Regional Planning in France and Germany: towards convergence?

Abstract

The comparison of planning systems is a well-established field of study in the planning sciences. However, the typologies in use seem to be outdated as planning systems in Europe change continuously, showing disruption as well as path-dependent trajectories. The eventual demise of regional planning has been one of the focal points in this debate. In this paper, we compare two planning systems following the idea of variation-finding comparison. We seek to find the differences within a group of similar systems (i.e. western European social-democratic welfare states). The two countries chosen for this contribution are Germany and France and our empirical focus is on regional planning in city-regions. The two countries usually are considered to be very different in terms of politics and governmental structure as well as with regard to the planning system. Recent reforms in France demonstrate that regional planning goes into the direction of a more consolidated system, eventually showing more convergence with the German system than expected. Our results demonstrate that differences continue to exist but that there is also considerable sub-national variation in both countries so that there is more convergence on the level of city-regions than on the national level. In addition, we put into question the widely assumed demise of regional planning.