Danish Municipal planning in Change: a Progress Report

The local authorities and the municipal planning are today under a considerable pressure of change. From a relatively practice-related approach this paper dicusses the turbulent situation characterizing the Danish municipal planning just now. The main idea of this paper is to describe and analyze Danish municipal planning at the entrance to the 2000 years, where many things in the everyday of planning are changed after pressure from the market, the state, the municipal organisation, the investors, the citizens and the planners themselves. In this situation of change there may be good reason to bear in mind what the basic task of physical planning at a local level has actually been and to discuss both what it is at the moment and what it can turn into in the future. The paper may actually raise more questions than it answers. The reason is that well-known political, administrative structures are breaking up, that the fight for planning competence in the open country is raging and that the protection og nature-friendly legislation, for which the previous gouvernment was responsible, is under quick phasing-out, at the same time as the traditional professional urban planner standards are challenged by actors with other educations and views of the development of our towns and cities.