Planning is what planners do? Turning the spotlight onto extra-departmental planning projects

摘要

Publicly funded projects have become popular and omnipresent in urban development. In Germany, both planning funding programs such as “St?dtebauf?rderung” as well as non-planning funding structures have largely increased within the last two decades. These latter funding streams, though not explicitly targeted at planning issues, have a significant impact on municipal planning practices. The increase in funding structures on the European level in particular, has led to the new phenomenon that we have labelled “extra-departmental planning practices”. By presenting two cases of such externally funded planning projects in Berlin, this article reflects on this new phenomenon as a blind spot within the academic planning sphere. We argue that filling this gap is crucial both for planning theory and practice. With regard to planning practice, the article demonstrates that the increase in projects requires stronger administrative coordination, which can hardly be met by municipalities – especially under austerity conditions. A risk is that knowledge generated in these externally funded projects is lost and cannot be drawn on for future municipal projects. With regard to planning theory, the article calls for an open empirical perspective that defines “planning practice” beyond institutional boundaries. The growing practical role of extra-departmental planning practices, described in this article, opposes the idea of a planning theory whose empirical pool is limited to certain institutionally designated actors, instruments or spatial units.