Strategic Spatial Planning for Urban and Regional Shrinking

Alois Humer The initial concern in this study is the fact that many cities and regions across Europe face demographic decline and economic downturn. The growing urban and metropolitan regions have so far received much higher attention in public and academic debates, especially when it comes to urban planning and economic performance. In contrast to the majority of spatial planning studies, this study will shed light on urban and regional developments of shrinking and decline instead of growth and enlargement. It will give a respective contribution to the ongoing academic debate on strategic spatial planning by introducing the problem of urban and regional shrinking. The main research question is: How can strategic spatial planning be adapted and developed for dealing with urban and regional shrinking? Strategic spatial planning is more than the formal and legal system of statutory spatial planning and the concept contains citizen participation, involvement of private actors, planning into the future and breaking with past development traits. The reason for focusing on strategic spatial planning is that the statutory planning (like local zoning plans and national planning perspectives) is fairly limited in responding to complex regional processes such as shrinking. Urban and regional shrinking is a politically delicate and complex matter and one can assume that awareness, perception and especially responses vary in various planning cultures. Therefore, this study follows a culturally sensitive approach and compares planning practices in two different but still comparable planning cultures: Finland and Austria. Main methods are literature, document and data analyses as well as expert and stakeholder interviews in case studies. The study will be enriched by workshops and panel settings in which the local and international scientific communities as well as planning experts and practitioners are given the possibility to interact on the basis of the study findings. Overall, the study will not only contribute to the ongoing theory building around strategic spatial planning but also add to the empirical knowledge for a better response of spatial planning to urban and regional shrinking. The first two years of research will be conducted in Finland. The applicant will be hosted by Prof. Dr. Raine Mäntysalo at Aalto University. A one year return phase to Austria is foreseen at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Prof. Dr. Heinz Fassmann). page 1 of 1

Strategic Spatial Planning in the Context of Urban and Regional Shrinking - comparing Finnish and Austrian Planning Cultures (J399-G29) Alois Humer The initial concern in this study was the fact that many cities and regions across Europe face demographic decline and economic downturn. The growing urban and metropolitan regions have so far received much higher attention in public and academic debates, especially when it came to urban planning and economic performance. In contrast to the majority of spatial planning studies, this study shed light on urban and regional developments of shrinking and decline instead of growth and enlargement. It gave a respective contribution to the ongoing academic debate on strategic spatial planning by introducing the problem of urban and regional shrinking. The main research question was: How can strategic spatial planning be adapted and developed for dealing with urban and regional shrinking? Strategic spatial planning is more than the formal and legal system of statutory spatial planning and the concept contains citizen participation, involvement of private actors, planning into the future and breaking with past development traits. The reason for focusing on strategic spatial planning was that the statutory planning (like local zoning plans and national planning perspectives) is fairly limited in responding to complex regional processes such as shrinking. Urban and regional shrinking was proven to be a politically delicate and complex matter. Case studies of the Finnish regions of Kotka-Hamina, Kainuu and Lapland revealed that there is some strong bias in strategic spatial planning towards mere growth-orientation, even if population and economic development of the past and of possible future trends is not promising growing trajectories. In cases of clear shrinking trends, it became evident that planning responses depend on various actors, whether they pro-actively tackle shrinking issues, or take agonistic stances. As far as comparative cases in Upper and Lower Austria have shown, such planning practice approaches are not necessarily subject to a national planning culture. Instead, Finnish and Austrian cases showed similarities. Main methods were literature, document and data analyses as well as expert and stakeholder interviews in case studies. Overall, the study did not only contribute to the ongoing theory building around strategic spatial planning but also added to the empirical knowledge for a better response of spatial planning to urban and regional shrinking. The first two years of research were conducted in Finland, hosted by the group of Professor Raine Mäntysalo at Aalto University; from May 2017 to April 2019. A one year return phase to Austria was conducted at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences; from July 2019 to June 2020. Findings of the project have been documented in several scientific journal articles and conference contributions.