Regional design for post-mining transformation: insights from implementation in Lusatia

ABSTRACT

This article reports on an attempt to implement regional design in a decarbonization transition in Lusatia, one of Germany’s lignite regions. As visioning tools, regional designs have great potential for application in coal-regions facing sustainability transitions. Through the implementation of the Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab, we find that the politically induced nature of the present transition, combined with regional factors, such its cross-border character and scepticism regarding sustainability, significantly modified the design and outcome of the method as applied. We note that the resistance to transformative goals by powerful actors administering transitions may prove an important impediment to their success.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional designs
• clean energy transition
• transformative capacity, governance, coal regions

1. Introduction

Recent research has highlighted the role of visions in motivating, coordinating and em-powering transitions to sustainability (Wolfram, 2016:127; Loorbach et al., 2017). In this context, strategic planning instruments such as regional design may show high potential to support such transitions by developing shared future-oriented visions of places (Wiek & Iwaniec, 2014; McPhearson et al., 2016) but there is limited research into how this unfolds in practice.

This article investigates the implementation of a regional design process in Lusatia, one of three remaining coal regions in Germany that have been allocated a total of 40 billion euros in structural investment to support a clean energy transition by 2038 at the latest. We adopt a social constructivist perspective on ‘doing visions’ to explore how spatial images and visions are developed as elements of transformation in strategic planning processes, what role designers and spatial planners can assume in such processes, and their potential contribution to sustainability transformations. We focus especially on regional design, an approach that stems from the design disciplines and aims to anticipate future developments, technologies and practices by using speculative designs to represent their spatial manifestations and assess where interventions are needed (Balz & Lingua, 2020). Regional designs are primarily characterised by the visualisation and communication of strategies through maps, physical plans and images, which distinguishes them from traditional forms of strategic planning (Neuman & Zonneveld, 2018). The empirical focus is on the Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab, initiated and implemented by researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER)¹, as part of an ongoing research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)² to provide ‘scientific support to the transformation process in Lusatia’,³ in particular by monitoring the elaboration of a development strategy for Germany’s second largest lignite region.

The role of visions in shaping transition pathways is usually analysed using case studies of pilot projects in progressive regions where change is welcomed and supported by local communities (Feiertag et al., 2020; Balz & Lingua, 2020). Lusatia, however, offers a case in which politically induced transformation is met with widespread scepticism in the general public in the region. The 1990s transition from socialist economy precipitated a negative development dynamic of deindustrialisation, mass unemployment, out-migration, ageing population and a decline in public services, which finds reflection today in political disaffection and support for populism. Regional and global ecological challenges are often considered secondary to job-creation and addressing social issues such as avoiding social distortions, exclusion and outmigration and creating a sense of community. This unfavourable starting point for a sustainability transition creates increased pressure on politics to succeed (Herberg et al., 2020; Heer et al., 2021). Considering that many regions slated for decarbonisation transitions are similarly peripheralised, it also provides an opportunity to explore the potential that visioning processes have to contribute to building transformative capacities in such regions, a crucial prerequisite for effecting the kind of sustainability transition foreseen by policy.

We ask the following research questions:

• What does the implementation of a regional design approach contribute to our understanding of transformative capacities available in regions undergoing coal phase-out?

• What role can regional design play in supporting coal regions in transition?

We address these questions by first outlining the specific potential of regional design to support decarbonisation transitions. We then introduce Lusatia and discuss the implementation of the Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab regional design process. We next explore how the requirements of regional stakeholders influenced the conceptualisation and implementation of the Planning Lab, as well as how the reception of the designs and the outcomes of the process, before offering our conclusions. Our findings are based on the analysis of the ideas generated in the Planning Lab and the monitoring of the workshops before and during the process. To our knowledge, this is the first piece of research to test the application of a regional design approach in the context of a decarbonisation transition. As such, it offers insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the method in practice, and crucially, the way in which power relations necessarily refract its deployment, highlighting its dependence on acceptance by high-powered stakeholders and their openness to its results. By doing so we aim to contribute to the literature on regional design.

2. Strategic planning for sustainability transformation

The transformation of complex systems – energy, mobility, food – to meet human needs within planetary boundaries is the major challenge of the 21st century, and the important contribution that spatial sciences can make to this agenda is increasingly recognised, as they can help identify how different geographical attributes of regions and urban areas affect transition processes and outcomes (see transformation research, Hansen & Coenen, 2015; Loorbach et al., 2017; Köhler et al., 2019). The terms ‘transition’ and ‘transformation’ are fuzzy (Hölscher et al., 2018). In this paper, we adopt the term ‘transition’ to refer to the large-scale, nonlinear process of path-deviant change that leads to a fundamental reorientation of a complex system, as it is actually occurring in practice. Transitions can be triggered by uncoordinated and emergent pressures (i.e. niche innovations and landscape changes), but more recently attention has turned to transitions as politically instigated and purposive, such as the decarbonisation of the energy system in the present case. Yet, there is nothing inevitable about the success of a sustainability transition: it can stall or fail entirely; the existing system can adjust to accommodate new pressures, or it can reconfigure itself along an entirely new system trajectory (Geels & Schot, 2007). This means that sustainability transitions as they occur in practice may not in fact lead to transformative outcomes, and as they are open-ended and emergent, there is also no yardstick by which their success can be assessed (Salomaa & Juhola, 2020).

Instead, research has sought to identify the prerequisites for a successful transition to be initiated and to accelerate. Here, it is useful to talk of ‘transformative capacity’ as ‘the ability to create a fundamentally new system when ecological, economic, or social (including political) conditions make the existing system untenable’ (Wolfram, 2016, citing Walker et al., 2004:4). Drawing on a range of research areas, Wolfram (2016) has developed an integrated conceptual framework to identify and assess key attributes of transformative capacity. This framework focuses firstly on the relationship between governance and agency: Is governance inclusive and multiform? Is leadership oriented towards transformative ends? Are communities of practice empowered to articulate and address social needs? Wolfram (2016) also identifies capacities that can be developed, such as systemic understanding and recognition of path-dependencies, scenario-building for future development, the creation of collective visions for radical sustainability changes, and support for broad-based experimentation in line with such shared visions (Wolfram, 2016; Bronto et al., 2019; Hajer & Versteeg, 2019). The emphasis on visions is of particular relevance to this research and ties in with research in spatial planning, which finds that by articulating values, and guiding planning decisions, behaviours and actions, visions can play a key role in supporting sustainability transformations in regions (van Dijk, 2011; Wiek & Iwaniec, 2014).

Visions for spatial structures are usually the purview of spatial planners, and strategic planning in particular shows promise for future-oriented visioning (McPhearson et al., 2016; Wolfram et al., 2019). Strategic planning evolved from the ‘communicative turn’ in planning, in which collaborative processes began to be used to develop consensual outcomes through shared learning (Healey, 1997; Fürst, 2012). It facilitates transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge about future desirable developments across diverse expert and lay stakeholders from different sectors, action domains and scales (Healey, 1997; Wolfram, 2016) and supports reflection on societal needs and governance structures, as well as helping to steer change through the development of long-term, implementation-oriented strategies that shape places in the present and future (Healey, 2003; Albrechts, 2004).

Strategic planning takes different forms and supports planning across disciplines and administrative boundaries, which makes it particularly suitable for spatialising thought experiments and exploring alternative approaches within functional spaces (Allmendinger & Haughton, 2009; Lingua, 2020). Its particular potential is that it focuses attention to space over a specific time period, and thus creates a context to negotiate shared ideas about spatial development goals and strategies (Balz & Zonneveld, 2020; Gilliard et al., 2020). As a temporary intervention, strategic planning can challenge established routines and cross-level coordination of hard planning spaces and thus offers potential for innovation (Kühn, 2008; Galland, 2020; Lingua, 2020).

Regional design is a strategic planning approach whose key characteristics include using a collaborative approach and design methods (Kempenaar, 2020) to create strategies for desirable regional futures. The use of visualisations to represent space and communicate strategies gives these designs a strong spatial reference and a high degree of concreteness, which strengthens the spatial planning imagination and can thus generate both agreement and conflict (Balz & Zonneveld, 2015). Visions and visioning processes do not replace spatial planning, but contribute to the discursive production of space and can capture the results of negotiation processes (Balz & Lingua, 2020). The results should be concrete enough to provide orientation for decision-making in regional transition, yet they must be flexible enough to allow for adjustment in the course of the transitions, for instance, by allowing for innovation and exnovation. Regional design processes perform in multiple ways: (a) analytically, they seek to explain spatial patterns, (b) normatively, they are metaphors for desirable spatial structures and are used as guiding principles to achieve policy goals and motivate action, and (c) discursively, they structure discussion between stakeholders (Balz & Zonneveld, 2015).

Recent attempts to foster transition through visions – Grand Paris, Grand Genève and Luxembourg in Transition – have primarily adopted regional design-oriented approaches to develop spatial visions on a large scale (Balz & Lingua, 2020; Geppert & Desjardins, 2021). These are developed using design practices, but also integrate workshops with regional actors and initiate collaborative sensemaking processes regarding these places and their future functions (van Dijk, 2011). Regional design thus represents a special form of strategic planning that highlights the importance of process and design, placing designers at the centre yet involving spatial planners and regional stakeholders at the same time (Kempenaar, 2020).

As a hybridisation of planning and design, regional design approaches link both ‘singularisation’ and ‘generalisation’ (Reckwitz, 2021). Applying design does not make spatial planners redundant. It recognises the particular value ascribed to places as sites where identity is (re)constituted while at the same time applying transferable principles of spatial design to envision their transformation. It can be useful to engage spatial planners explicitly in regional design processes. Spatial planners have specific understanding of their regions and of the challenges, interactions and influencing factors that characterise them (Kempenaar, 2020; Lingua, 2020). This is especially so in cross-border regions, where the number of planning documents, specifications and regulations to be observed can also increase significantly (Gilliard et al., 2020; Lingua, 2020). In order not only to create powerful images but also to anchor them in reality and initiate change-making, these context conditions need to be integrated into the visions. Planners can serve as valuable intermediaries; by knowing regional actors, their interests, challenges and conflicts, they might help to bridge the gap between concept and implementation.

In sum, recent debate over regional design supports the hypothesis from sustainability transitions research that regional design approaches can contribute meaningfully to regional transformation processes. Their results are more than just meaningful images or coherent narratives. Regional Design may result in planning concepts that spatialise principles, structure discourses and explain spatial structures and thus relate different fields of action to each other. Still, evaluations of regional design processes illustrate the difficulty of translating regional design ideas into planning practice and show how essential it is to involve regional planning actors in these processes and take their needs into account in order to establish compatibility (Ache, 2019; Feiertag et al., 2020). Since the outcomes of narrative-building processes can be unpredictable they may be treated with scepticism by stakeholders, who might even limit their participation (van Dijk, 2011). Influential actors may also derail regional design processes. Prominent examples, such as that of Grand Paris, show the danger of politicised processes and of findings being misused to rubber-stamp large investments or controversial decisions (Enright, 2016; Galland, 2020; Geppert & Desjardins, 2021). It is therefore necessary to explore not only how regional design practices can enhance the capacities of regional stakeholders in transition processes, but also how political dynamics and regional stakeholders influence the performance of design approaches.

3. Case study: Lusatia 2050 planning lab⁴

In the context of the package of investments to support coal phase-out and regional structural change in Germany’s last remaining lignite regions, our case study in Lusatia asks how regional transition can be supported by visions and visioning processes. In particular, we analyse the Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab, a regional design process launched in 2021 to promote reflection on spatial strategies for structural change. We examine what lessons implementation of the Planning Lab holds for understanding and enhancing the region’s transformative capacities. Our findings are based on document analysis of 24 applications to participate in the Planning Lab and four preliminary concepts produced in the process, alongside observations from six workshops of the advisory board, two planning lab meetings, and four semi-structured interviews. We paid special attention to (a) understanding of regional design as an instrument; (b) the process of implementation; and (c) the creation and reception of designs including the potential utilisation of results. The Planning Lab foresees transfer workshops with regional actors, but these have not been completed at the time of writing and are therefore not considered in this paper.

But before we get into the Planning Lab in more detail, we first need to describe the regional and governance context of structural change in Lusatia.

3.1. Coal phase-out and structural change in Lusatia

Comprising an area of 11,726 km2 and a population of 1.1 million, Lusatia is a heterogeneous region that lies across the federal states of Brandenburg and Saxony and borders Poland and Czechia (StBA, 2020; see Figure 1). The core of the region is the Lusatian mining area, the second largest of the German lignite coalfields and the largest in the former East Germany (RWI, 2018). By 1989, the region’s coal industry employed 79,000 workers and helped ensure the energy independence of the German Democratic Republic. Yet reunification was accompanied by precipitous decline, as deindustrialisation led to job losses and massive out-migration. This has been compounded by ongoing peripheralisation trends, including demographic and socio-economic shrinkage, brain-drain, and environmental problems, as well as stigmatisation, fears of decline, and rising populism (Kühn & Lang, 2017; Heer et al., 2021).

Figure 1. Lusatia region (own illustration).

Alongside the public sector, the coal industry remains the biggest employer in the region, with 13,245 direct and indirect jobs (RWI, 2018). Industry (including chemicals giant BASF) adds about 30% of value added. The region has a number of small- and medium-sized enterprises with low regional interdependence, scarcely identifiable local value chains, and low research intensity compared to the national average (Petersen Hardraht Pruggmayer, 2019). Coal shapes not only the region’s economic structure, but also its identity. This was capitalised upon by the 2010 International Building Exhibition, which sought to preserve the region’s industrial and architectural heritage and set anchor points for regional identity (Deshaies, 2018). The development of a new lake landscape from rehabilitated and flooded former mining areas and the promotion of industrial-cultural artefacts are intended to develop tourism into an important branch of the region’s economy (WRL, 2020).

The federal government’s decision to phase-out lignite mining and power generation by 2038 at the latest has added a new dynamic to this situation. Legal and economic framework conditions have been set for regional structural change to be shaped in the medium term, with the aim of developing attractive living and working conditions and sustainable spatial structures in the long term. 17 billion euros are to be invested in Lusatia in correspondence with legally enshrined guiding visions and action programs (StrStG, 2020). While the legal framework and objectives have been set by the federal government, federal states are responsible for defining structures to manage the transition process and involve districts, municipalities, and private actors (see Table 1).

Table 1. Stakeholders of the regional transition process (own illustration).

Spatial Level	Institutions & Actors
	Brandenburg	Saxony
Local	4 Districts + City of Cottbus Municipalities	2 Districts Municipalities
Regional	Regional Policy: State Chancellery Lusatia Economic Region Spatial Planning: Regional Planning Association	Spatial Planning: Regional Planning Association^1
Federal State	Spatial Planning: State Planning Department	Regional Policy ^2: Ministry for Regional Development (Department Structural Development) Agency for Structural Development Spatial Planning: Ministry for Regional Development (Department State Planning)
National	Regional Policy: Federal Ministry for Economics (BMWI) Spatial Planning: Federal Ministry of Interior (BMI)

¹In Germany, regional planning associations are public corporations that coordinate the spatial development of a region.

²Saxony has two lignite regions, so regional policy for structural development is based at the federal state level.

Initial findings from our ongoing BMBF-funded project permitted us to identify several features of structural change management in the region: (1) The present development approach is largely project-based and offers little strategic or long-term orientation. In particular, there seems to be no long-term strategy or priority-setting to engender an immediate sustainability transformation; (2) Regional development strategies are strongly determined by the existing distribution of power between government departments and ministries, with regional policy being privileged, while spatial dimensions receive scant attention and integrative spatial development strategies are missing; (3) It has proven difficult for regional actors to establish durable and transparent joint governance structures for Lusatia across existing administrative boundaries between the federal states of Brandenburg and Saxony, but also with regard to Poland and Czechia in the long term (Herberg et al., 2020).

Competence for the elaboration of long-term development goals and integrative future visions has been assigned to regional policy, with ministries for economics, regional development, and transportation playing the decisive role in spatial development, while spatial planning departments and environmental ministries play a subordinate role (Heer et al., 2021). This means that the spatial dimensions of structural change have so far only been given secondary consideration (BfRE, 2021). Strategies to date focus predominantly on large-scale projects in urban centres, aimed at strengthening the economy and generating jobs. Ecological sustainability goals are, however, neglected. A recent evaluation of the projects selected for support from the structural funds highlights the ad hoc financing of measures in both federal states that may improve local living conditions but make only a small contribution to successful structural development (Ragnitz, 2021).

Planning is further complicated by the cross-border nature of the region. As a funding construct, Lusatia consists of four districts and the city of Cottbus in Brandenburg and two districts in Saxony (KWSB, 2019). These administrative and jurisdictional boundaries pose a particular challenge when it comes to developing a spatial planning strategy that goes beyond existing formal state-specific (regional) plans. State governments in Brandenburg and Saxony have established independent strategies (action programmes) and institutions to manage structural change in Lusatia. Existing planning and coordination mechanisms are ill-suited to address regional development across the region (Heer et al., 2021). A cross-border development strategy drawn up by stakeholders from business, science, culture, politics and civil society (WRL, 2020) has found little reflection in practice.

The Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab, which was realised from January to September 2021, sought to close these gaps and help develop existing approaches and strategies into an integrative comprehensive spatial vision. This was done by a collaborative regional design approach that linked knowledge, experience and perspectives of external design teams with that of local experts. The process was run by the authors in collaboration with spatial planning actors and regional policy experts in Brandenburg and Saxony, who provided support as members of the advisory board and act as addressees of the project.

3.2. Methods: planning the Planning Lab

Within the framework of the BMBF-funded research project, we tracked ongoing debates over governance structures through document analysis of strategy and policy papers, interviews with policy and planning actors, and observations of meetings and events. This permitted us to gain insights into regional actor constellations, interests and approaches, and thus also to identify shortcomings. These observations revealed that the process of structural change in Lusatia lacks comprehensive spatial development strategies and visions regarding sustainable futures. Instead, the debates revolve around small-scale, spatially separated strategies and guidelines that collect measures that continue to pursue current priorities – e.g. economic development in the industrial sector or the expansion of infrastructure. Little attention is paid either to the spatial impacts of measures or environmentally sustainable approaches. In-depth interviews with regional planning experts confirmed that too little attention was paid to planning expertise, but that it could make a contribution to structural change. At the same time, interviews revealed the narrow scope for planning input, among other things because the political process was opaque, under pressure to produce quick results, and was dominated by state ministries. Local, regional or state level planning expertise is hardly integrated. In the early stages of the current transformation process, a development strategy for the entire Lusatia region was developed with the broad participation of various experts – also from spatial planning – as well as the general population (WRL [Wirtschaftsregion Lausitz], 2020), which represents a good starting point for strategic and foresighted planning, but has since been superseded by diverging approaches in Brandenburg and Saxony. Against the background of these developments and deficits in the regional governance structure, we have turned to the approach of regional design to test the advantages of visual representations and co-creative processes, and to develop overall spatial visions for the transformation of Lusatia in an informal planning format.

For our preliminary analysis of regional design approaches we chose cases of similar complexity, approaches with a focus on large-scale regional designs in Europe and more recent, regional approaches in Germany. We thus examined regional design concepts in the Helsinki (2007) and Ruhr (2013) metropolitan regions, Cologne-Bonn (2019), Hamburg (2019) and Luxembourg (2010–2022) using document analysis and seven semi-structured interviews with participants, organisers and regional design experts, regarding the implementation of such processes at regional scale, organisational challenges, and eventual outcomes. Based on these results, we developed the concept for a Planning Lab, which we adapted and further developed in dialogues and four workshops with regional experts in planning and regional policy. As the findings from the literature on regional design suggest, a collaborative approach was implemented that includes knowledge and perspectives of external design teams and of local experts. Furthermore, the findings of the analyses fed into the thematic orientation of the Planning Lab and sensitised us to the actors involved, but they also influenced the architecture of the process and made us aware of possible barriers to implementation and drawing further outcomes from the process. We opted for a multi-phase cooperative procedure that allowed close coordination and direct influence of regional stakeholders in the design process. This would give the external design teams enough time to become familiar with the region and carry out analyses while entailing active involvement of regional stakeholders from the beginning. Given limited time and financial resources (and because the aforementioned development strategy had tied up the capacities of much of the active citizenry and revealed participation fatigue) it was decided not to involve the general public in the design process.

In a first stage, we convoked an advisory board (see Figure 2). This was intended as a steering group to onboard regional stakeholders as co-organisers of the Planning Lab, but it morphed into an advisory role as it became clear that key regional stakeholders did not wish to assume ownership of the process (see below). This advisory board was supplemented with additional expertise from science and regional practice (see Figure 2) in order to jointly form an assessment committee, which, in contrast, was effortlessly accomplished. The role of critical discussant, and the high level of political attention accorded to structural change in Lusatia ensured a great deal of interest among experts invited to participate. Through these committees, the Planning Lab combined actors from regional policy as the currently most central actors in the transformation of Lusatia, actors from spatial planning who have not been sufficiently involved in the process so far, as well as actors from science to further anchor the contents of the Planning Lab. At the same time, different levels of government were integrated into the process due to the structure of the planning system.

Figure 2. Stakeholder Map (own illustration).

The Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab was then launched in January 2021 with a call for applications from interdisciplinary planning teams, who were also asked to submit comments on the suitability of regional design approaches for addressing challenges faced by coal regions in transition. The call allowed us to extend beyond regionally anchored design teams and make use of experience from outside the region while ensuring quality and fairness in selection.

We received 24 high-quality applications from mostly international and interdisciplinary teams, of which four were selected to participate further in a collaborative planning process to provide strategies and visions for the spatial development of Lusatia. Criteria for the team selection were mentioned in the call for applications. They included experience with regional planning approaches, a convincing presentation of the team’s motivation, and a place-based conceptual proposal as well as a suitable mix of disciplines involved. Teams comprised specialists in (landscape) architecture, urban and spatial planning, as well as experts in mobility planning, economics or journalism. In this process, teams received extensive terms of reference, which we developed on the basis of studies and planning documents and modified in discussion with the advisory board. A kick-off workshop was held to bring together the external planning teams with (regional) experts to discuss and further develop their concepts and adapt their visions to Lusatia. This was combined with an excursion to provide impressions of the region and its challenges. At a subsequent workshop in September 2021, final plans were presented and evaluated by the assessment committee (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Lusatia 2050 Planning Lab process (own illustration).

Teams were given the task of developing an equitable spatial development vision for Lusatia on the basis of existing strategies and plans, taking into account economic and ecological criteria, reducing or avoiding regional disparities, and outlining an ecologically sustainable development path towards a resilient, climate neutral region. This required first preparing an analysis of the initial situation in Lusatia in order to ground the overall regional concept for a sustainability transformation at a second stage. In a final step, the teams also developed detailed analyses and solutions for individual aspects of the concept at subregional level.

After this introduction to the planning process, in the following section we would like to provide more in-depth insights into the analyses of the planning process and its outcome. These result from observations in the process, accompanying workshops and semi-structured interviews (cf. methods 3.2).

4. Findings: the Lusatia 2050 planning Lab in practice

Comparable to other regional design processes, the Planning Lab aimed to provide impulses for regional policies and strengthen the role of sustainability in the transition process through the development of an integrative and comprehensive spatial vision for Lusatia. The preceding analysis of regional design concepts influenced the conception of the Planning Lab primarily with regard to its format and composition, but also highlighted the challenge (and importance) of communicating results in a transfer phase after the design process. The method adopted sought to foster collaboration with regional stakeholders from spatial planning and regional policy and create a space for negotiation over important factors for regional development in order to contribute to regional governance capacities and reflexive learning processes. The integration of key regional development stakeholders offered the possibility of anchoring ideas for future developments and initiating measures that could ultimately be implemented.

However, we also found that the participation of state actors led to a high level of politicisation, resulting in negotiation at all stages; over the process, the constitution and staffing of the advisory committee, and attempts to manage for specific outcomes. The logics and constraints on action that come from occupying ministerial and departmental hierarchies, and preconceptions of what was feasible or realistic, made it difficult to produce the space of suspended hierarchies, which is supposed to foster open discussion and creative thinking about alternative futures beyond familiar planning specifications and spatial concepts.

4.1. Negotiation: adapting the concept to stakeholder demands

Preparatory workshops to onboard stakeholders and adapt a regional design approach to Lusatia turned into negotiations over the objectives and priorities of the Planning Lab, spatial definitions of the region and its boundaries, as well as the orientation of the process towards sustainability, on the one hand, and economic development, on the other. These debates questioned how open-ended the process should be, what role existing planning strategies should have, and, most fundamentally, revealed an underlying power struggle over who has the authority to develop concepts for the region. The issue of power proved central to the process and difficult to resolve in this soft space across different disciplines, territories and juridical borders.

As key regional stakeholders refused to claim ownership of the process, the intended organising committee morphed into an advisory board. Ownership may have implied accountability for its outcomes. Furthermore, a position of responsibility in the process might have given the impression of questioning the results of their own regional strategies, some of which had been developed under difficult conditions.

Stakeholder participation in the Planning Lab was more politically determined than expected and decided by governmental actors. This dominance was exacerbated by the limited number and tenuous position of regional experts in this deprived, sparsely populated region, who found themselves subordinated to state planners, making their formal involvement untenable. While the willingness of regional planners to participate in an advisory board was quickly established, decisions on departmental responsibility in each federal state took time. Members of a spatial planning department initially contributed actively, but were then barred from attending as the question of departmental competence in Saxony was decided in favour of regional policy. They were replaced by regional policy actors. The repeated shifts in responsibilities between different offices, especially between regional policy and spatial planning, delayed the implementation of the project and created tensions which finally led to the withdrawal of the state planning authority of Saxony, who subsequently retained only informal involvement. At the end of the preparatory phase, the composition of the committees was consolidated and a compromise reached on the implementation of the Planning Lab. Regional planning and the responsible state authority had an informal form of representation from each of the participating federal states. On the other hand, stakeholders for regional policies were actively represented on both the advisory board and the assessment committee (see Figure 2).

The regional design methodology, both in its implementation and in the potential results, was far from what many stakeholders imagined and thought would be useful. It took several conversations to introduce its merits and to convey the results that could be expected, how they differ from existing spatial strategies, and what benefits can consequently be achieved. Furthermore, the methodology constituted a black box with potential to challenge existing planning approaches, paradigms, and values. Concerns about the open-endedness of the process and uncertainty of its results became manifest in debates over preconditions, depth of detail, and eventual use of the findings. State planners sought to formulate narrow specifications in the terms of reference that would help control the results but would limit visionary thinking. They demanded that the existing development plans and investment projects be used as frame-works and that the spatialisation of existing development strategies should take up more room than usual in a regional design concept. The orientation to sustainability was limited, as regional actors considered ecological aspects secondary to the challenges of economic development and public services, and not of interest to the districts and their constituents.

As a low-power actor invested in implementing the Planning Lab, we had to acquiesce to the demands of high-power stakeholders. The Planning Lab was organised exclusively by IOER and issues of ecological sustainability were subordinated to a wider regional development agenda. Expectations of outcomes in terms of possible sustainability or governance innovations had to be adjusted accordingly. In order to enhance the potential of the developed visions, transfer workshops will be organised to discuss all four concepts in sub-regional or sub-sectoral groups. The transfer workshops aim to widen and deepen discussions of the visions and to identify linkages for further planning and implementation options as well as to promote a cross border strategic exchange. Through discussions with stakeholders and a broader professional public, an attempt will be made to develop the designs into boundary objects and thus into actors in the structural change process. In addition, the transfer workshops will further reflect on the applicability of the visions to planning practice.

4.2. Visions and their reception

Contrary to the attempts of administrative stakeholders to tightly frame the process, design teams incorporated ecology and sustainability in their motivation letters, as well as in their analyses and design concepts, more prominently than was requested. The need for climate adaptation in response to increasing droughts and water shortages, as well as carbon sink options and renewable energies, often provided entry points for the teams. One team took a radical approach by mapping transition initiatives and entrepreneurs and focusing on their potential to catalyse change in regional development. In their selection of topics for development, the background and expertise of the teams seemed to be more influential than the documentation – studies, programmes, concepts – provided. Their expertise ranged from grassroots movements and transition initiatives to the knowledge economy and new public transport concepts. Yet circular economy approaches and decentralised structures seemed to provide common ground. Just as approaches differed from grassroots initiatives to new knowledge campuses, so did the local and regional embeddedness of the concepts. In all cases, the designs presented visions and images of possible futures rather than implementation-oriented concepts to spatialise existing development strategies.

The visions were presented and discussed at an interim colloquium. The majority of proposed strategies were regional applications of growth and urbanisation concepts, as shown by approaches to strengthen the knowledge society, city alliances and new networks. Uncertainties stemming from unclear spatialisation of sustainability initiatives or climate-related concepts offered gateways for regional stakeholders to criticise their feasibility and point out gaps in the visions. In particular, the approach most in line with an established approach to sustainability transitions (strategic niche management; Kemp et al., 1998; Schot & Geels, 2008; Smith & Raven, 2012), which relied on empowering niche transition actors⁵, received strong criticism. It was suggested that the concept was elitist and could not be communicated to decision-makers. Approaches such as climate-oriented forest conversion and changes to agriculture also deviated strongly from the existing development trajectory and were thus greeted critically with regard to their feasibility. This highlights the difficulty even a process designed to encourage open thinking had in the face of well-established incumbents institutionally invested in habitual ways of thinking. In response to these criticisms, design teams retained their epistemic freedom and did not compromise more innovative concepts to correspond to established approaches or conceptions of feasibility. Stakeholder’s expectations of a clear spatialisation of existing strategies and reappraisal of existing studies into an overall spatial concept were therefore not met, or only in part. It remains to be seen whether these gaps will lead to limited stakeholder commitment or generate innovation in thinking.

5. Conclusions

These findings from the implementation of the Planning Lab in the context of Lusatia’s structural transformation illustrate the potentials and pitfalls of applying a regional design methodology to a highly politicised coal region in transition. Our choice for a regional design approach that responded to the demands of regime actors and regional planners aimed to develop common perspectives and a positive spatial vision for the development of Lusatia through cross-border collaboration and learning. But involving these stakeholders entailed restricting the project’s innovation orientation, especially concerning sustainability and strategic planning.

The Planning Lab became a microcosm of structural transformation in Lusatia as a whole. The same factors that hinder an integrated, long-term, spatial development strategy could be observed in the Planning Lab: inter-ministerial disputes over competency, fragmentation and non-symmetry of administrative structures across the two federal states. Not only did people and institutions change, but also the framework conditions for the Planning Lab were altered. This makes strategic planning initiatives like regional design approaches at once highly meaningful while at the same time fraught with tension. It also highlights the importance of intermediaries in such processes. As the Planning Lab was led by an academic research institute, doubts and discontinuities on the part of regional actors did not mean the end of the process.

Indeed, the Planning Lab became a site for negotiation and debate over many crucial aspects of the structural transformation. Negotiations over space – its delimitation, characteristics, and resulting development challenges – and according priorities for development policy demonstrate that the Lusatian lignite district remains rather a construct of regional policy than a region anchored in identity and practice. This validates the postulate that regional design processes such as the Planning Lab are useful in creating arenas for negotiation and debate (cf. Balz & Zonneveld, 2015). The fact that it was run by a non-political actor, and that state actors did not have to take ownership of the process, ensured their participation and engagement. Although its eventual outcomes are both messy and unquantifiable, the importance of such initiatives and processes in stimulating the development of transformative capacities should not be dismissed (Olsson et al., 2004).

Expectations that the Planning Lab could offer an extraordinary space for thinking, free of the usual constraints and hierarchies, were not met. It occurred within existing power structures, which state actors in particular ensured were observed, and was shaped by ongoing power struggles (Kühn, 2008; van Dijk, 2011). These limitations did not influence the design teams, but did affect the receptivity of state actors both to the process and to the visions presented. From the beginning, the Planning Lab was greeted with a high degree of circumspection, despite the apparent lack of a spatial dimension in regional policies. The workshops revealed little openness to innovation on the part of state authorities, which they justified by the population’s putative low propensity for innovation. In particular, the ecological goals of sustainable development were sidelined, both in negotiation over methodology and in response to visions with the argument that these were secondary to the socio-economic challenges of the region and difficult to communicate to local decision makers. This relegation of ecological goals comes despite the stated ambition of the clean energy transition, that the regions exemplify the transformation ‘towards a largely climate-neutral industrial society’ (KWSB, 2019:13; see also StrStG, 2020:§15/1). The Planning Lab does not appear to have fostered new thinking in this regard.

In the end, scepticism and resistance towards a long-term integrative and cross-border strategy may stem from present funding arrangements which lock in a centralised, project-based management approach without pronounced strategic orientation. This incentivises high-profile, quickly implementable, short-term measures that can flag the early successes of structural transformation and discourages coordination across federal states. It remains to be seen whether the Planning Lab will result in a rethinking of existing practice in spatial planning and regional policy, or conversely, whether it might further weaken the status of spatial planning within the administration and lead to undesired justification debates or new demands towards planning actors. Without recognition on the part of stakeholders of the desirability of, or the contribution that spatial planning can make to, a sustainability transition and what that entails, and without the attendant political will, it is unlikely that such visioning processes on their own will have the desired effects of enhancing transformative capacity, beyond sensitising stakeholders and stimulating consideration of topics that would otherwise go unaddressed. The most that can be hoped at this stage is that the visions provide an impulse to thought that will endure in future discussions and can contribute to reflection over the spatial dimensions and eventual outcomes of the clean energy transition. This gives scant comfort, considering the scale of the necessary structural transformation and the need for bold regional governance approaches to lead it.

For spatial imaginaries to serve as a common framework for regional action, more actors need to be involved in the process that follows. The choice of a limited actor framework and an exchange with mainly governmental and scientific actors resulted in only minor implications for regional governance. It remains to be seen to what extent it will be possible to involve private sector and civil society actors in follow-up transfer workshops, and to use these spatial images to stimulate coordinated action and discussion about the future of the region.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Bundesministerium f?r Bildung und Forschung [03SF0562].

Notes

1. Leibniz-Institut für ökologische Raumentwicklung.

2. Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.

3. This research and policy advice project was launched in 2018 to accompany the early phase-out transformation process and to support the development of regional strategies and governance structures. More information can be found at the project website https://izs-goerlitz.ioer.de/en/research/.

4. Planungslabor ‚Raumbilder Lausitz 2050‘.

5. Niches are a central element in concepts of transition literature. They refer to protected spaces in which (radical) innovations can emerge. (see Geels & Schot, 2007).