Planning for Sea Spaces II: Towards an Agenda for Research

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© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Introduction

The last two decades have seen the emergence of new practices of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) across the world as well as the development of a growing MSP research community.¹ In this special issue, the second of two in this journal, we scrutinize MSP practices and position them in relation to core spatial planning debates (see also Walsh et al., 2022). These shared debates include the spatial framing of environmental and cultural relationships, the development of institutions in response to socio-ecological complexity and change, and the role of spatial strategies. They are given particular urgency, across all domains of spatial planning, by the ways in which climate change intensifies the uncertainty, and complexity (‘fluidity’) of spatial change and drives new development pathways (Olesen, 2014; Albrechts et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2022).

While terrestrial, aquatic and marine environments are inextricably interconnected, both the practice and theory of urban and regional planning have effectively excluded consideration of aquatic and marine space. Where rivers, lakes, estuaries and coasts have been considered as part of the development process, their main roles have been as drainage and transportation infrastructure: contained, canalised, embanked and in-filled: to become extensions of land-based activity, with port development uneasily connected to city planning practice. In this frame, the sea has remained largely a blank space beyond the edge of two-dimensional, largely containerized planning space (Peters & Anderson, 2014; Couling, 2018; Walsh, 2021). It is clear that a spatial planning practice that is responsive to the multifaceted challenges of the Anthropocene must engage more fully with ‘fluid space’, whether at sea or on land.

As the papers in both issues detail, MSP has become explicitly incorporated into the legislative programs, institutions and activities of nation-states and, to varying degrees, of regional and local governments. In many ways, the dichotomy between land and sea has been continued, and at times reinforced, through these new institutions and approaches. However, emerging planning practices in marine space present opportunities for reassessment and point to key directions for the further development of spatial planning practice and research. Both special issues build on recent debates on the theory and practice of regional planning (see in particular Harrison et al., 2021; Purkarthofer et al., 2021) as well as the ‘critical turn’ in marine spatial planning (Flannery et al., 2020). Together, they call for increased attention to issues of power, knowledge, spatiality and society–environment relations in the analysis and critique of contemporary practices of spatial planning, both on land and at sea. Here, we outline three key emerging areas concerning the understanding, representation and governance of space that point to shared agendas for research.

Engaging with and Belonging to Fluid Space

Fluid space necessarily highlights relational understandings of space (Murdoch, 2006; Davoudi & Strange, 2009; Jay, 2012). In the first special issue, Jay (2022) noted the paradox that, despite the problems of ‘fixing’ the fluidity of the marine milieu, MSP has tended to rely, even more than land-based planning, on GIS and mapping, simply because sea spaces are so inaccessible in other ways. While the direct, tacit engagement of planners on land is strongly mediated by other technical and discursive frameworks and, indeed, may be severely limited by the physical remoteness of places and the personal history and training of the planner, it remains a significant element of the knowledge process involved in spatial planning (see also Smith & Brennan, 2012). This opens up key questions for the training of spatial planners in both collaborative engagement and appreciation of the biophysical environment, shared across the milieus of land and sea, but highlighted by the challenges of the latter. In this issue, Couling (2022) offers an example of a response to these questions, based on the experience of research by design project for the North Sea, developed with students at Bergen School of Architecture. This is based on an understanding of the North Sea as ‘a space of extended urbanisation’, accorded particular resonance by the prospect of the installation of huge ‘energy islands’ over the coming decade, yet a space largely subject to ‘sea blindness’ within urban governance.

Questions of place, belonging and identity apply to both the land and the sea (MacKinnon & Brennan, 2012; Döring & Ratter, 2018). The nature of relational space requires cognisance of the past dynamics of coastal and marine landscapes and related processes of societal change (see Brace & Geoghegan, 2010; Döring et al., 2022). This implies a planning practice that moves beyond the established concepts of the future as a linear, progressive continuation of the past and the present (Yusoff & Gabrys, 2011). It explicitly engages with the societal processes required for developing trajectories that move beyond unhelpful nature–culture dichotomies (Aswani et al., 2017; Döring et al., 2021). Kon Kam King and Riera (2022) compare examples of how the space and place of sharks and human–shark relations are understood within MSP in the South Pacific. They draw on Metzger’s application of a ‘more-than-human’ approach to environmental planning (Metzger, 2019) to argue for conceptualisations of a ‘more-than-human ocean’. Here, planning for the interaction of humans and sharks offers insights into how human interspecies relationships might be spatialised in other, not necessarily marine or aquatic, environments. It highlights the contingencies, complexities and ephemeralities of ‘dwelling’. Spatial dynamics are continuously emergent and therefore the design of processes of governance that mediate and evaluate coexistence is critical. One fascinating aspect among others is the use of intense surveillance to adapt behaviours and make management responses in real time. Such environmental surveillance space raises its own set of governance challenges.

Understanding shared space as networked and porous will be vital in achieving decisions about the design and functioning of human ‘dwelling’ and our socio-economic and ecological relationships. This involves the recognition of all specific interests in place and increased awareness and revisiting of the processes of inclusion/exclusion. In such contexts, spatial planners need to take cognisance of and work with multiple, diverse ways of knowing the sea and the coast. This implies moving beyond the language of quantitatively defined indicators and GIS mapping to engage with a plurality of both lay and expert knowledges (Smith & Brennan, 2012; Köpsel et al., 2017). It requires reflection on professional frames and disciplinary-specific ways of understanding social and ecological processes – ‘the masks we wear’ to embrace imaginative ways of thinking about coastal and marine space (Brennan & Valcic, 2012).

Fluid Governance for Fluid Space

Understandings of space at sea and on land are especially tested in the context of land–sea interactions (LSI) (Shaw and Kidd, 2013). ‘The coast’ is an uneasy, shifting territory at the heart of LSI. It bears a rich heritage of scientific, cultural and economic associations to the policy table and demonstrates attempts to provide definitive boundaries between sea and land space as not only spurious but counterproductive. In the first special issue, Howells and Ramirez-Monsalve (2022) demonstrated the failure of current institutional frameworks to reflect ‘the fluid and interconnected nature of the spaces either side of the coastline’. Fragmented national and sub-national institutions are further complicated by cross-border interactions, whether in economic activity, cultural identity or resource and ecological management. These are the focus of the articles by Moodie and Sielker (2022) and Morf et al. (2022), which analyse practical case studies of transnational MSP. Such case studies are an important opportunity to evaluate governance practice. Their findings demonstrate the potential for innovative, inclusive problem-solving in this arena and its subversion by counterproductive institutions. One of their key insights is the identification of the need for specific arenas within which stakeholders are enabled to reflect upon and actively contribute to the definition of LSI.

What are the roles of national, regional and local governments in establishing and maintaining such arenas? Tissière and Trouillet (2022) analyse stakeholder participation in the emerging French MSP system, according to a framework of structural, contextual, organizational and methodological issues. They describe the dominant structures of participation (aimed at increased exploitation of marine space, especially for renewable energy development) as operating within a ‘soft sustainability’ logic. The technical orientation of French MSP overshadows the political accountability of resource management decisions and excludes key elements of democratic participation. These are important insights into current planning practice, with resonances across all planning communities (as demonstrated by Yet et al., 2022). They include identification of the need for enhanced involvement of stakeholders in conceptualizing and framing issues and appropriate strategic timescales, emphasizing the learning and adaptation which characterize a relational rather than containerized understanding of space. Moving from taken-for-granted understandings of space as containerized to the full realization of socio-ecological space as relational is a powerful argument for the further development of democratic inclusion not only in marine spatial planning but spatial planning as a whole (Davoudi, 2012; Jay, 2018; Walsh, 2021).

Engaging with the multi-dimensionality of coastal space stimulates further reflection on fluid, mobile and common pool resources, such as water quality, fisheries, transnational river catchments or migratory bird populations, which spatial planning as a whole struggles to address. Overarching these concerns, of course, is the urgency of responding to climate change by cutting carbon emissions and adapting to unavoidable changes. As Kidd et al. (2019) point out, ‘MSP has only a small part to play in addressing many of the environmental challenges facing the world’s oceans’ (p. 267). Morf et al. (2022) elaborate on evidence backing the argument for a ‘territorial spatial planning’ that spans both land and sea. They stress the urgent need for ‘an exchange between planners, stakeholders and academics on … how to link sea and land-based planning with overall ecosystem-based coastal and ocean governance’.

Transformative Strategies and Performative Spatial Imaginaries

There is clearly potential for the spatial vocabulary of planning strategies and visions to focus more on relational connectivities rather than on bounded container spaces. It is through relational connectivities that interactions between sectoral interests and claims on coastal and marine space can be articulated and negotiated. The articulation and depiction of these connectivities should not stop at the boundaries of the planning region but reflect transboundary processes and cooperation initiatives. Such processes and connectivities may be ecological, socio-cultural or economic (Jay, 2012, 2018). Spatial strategies can draw attention to existing processes of interaction at the land–sea interface and highlight new potentialities. They can play an active role in reframing land–sea relationships, transcending the confines of established metageographical understandings of the coast (see Jay, 2018; Walsh, 2021). In practice, multiple overlapping strategies may co-exist, with a dynamic interplay between soft and hard spaces within one regional context.

At the same time, the experience of MSP supports the insight that transformative strategies necessarily focus on the processes of strategy-making and subsequent application in practice. Such processes should be understood as generative, fostering creative and imaginative ways of thinking about space and its interconnections, with often intangible, but nevertheless, critically important ‘process outcomes’ for participant actors and stakeholders (Healey, 2006; Murdoch, 2006; Albrechts et al., 2019). In comparison to other forms of public policy, spatial plans by their very nature include a strong visual component. How spatial relationships and place meanings are represented and framed matters (Duühr, 2007, Pojani & Stead 2016). The spatial imaginaries created through planning processes perform relations of power (Davoudi et al., 2018). The construction of such imaginaries can be inclusive, enabling and progressive. However, they can also act to exclude and dominate interests in spatial decision-making and as such are a key focus for agonistic processes (Tafon et al., 2022).

These special issues indicate the scope of shared interests in the practices of planning for fluid space, in both marine and terrestrial contexts. They demonstrate how a focus on human interactions with the biophysical attributes of the marine environment gives potential insights into the fluidities of socio-ecological space and the nature of spatial governance. Innovations in inclusive participation, transboundary governance and plan-making for both marine and terrestrial environments offer important arenas for mutual learning. In particular, the significance of land–sea interactions, at all scales, whether at the level of international cooperation or at the level of local government and community development, requires further urgent attention in both land-based and marine spatial planning practice and research.

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Correction Statement

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

Notes

1. See Marine Spatial Planning Research Network, msprn.net.