How do New Approaches emerge in Spatial Planning? Processes of Innovation in Fields of Activities in Urban and Regional Planning

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The research project addresses the question of how new approaches in spatial planning emerge and how they are implemented. It attempts to make productive use of the concept of innovation as developed in economic theory and sociology. The project will explore and conceptually clarify the ways in which substantially new objectives, concepts and procedures in spatial planning emerge and become widely accepted. In order do this, four prominent fields of action in spatial planning will be conceptually reworked and analyzed: (a) urban design: planning of new neighborhoods or whole housing areas; (b) urban regeneration: temporary uses and so-called place pioneers; (c) regional planning: concepts of a learning region; (d) neighborhood regeneration: area management in deprived neighborhoods. Case studies will be divided up according to the expertise of the respective member of the research team and analyzed in collaboration. In the case studies, an appropriate mix of methods will be employed. The project aims at identifying (i) relevant factors and trajectories of innovation in spatial planning (product and process innovation) in their interdependencies. (ii) Supportive and hindering circumstances for innovation in spatial planning are identified and reflected against the background of existing planning theory. On the basis of this knowledge, the project is expected to shed a clearer light on the chances to identify and make better use of the existing, but yet underexploited opportunities to promote structural change in the sphere of spatial planning.