Practices of spatial governance in regional and city-region making

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Abstract

A planning account concerned with the rise of ‘soft spaces’ and ‘fuzzy boundaries’ has been object of increasing attention since the past decade (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2007; Haughton et al, 2010). In addition to or in substitution of formal, regulatory spaces of planning and governance, it is argued that soft spaces emerge as complementary arenas that bring different policy actors together to rework ‘the real geographies of development’ (Allmendinger & Haughton 2009). In these contexts, soft spaces result from the need to attain effective policy delivery and policy integration based on the rationale of ‘getting things done’ (ibid.). In this respect, the ‘hollowing out’ of nation-states (Rhodes, 1994) and the progressive loss of ‘territorial synchrony’ (Hajer, 2003) is directly linked with what Jones et al. (2005) refer to as the process of ‘filling in’ the state, which entails the emergence of soft spaces and practices of neoliberal spatial governance (Allmendinger et al., 2015; Allmendinger, 2016). Processes of ‘hollowing out’ and ‘filling in’ have thereby been conceived as examples of governance rescaling. Soft spaces could be similarly interpreted as a ‘further round of rescaling’ (Haughton et al, 2010), although characterised by a rather flexible and temporary qualities. While examples of soft spaces exist at diverse geographical scales including macro-regional and local levels, it is at the city-region as well as the sub-national/regional scales that they seem to emerge in a wide variety of governance forms (Allmendinger et al., 2015). From the perspective of regional development, soft spaces emerge as bottom-up initiatives including public and private stakeholders working across policy sectors and administrative scales. In this sense, soft spaces are understood as alternative institutional spaces of governance wherein possibilities for future place making may be imagined alongside hard space governance arrangements. Building on the above conceptualisation and in an attempt to contribute to recent work concerning the study of soft spaces (Allmendinger, Haughton, Knieling & Othengrafen, 2015), this paper presents three Danish cases at regional and city-regional scale that, within a decade, not only managed to align and consolidate but also contributed to undermine and replace hard spaces in the formal planning system. Drawing from the experience of North Denmark, the paper focuses on their constitutive and evolutionary character, their range of rationalities as well as the overall planning implications. In portraying the historical evolution of the three cases, the paper argues that soft spaces of governance have altogether supplanted the ‘steering’ role formerly attributed to statutory regional planning in Denmark. In doing so, soft spaces facilitate spatial development by influencing municipal planning agendas as well as municipal plans themselves. The three cases are briefly described as follows: • Regional Growth Forum (RGF), with an institutional set-up consisting of private and public stakeholders. Since the implementation of the Danish municipal reform in 2007, this partnership-oriented body has advanced and implemented business development strategies (BDS) aimed at improving local conditions for economic growth. • Municipal Contact Councils (Kommunekontaktråd or KKR), a political arena that fosters inter-municipal collaboration, which acts as the regional representative of an influential interest organisation known as Local Government Denmark (Kommunernes Landsforening or KL). With a mandate to support municipal interests at the regional scale, these councils have succeeded in 35 bringing together municipal directors and have developed into a significant regional player since the implementation of the structural reform a decade ago. • Business Region North Denmark (BRN) recently established as a collaborative body between the municipalities and the Region of North Denmark with a common agenda for growth. BRN is an instigator of projects where the municipalities, local business communities and educational institutions of North Denmark hold the role of implementers. Furthermore, it is argued that the creation of soft spaces of governance has also been promoted at the national level through national planning reports, which imply a need to rethink spatial planning in terms of economic growth and competitiveness demands (Ministry of the Environment, 2006, 2013). By aligning with the government’s long-term growth discourse, the Ministry of the Environment (whose planning mandate was transferred to the Ministry of Growth and Business by mid-2015) adopted a development orientation based on differentiated spatial planning in pursuit of economic growth according to local and regional strengths and potentials. In doing so, the ministry has proposed the constituency of either ‘metropolitan regions’ (in 2006) or ‘city-regions’ (in 2013). The case of BRN could be conceived as the prevailing soft space of governance aiming at positioning Aalborg as a prominent city-region. In synthesis, the Danish experience addressed in this paper is reminiscent of Allmendinger’s (2016) recent work on spatial governance with a focus on England, whereby the evolution and transformation of English planning is portrayed as follows: “Once a system for regulating and balancing change in the built and natural environments in the public interest, planning now finds itself facilitating development and economic growth for narrow, sectional interests.”
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Publikationsdatonov. 2016
Antal sider1
StatusUdgivet - nov. 2016
BegivenhedRegional Studies Association Winter Conference : New Pressures on Cities and Regions - London, Storbritannien
Varighed: 24 nov. 201625 nov. 2016

Konference

KonferenceRegional Studies Association Winter Conference
Land/OmrådeStorbritannien
ByLondon
Periode24/11/201625/11/2016

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