Is Regional Planning Dead or Just Coping? The Transformation of a State Sociospatial Project into Growth-Oriented Strategies

TLDR

Regional planning is increasingly reshaped by rapidly changing socioeconomic and political contexts, prompting questions about how its policies and practices are ultimately formed. This study proposes and applies an analytical model to examine the evolution of Danish regional planning over the past four decades. The model draws on state theory, state spatial selectivity, new planning spaces, and policy discourses to analyze this evolution. The analysis shows that Danish regional planning has moved from a sociospatial, welfare‑oriented state project to a growth‑oriented, neoliberal domain, with hierarchical governance replaced by soft, flexible policies that shift the planner’s role from addressing disparities to promoting competitiveness.

Abstract

How is regional planning transformed in increasingly changing socioeconomic and political contexts? How are regional planning policies and practices ultimately shaped and why? With this paper I propose and apply an analytical model based on notions of state theory, state spatial selectivity, new planning spaces, and policy discourses to examine how regional planning has evolved in the course of the past four or so decades. On the basis of an analysis concerned with the history and evolution of Danish regional planning I argue that regional planning has shifted away from being a sociospatial and welfarist state project towards being a domain characterised by growth-oriented strategies that stand for neoliberal political agendas. In analysing this process I show that hierarchical forms of governance and statutory mechanisms embedded within them have been largely substituted by emerging soft spaces of governance and flexible policies intended to destabilise formal planning arenas. Finally, I discuss the fact that the ‘classical–modernist’ steering role of regional planning that once sought to tackle socioeconomic disparities has been replaced by a facilitating role that promotes competitiveness through growth-oriented policy instruments.