Soft Spaces, Fuzzy Boundaries and Spatial Governance in Post‐devolution Wales

Abstract

This article explores the responses of senior local government actors to the 2004 Wales Spatial Plan and its 2008 update. An example of the so‐called ‘new spatial planning’ which has emerged in the movement towards regional devolution in the UK, this planning discourse foregrounds elements of relational thinking that seek to alternatively augment, destabilize and overturn orthodox administrative categories and divisions of space. Whereas spatial planners have traditionally thought and practised with and through clearly bounded scales (national, regional, local), in this century the new spatial planning is imposing relationally inscribed concepts such as ‘soft space’ and ‘fuzzy boundaries’ into the lexicon of spatial planners. Keystones in a vocabulary used to conceptualize the emergence of new spaces of more networked governance, the importance attached to both concepts in current thinking is that they seek to translate theory into policy, and policy into action. A key question arising from this, however, is how the lexicon of the new spatial planning translates, intersects, and compares with the spatial imaginations of the local government and non‐government officials who have to implement and deliver the strategy. By drawing on the case study of post‐devolution Wales, this article draws on interview data to critically explore the impact of the Wales Spatial Plan as a strategy indicative of the new spatial planning in action, and the implications it has had for service delivery. Résumé L’étude s’intéresse aux réactions de hauts responsables des autorités locales face au programme ‘Wales Spatial Plan’ de 2004 et à son actualisation de 2008. Représentatif de ce qu’on a appelé la ‘nouvelle planification spatiale’, née dans le sillage de la dévolution régionale au Royaume‐Uni, le discours utilisé met en avant des éléments de la pensée relationnelle qui, eux, cherchent à grossir, déstabiliser et rompre les catégories administratives classiques et les divisions de l’espace. D’habitude, les aménageurs réfléchissaient et opéraient dans le cadre d’échelons territoriaux clairement établis (national, régional, local), mais depuis le début de ce siècle, la nouvelle planification spatiale impose, dans leur lexique, des concepts définis en fonction des interconnexions, tels que soft space (espace transversal) et fuzzy boundaries (délimitations floues). Éléments fondamentaux d’un vocabulaire servant à conceptualiser l’apparition de nouveaux espaces de gouvernance en réseau, ces deux concepts doivent leur place dans la réflexion actuelle au fait qu’ils tentent de traduire la théorie en politiques, et les politiques en actions. D’où une question essentielle : comment le lexique de la nouvelle planification spatiale parvient‐il à donner une traduction, à se superposer et àêtre comparable aux imaginations spatiales des responsables locaux, gouvernementaux et non gouvernementaux, qui doivent mettre en œuvre et concrétiser la stratégie? En partant de l’après‐dévolution galloise de l’étude de cas, ce travail s’appuie sur des...

New Localities

“…An attempt to produce a more nuanced and process-led representation of Wales's internal geography was made with the Wales Spatial Plan in 2004 (updated in 2008), but subsequent efforts to align the initially 'fuzzy' boundaries of the spatial plan regions with the hard boundaries of local authority areas demonstrates the accretional power of fixed institutional geographies in shaping the representation of localities (cf. HAUGHTON et al, 2010;HELEY, 2012;HELEY and JONES, 2012b;WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT, 2004. 4 The Knowing Localities Research Programme was designed to develop understanding of the form and effects of localities in Wales.…”

“…1 The paper does not discuss the research programme or its findings in detail HELEY, 2012;HELEY and JONES, 2012b;HELEY and MOLES, 2012), but rather it seeks to move from the particular to the general and highlights how principles from the 'new localities' approach have been engaged to allow meaningful representations of 'locality' to be constructed and mobilized through the research.…”

Making a difference : boundary management in spatial governance

“…Elements of this framework have been proposed and used in literature (Heley, 2013;Hernes, 2004;Schut et al, 2013;Sternlieb et al, ~ 165 ~ 2013;Van Broekhoven et al, 2014), but the framework as a whole is new. Its cyclical nature allows the study of multiple cycles of boundary management as have been identified in the case studies.…”

“…Negotiations and conflicts about these boundaries are at the heart of spatial planning and governance. A complicating matter is that 'areas' and categories of land use, when delineated spatially, may not match the administrative and ownership boundaries (Boonstra and Van Den Brink, 2007;Cash et al, 2006;Heley, 2013;Padt and Westerink, 2012). Administrative and ownership boundaries have received wide attention in literature.…”

“…In response to this constraint being reinforced by the competing place concepts, the province introduced a new place concept at a higher scale level, eliciting the formation of a new actor coalition (cf. Heley, 2013).…”