TY - JOUR

T1 - Planners between the chairs

T2 - How planners (do not) adapt to transformative practices

AU - Othengrafen, Frank

AU - Levin-Keitel, Meike

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft (DFG) through grant OT 468/3–1 (project number 60470360). We further acknowledge financial support by DFG and TU Dortmund within the funding programme Open Access Publishing. We also would like to thank our colleague Dominique Charlotte Breier from Leibniz Universität Hannover for carrying out the cluster analysis. Furthermore, we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their valuable comments on the previous version of the article. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2019/12/27

Y1 - 2019/12/27

N2 - Even though the turn to practice is widely accepted in the field of urban planning, the practices of planners are empirically largely unexplored. Looking at the daily routines and practices of urban planners thus allows a deeper insight into what planning is, and how planning practices are related to innovation and transformation. To do so, we start from the assumption that behaviour is a constellation of practices, including certain activities, a set of choices and actions, patterns of behaviour or forms of interaction that is organised in a certain space or context by common understandings and rules. By conducting an online survey among planners in medium-sized German cities, we first identified a wide range of planning practices and activities in general. In a second step, we conducted a statistical cluster analysis resulting in six types of planners: (1) the ‘local-specific analysts,’ (2) the ‘experienced generalists,’ (3) the ‘reactive pragmatists,’ (4) the ‘project-oriented planners,’ (5) the ‘compensatory moderators,’ and (6) the ‘innovative designers.’ Each cluster has specific practices and activities, linked to characteristic value-sets, role interpretations and self-perceptions that might help explain the differences with regard to innovation and transformation. From the identified six groups or clusters of planners, only two clusters more or less consequently aim at innovation, experimentation and new approaches. One cluster is dedicated to collaborative practices whereas traditional practices predominate in three clusters at least, mainly because of legal requirements. This is the result of an increasing ‘formalisation’ of land-use planning, making planners focus on technical and formal practices, and, at the same time, lead to the reduced ‘attention’ to and implementation of conceptual approaches or ‘necessary’ transformative practices, including proactive approaches and strategic coordination with regard to sustainable urban development, but also comprising experiments, real labs or social innovations.

AB - Even though the turn to practice is widely accepted in the field of urban planning, the practices of planners are empirically largely unexplored. Looking at the daily routines and practices of urban planners thus allows a deeper insight into what planning is, and how planning practices are related to innovation and transformation. To do so, we start from the assumption that behaviour is a constellation of practices, including certain activities, a set of choices and actions, patterns of behaviour or forms of interaction that is organised in a certain space or context by common understandings and rules. By conducting an online survey among planners in medium-sized German cities, we first identified a wide range of planning practices and activities in general. In a second step, we conducted a statistical cluster analysis resulting in six types of planners: (1) the ‘local-specific analysts,’ (2) the ‘experienced generalists,’ (3) the ‘reactive pragmatists,’ (4) the ‘project-oriented planners,’ (5) the ‘compensatory moderators,’ and (6) the ‘innovative designers.’ Each cluster has specific practices and activities, linked to characteristic value-sets, role interpretations and self-perceptions that might help explain the differences with regard to innovation and transformation. From the identified six groups or clusters of planners, only two clusters more or less consequently aim at innovation, experimentation and new approaches. One cluster is dedicated to collaborative practices whereas traditional practices predominate in three clusters at least, mainly because of legal requirements. This is the result of an increasing ‘formalisation’ of land-use planning, making planners focus on technical and formal practices, and, at the same time, lead to the reduced ‘attention’ to and implementation of conceptual approaches or ‘necessary’ transformative practices, including proactive approaches and strategic coordination with regard to sustainable urban development, but also comprising experiments, real labs or social innovations.

KW - Cluster analysis

KW - Planning practice

KW - Role of planners

KW - Transformative practices

KW - Urban planning

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079689016&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.17645/up.v4i4.2237

DO - 10.17645/up.v4i4.2237

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85079689016

VL - 4

SP - 111

EP - 125

JO - Urban Planning

JF - Urban Planning

IS - 4

ER -