‘Governance Approaches’ to Study Planning Systems

Previous comparative studies on spatial planning systems have revealed some critical issues: the weight to be attributed to planning cultures, the missing definition of the nature of the system itself and the limited usefulness of purely descriptive comparisons. Addressing these issues in the last two decades has led to a reconceptualisation of the planning system, centred on its social function (and construction) rather than on the multiplicity of possible characteristics. Recognising that the political process through which the public authority assigns the rights of spatial development matters at least as much as the technical function serving this process has led to the introduction of more articulated terminologies, such as ‘spatial governance and planning systems’. This progress has mainly matured in Europe through various research projects dedicated to the understanding and improvement of ‘territorial governance’ within the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion (ESPON) programme. Three system models are currently recognised here which, according to the technical-political devices for assigning land rights, are usually defined as conformative, performative and neo-performative. Based on the characteristics of these institutional technology models and their ability to ensure public control over spatial development, a new typology of systems in Europe has been proposed. Overall, this indicates that systems that tend to assign rights on a case-by-case basis after the evaluation of projects would be more effective than the more traditional ones based on generalised binding zoning. While such typology of systems seems to find confirmation in the medium to long term data on land consumption in Europe, the concept of institutional technology has also proved useful for studying the phenomenon of the “Europeanisation” of territorial governance.