Empirical Research on Planning Cultures in the Context of Open Space, Housing and Retail Development in Shrinking Cities and City Regions

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The aim of the proposed project is to find theoretically and empirically grounded answers to the question in what sense a change in local and regional planning cultures takes place during the transition from growth-oriented planning towards adaptations to multidimensional shrinking processes. Specifically, new insights will be gained into persistence and change of informal institutional structures being composed of values and norms, assignments of meanings and perception patterns which guide decision making and action. Here, investigations into the adaptation of political discourses, logics of action and action patterns in interrelation with the creation and application of new planning concepts, tools, and procedures are needed. In consideration of development paths as well as different spatial reference levels of action and their interdependencies, the complex interrelationships between the world of formal institutions, which is the respective planning system as the formal framework for action, and the world of informal institutions, which means the informal operational framework comprising discourses and cognitive dimensions of action, will be analysed. For this purpose, using a model derived from institutional and action theories, configurations and dynamics of planning culture at the municipal and regional level will be explored by comparative analysis based on four case studies (Gelsenkirchen, Saarbrücken, Halle, Chemnitz). The comparison is designed in three contrasting ways: Firstly, by selecting open space, housing and retail development, sectoral fields of planning that differ in terms of institutional settings and constellations of actors will be moved into focus. Therefore, based on a comparison of sectoral adaptations under conditions of shrinkage, new findings with regard to sectoral variations of change in planning culture are expected. Secondly, by comparing case studies from the former West and East Germany, the project will identify implications for adaptation to shrinkage due to divergent development paths in planning cultures based on conflicting political systems as well as different economic and demographic frameworks after reunification. Thirdly, by comparing two case studies with similar development paths of shrinkage in the old federal states (Gelsenkirchen and Saarbrücken) on the one hand and in the new federal states (Halle and Chemnitz) on the other hand, the influence of specific local and regional planning cultures to adaptation strategies towards shrinkage will be examined alongside similarities due to common formal as well as informal institutional worlds of planning.