Abstract
In the last decades, institutional reforms and new informal practices have deeply transformed ‘spatial planning’ systems in Europe; in a context of reduced resources, local actors must simultaneously adapt their agenda and networking strategies for local development and urban transformation. Do European mayors continue to have faith in ‘new’ instruments such as territorial strategic planning, integrated urban projects in public–private partnerships? Or do they presently have more trust in a regulation introduced hierarchically within vertical power relations? Are there particular ‘spatial planning’ practices linked to specific urban agendas? Which are the main difficulties mayors have to face in defining urban plans and projects? The mayors’ declarations on the different ‘spatial planning’ instruments show how local leaders are currently contributing to the re-construction of the planning systems. Under the sign of an increasing adherence to the principles of ‘communicative’ planning emerges a composite trend, in contrast with the hypothesis of a progressive uniformity of cultures and practices around Europe. The three patterns of interpretation of the regulation’s function resulting from the statements of mayors suggest, on the contrary, the appearance of original configurations, new national settings and cultures if not of urban situations, which echo some classical models but, nevertheless, deeply revised.
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Notes
- 1.
See for example the revision of the classical typologies proposed by Janin Rivolin (2017), based on the mechanisms of rights assignation for spatial development.
- 2.
The plan as a regulative instrument requires no financial means. However, to achieve the effects intended by planning regulation financial means are needed. If those (e.g. municipalities) setting these regulations do not possess these means, they have to adapt the regulation to these conditions. This could also imply that they have to adapt the regulation to the preferences of those (private actors) who have these means at their disposal. By referring to ‘spatial planning’ in the sense of Janin Rivolin (2012: 69)—outlined at the beginning of this chapter—we refer to different modalities of regulation—of plans in the most classical interpretation of the term—but we also emphasise that one has to consider who is possessing the financial means necessary to realise what is planned.
- 3.
As in the book as a whole, we consider only the countries with more than 20 responses or with a very high national response rate (as in the case of Iceland). Furthermore, the Netherlands are not considered because the questionnaire used there did not include any of the questions here taken in consideration.
- 4.
Chi-square test: N = 2059 (1797 male, 292 female); χ 2 = 15.998; p = 0.003.
- 5.
The mayors were asked in the questionnaire to place themselves on a 0–10 scale (where 0 means left and 10 right). We recomputed the variable into five classes: ‘extreme left’ corresponded to 0–1 values; ‘left’ was considered from 2 to 4; 5 was ‘moderate’; ‘right’ was from 6 to 8; and ‘extreme right’ was 9 and 10.
- 6.
Pearson’s chi-square test: N = 2145; χ 2 = 357.199; p = 0.001.
- 7.
Pearson’s chi-square test: N = 1713; χ 2 = 34.594; p = 0.022.
- 8.
This exploratory tool was designed to reveal natural clusters identifying structures and homogenous groups of mayors’ responses. It moved through two steps: pre-clustering the cases (cluster features), and then clustering the resulting sub-clusters into the number of groups that offers more heuristic value, using a traditional hierarchical clustering procedure. Lastly, a discriminant analysis checked the goodness of fit of the model found, if the groups were statistically significant, and if the variables significantly discriminated among the groups. It did not make any distinction between dependent and independent variables. This cluster analysis technique takes into consideration cases instead of variables; the distance measure, that determines how the similarity between the clusters is computed, is based on Log-likelihood computation, suitable to be used also with categorical variables; the clustering criterion adopted is the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) based on maximum likelihood estimation.
- 9.
The three clusters resulting from the analysis were quite balanced: cluster 1 comprised 43.5 per cent; cluster 2 comprised 32.2 per cent; cluster 3 represented 24.3 per cent of our sample. Within the resulting model, the ‘predictor importance’ of the considered variables was quite different: ‘first choice’ registered a score of 1 on a 0–1 scale; the ‘second choice’ variable 0.31, while the ‘third choice’ 0.25; the country variable was rated 0.13.
- 10.
For details on the construction of these three patterns of spatial planning orientation see Table 14.5 in the Appendix.
- 11.
We shall see that Swedish mayors joined also Southern European mayors in often complaining ineffective relations with the upper levels of government in spatial planning.
- 12.
Unfortunately the emblematic case of Netherlands could be checked as the question was not proposed to Dutch mayors.
- 13.
We performed a one-way analysis of variance between clusters variable and the three agenda indices described in Chap. 8: no statistical significant association is reported. Developmental agenda index: F = 1.015, Sig. = 0.363. Maintenance agenda index: F = 0.107, Sig. = 0.899. Social Sustainability agenda index: F = 1.326, Sig. = 0.266.
- 14.
See previous footnote (13).
- 15.
These difficulties are: ‘getting support from the highest levels of government’; ‘anticipating and controlling the real estate market’; and ‘involving local societies in defining territorial priorities’.
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Magnier, A., Getimis, P., Cabria, M., Baptista, L. (2018). Mayors and Spatial Planning in Their Cities. In: Heinelt, H., Magnier, A., Cabria, M., Reynaert, H. (eds) Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy . Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67410-0_14
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