Crisis or opportunity? Seminar at KU, Life
4th June 2013
NATIONAL SPATIAL PLANNING IN CRISIS?
Kristian Olesen, kristian@plan.aau.dk
Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University
ABSTRACT
Strategic spatial planning in Denmark (national spatial planning) has been on standby
since the Danish government reform in 2007. What is deemed to be practically possible
and politically legitimate in terms of national spatial planning has changed significantly in a
short time. The acting spaces of strategic spatial planning and the Danish Ministry of the
Environment have not only narrowed, but are being significantly transformed. This
presentation seeks to unpack some of these changes with the aim of developing an
understanding of the current state of Danish national spatial planning.
OUTLINE
This brief research note discusses transformations in contemporary strategic spatial
planning in Denmark and the implications for the acting space of planners in the Ministry of
the Environment. The discussion builds on research reported elsewhere (Olesen 2011,
2012; Olesen and Richardson 2011, 2012).
The national planning report [landsplanredegørelse] The New Map of Denmark published
in 2006 sought to rethink strategic spatial planning in Denmark in the context of the
forthcoming governance reform (Ministry of the Environment 2006). The borders of the
new administrative regions were believed to be inadequate for managing the general
development trends of two emerging urban regions (Olesen 2011). As a consequence, the
ministry decided to define its own appropriate scales of planning and set up informal
collaborative processes [dialogprojekter] involving municipalities in (sub-)national spatial
strategy-making (Ministry of the Environment 2006). The original intention was to inscribe
the outputs from these processes, voluntary strategic spatial plans, into the planning
framework by promoting them to the status of national planning directives
[landsplandirektiver]. In sum, the Ministry of the Environment’s approach to strategic
spatial planning was primarily regulatory. As one ministry planner put it, the ministry
wanted to involve the municipalities in implementing the ministry’s spatial policies (Olesen
2011).
As reported elsewhere (Olesen 2011), the strategy-making processes took a significant
turn away from the regulatory approach as a result of several factors: a) the municipalities
strongly opposed regulation, b) the new Minister of the Environment was against
application of national planning directives, and c) the ministry was occupied with
organisational restructuring, including decentralisation. As a consequence, the ministry
planners involved in the processes were uncertain about their acting space and the
minister’s support to the processes. Within the ambiguous acting space, the ministry
planners had to adopt a new planning style and invent a new role for themselves, whilst
the processes were being set up and as they evolved. Often the ministry planners simply
ended up taking the (neutral) role as secretary or coordinator of the processes, leaving it to
Crisis or opportunity? Seminar at KU, Life
4th June 2013
the municipalities to define aim and scope of the processes. The political spatial policies
presented a few years earlier seemed no longer political legitimate.
As the planning processes moved away from discussions on regulation, and instead
became concerned with issues like ‘how to foster economic growth’, it became more
uncertain what the ministry planners actually could contribute to in the process. As one
municipal head of planning put it: all the ministry planners want to discuss regulation, but
all the municipalities want to discuss growth, which is really beyond the ministry’s authority
and expertise. Here, the processes ended in a stalemate. The ministry decided not to
follow up on the processes (or the issues the processes sat out to engage with).
REFLECTIONS
The latest restructuring in the Ministry of the Environment, in which spatial planning has
been placed in the Nature Agency [Naturstyrelsen] and thereby largely reduced to nature
preservation, seems to narrow the Ministry of the Environment’s action space even further.
With the contemporary organisational setup, it is very difficult to imagine that the Ministry
of the Environment will be able to lead meaningful discussions when it comes to strategic
spatial planning. Perhaps the best illustration of the Ministry of the Environment’s limited
action space is the 2010 national planning report (Ministry of the Environment 2010),
which adopts a section-oriented approach and reduces national spatial planning to a
minimum.
As argued elsewhere, Danish national spatial planning seems to be in a state of crisis
(Olesen 2011; Olesen and Richardson 2012). Processes of neoliberalisation (new public
management and neoliberal political climate) have stripped the Ministry of the Environment
(and its planners) of any real authority or ability to set the national agenda when it comes
to strategic spatial planning. Bold visions and spatial strategies with clear political content
belong to the past. The ministry planners’ narrowing acting space has reduced them to
bureaucrats (and in some cases metagovernors), whose primary function is to manage
planning processes and prepare universal (non-spatial) policies. This has led to increasing
critique of the Ministry of the Environment’s role in spatial planning. Ironically, the Ministry
of the Environment seems to have moved further away from the municipalities (in terms of
planning culture), even though the governance reform and the 2006 planning report
sought to achieve the opposite.
REFERENCES
Ministry of the Environment (2006) Landsplanredegørelse 2006. Det nye Danmarkskort. Copenhagen:
Ministry of the Environment.
Ministry of the Environment (2010) Landsplanredegørelse 2010. Copenhagen: Ministry of the Environment.
Olesen K (2011) Strategic Spatial Planning in Transition: a case study of Denmark. Unpublished doctoral
thesis, Aalborg University, Aalborg.
Olesen K (2012) Soft spaces as vehicles for neoliberal transformations of strategic spatial planning?
Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 30(5): 910-923.
Olesen K and Richardson T (2011) The spatial politics of spatial representation: relationality as a medium for
depoliticisation? International Planning Studies 16(4): 355-375.
Olesen K and Richardson T (2012) Strategic spatial planning in transition: contested rationalities and spatial
logics in 21st century Danish spatial planning. European Planning Studies 20(10): 1689-1706.