 2009; Aaen, Kerndrup, and Lyhne 2016). The conflicts that often arise around for example the location of wind turbines can be seen as a dilemma between democracy or delivery (Cowell and Devine-Wright 2018). On the one hand, there is a need to ensure the efficiency of planning procedures seeking to fulfil national and international policy targets. On the other hand, it is important to strengthen the democratic legitimacy of these planning processes to build local support (Liljenfeldt 2015). If you add to this that there already is a great pressure on land use in many European countries due to many competing demands and interests, and multiple other crises (climate change and biodiversity crisis) which also must be taken into consideration, the task of identifying new appropriate spaces for sustainable energy production appears even more daunting. This is especially true for a small country like Denmark.

We can also understand the democracy and delivery dilemma as a conflict between input legitimacy and output efficiency (Mäntysalo, Saglie, and Cars 2011). Input legitimacy refers here to the (often legal) requirements of public participation in planning processes, whilst output efficiency can be understood as market actors’ critique of planning processes as too slow and bureaucratic. Each side of this dilemma is therefore also rooted in the two opposing conceptions of the basis for the political legitimacy of spatial planning outlined above. The question is whether such competing interests and different understandings of planning, and the political legitimacy underpinning it, can be combined.

This is where strategic spatial planning comes into the picture. The task of managing different competing land use demands, whilst finding appropriate spaces for new sustainable energy production facilities necessitates a strategic approach, which combines long-term strategic goals of increased sustainable energy production (output efficiency) with short-term actions of building broad community support for energy production facilities at the local scale (input legitimacy).

Towards strategic spatial planning for a sustainable energy transition

I will end this paper by outlining some of the ingredients of what a revived strategic spatial planning for the sustainable energy transition could look like, using Denmark as an example. In the autumn 2022, after the Danish Government’s proposal to abolish national strategic spatial planning, the draft of a new spatial strategy was published (Danish Ministry of Interior Affairs and Housing 2022). The plan focuses on how spatial planning can support the Danish Government’s ambitions of accelerating the transition towards a sustainable energy production. In the plan, it is recognized that the current transition and developer-oriented approach at municipal level has been too slow, and that there is a need for a more proactive and strategic approach, where suitable areas for energy production close to the transmission network are identified and reserved before there is an interest from landowners and/or potential investors (Danish Ministry of Interior Affairs and Housing 2022).

On the one hand, this a complex technical process, which involves identifying the most appropriate areas for energy production facilities, including repowering of existing facilities, with easy access to the transmission network where there is excess capacity, whilst at the same time taking biodiversity and other environmental concerns into account, and with the appropriate distance to housing areas. On the other hand, this is also a complex political and potentially highly conflictual process, which necessitates careful communication to landowners, local communities and other stakeholders about what this initial area reservation means, and how they can become involved in planning processes of identifying the most appropriate spaces at the local scale. This is just one example of how strategic spatial planning could play an important role in supporting the sustainable energy transition by developing planning principles that can guide the process of identifying appropriate areas for sustainable energy production.

Such an approach would require a reorientation of the foundations for the political legitimacy of strategic spatial planning. This new political legitimacy would accept a spatial planning that strives towards a state-led planning for the common good, rather than a concern with optimizing the investment opportunities for the private sector. It furthermore builds on the understanding that more (not less) planning is needed in a time of multiple crisis, where tough decisions must be made about how to build sustainable urban futures. Strategic spatial planning should be a tool that politicians look to for direction and inspiration in their decision-making. In order to fulfil this role strategic spatial planning must address the most pressing political concerns of our time.

Strategic spatial planning could also play an important role in developing a spatial imaginary with supporting storylines that could help mobilize support for the sustainable energy transition and the need to place sustainable energy production facilities somewhere (Healey 2006; Olesen 2017). In this process, special attention should be paid to how ‘acceptable places’ are constructed, and what the consequences of such constructions would be at the local scale (Cowell 2010).

Again, an example from national spatial planning in Denmark comes to mind. 30 years ago, in the first Danish national spatial plan inspired by the new strategic spatial planning paradigm, the Danish Ministry of the Environment asked teenagers (aged 14–19) about what their dreams were for Denmark in 2018 (Danish Ministry of the Environment 1992). The state of the environment was the teenagers’ main concern. Several of the illustrations submitted by schools to the ministry were published in the national spatial strategy, and several of these depict an urban landscape with green areas and wind turbines in the background (Danish Ministry of the Environment 1992). Environmental concerns and the awareness of the need to transition into sustainable energy sources is not a new issue that must be communicated. The European population at large is very aware of these issues, perhaps especially the younger generations, and this is the support that strategic spatial planning could draw on to regain its political legitimacy. The support for new sustainable spatial imaginaries of our urban landscapes should most likely be found among the younger generation of future decision-makers.

I will end with a small note on some of the conceptual challenges of strategic spatial planning. It is largely recognized within the academic community that there is a need to rethink and develop the conceptual ideas and arguments for strategic spatial planning further (see e.g. Albrechts 2015; Albrechts, Balducci, and Hillier 2017; Olesen 2014). In Albrechts (2010) words: ‘more of the same is not enough’. Several have argued that strategic spatial planning ought to focus more on the process of becoming (Hillier 2011; Albrechts and Balducci 2013), and that strategic spatial planning should be understood as a process of dreaming up radically different and (im)possible futures (Albrechts 2015; Monno 2010), rather than an instrument to reinforce the contemporary neoliberal imaginations of the urban (Olesen 2014; 2020a).

At the same time, case studies of strategic spatial planning have demonstrated that planners have many ideas of how to promote sustainable urban development, but that these ideas often fail to gain political recognition or simply fall outside the political agenda (see Trygg and Wenander 2022 for a recent study). There is in other words a need to reconnect the sphere of planning and the sphere of politics. Strengthening the political interest in spatial planning was an important part of the revival of strategic spatial planning in the 1990s. However, as Grange (2014) has demonstrated, the strengthened political interest in planning has in some cases resulted in political critique rather than increased the political understanding of planning as initially envisioned. There is therefore a need to reconnect planning and politics again in a way that strengthens rather than weakens the planning profession. One way to strengthen the political legitimacy of planning will be to demonstrate how spatial planning can help to manage the contemporary challenges of society.

Disclosure statement

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