Beyond Soft Planning: Towards a Soft Turn in Planning Theory and Practice?

Introduction

Over the last decade, soft planning has become an increasingly visible concept in planning literature. Since Phil Allmendinger and Graham Haughton coined the term soft spaces to frame the Thames Gateway development (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2007,?2009), soft planning has been used to describe a growing number of practices that occur at the margins of statutory planning systems (Faludi, 2013;?Illsley et al., 2010;?Kaczmarek, 2018;?Luukkonen and Moilanen, 2012;?Metzger and Schmitt, 2012;?Purkarthofer, 2016;?Stead, 2014;?Waterhout, 2010). The use of soft planning translates planning solutions that go beyond traditional administrative boundaries and introduce new governance processes between formal and informal structures and institutions. These develop at different scales, ranging from the European level (Faludi, 2010,?2013;?Luukkonen and Moilanen, 2012;?Purkarthofer, 2016,?2018;?Stead, 2014) to regional approaches (Kaczmarek, 2018;?Metzger and Schmitt, 2012;?Waterhout, 2010) and local community-led initiatives (Illsley et al., 2010).

However, as soft planning-related literature proliferates, so does the diversity of approaches and planning practices it encompasses. This diversity, in face of a still unclear conceptual outline, fuels long-standing questions about what can or cannot be considered as soft planning and how it is useful to planning theory and practice. In fact, soft spaces (e.g., (Allmendinger et al., 2015;?Allmendinger and Haughton, 2007), soft planning (e.g., (Kaczmarek, 2018;?Purkarthofer, 2016), and soft spaces of planning (e.g., (Illsley et al., 2010) seem to be used interchangeably without a clear-cut distinction and definition. Additional complexity arises from the fact that soft planning practices to a certain degree seems to replicate the paradigm shift from traditional land-use planning to strategic spatial planning (Albrechts, 2004;?European Communities, 1997;?Nadin, 2007;?Vigar, 2009). Several questions therefore arise: What exactly distinguishes soft planning from strategic spatial planning? What is new in soft planning and how useful is it for planning theory and practice? What normative debate does it entail and how significant is it to better understand the risks and opportunities planning is facing today? Last but not least, can the conceptual systematization of soft planning contribute to expand this debate to other geographic contexts? So far, this is undoubtedly a heavily geographically skewed debate, which largely reflects an European Anglo-Saxon discursive hegemony stemming from planning practices in the UK (Allmendinger and Haughton, 2007;?Vigar, 2009), Nordic countries (Olesen, 2011;?Purkarthofer and Mattila, 2018;?Stead, 2014), and the Netherlands (Waterhout, 2010). Eastern (Kaczmarek, 2018) and Southern European perspectives (Cavaco and Costa, 2019;?Elorrieta, 2018;?Ferr?o, 2014;?Giannakourou, 2011;?Mourato and Rosa Pires, 2007;?Oliveira and Breda-Vázquez, 2010) are a marginal minority with soft planning rarely used explicitly.

In short, soft planning is conceptually and empirically far from systematized. This paper addresses this issue by examining whether a?soft turn?is taking place in planning theory and practice and, if so, what does it entail.

First, we identify possible origins, core features, and approaches behind soft spaces and soft planning (The emergence of an alternative planning concept?).

Second, we outline soft planning as a?construct?in planning theory, using five key ”contextual components of planning" to comparatively review soft planning and strategic spatial planning (For a piecemeal interpretation of soft planning).

In sum, we review a conceptual debate looking for how it sheds light on emerging planning practices.

Finally, we reflect on the relevance of such?construct?to foreground soft planning as a?concept?and thus clarify and raise awareness on the risks, challenges, and opportunities that planning currently faces (Final remarks).

For the full article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14730952221087389

Reference:

"CAVACO, Cristina, MOURATO, Jo?o, COSTA, Jo?o Pedro, FERR?O, Jo?o

‘Beyond Soft Planning: Towards a Soft Turn in Planning Theory and Practice?’ in Planning Theory. Vol. 0(0) 1–24. DOI: 10.1177/14730952221087389"