Abstract :
[en] Planning is not anymore seeing as a neutral concept. During a long period planning has been conducted as a technical activity only. Nevertheless, space “is no longer a neutral category as it was between the 1960s and the 1980s that is viewed as a container for economic and social processes, but is rather the result of social relations among people living in a certain area or region where culture and cultural influences play a crucial role”(Knieling & Othengrafen, 2009, p. xxiii)1. Planning is indeed deeply depending on cultural context of a country and a region. Since the 1990s, the term planning culture covers comparative spatial planning research. This concept can be define as “the collective ethos and dominant attitudes of planners regarding the appropriate role of the state, market forces, and civil society in influencing social outcomes” (Sanyal, 2005, p. xxi)2.
To date, planning culture literature concentrates on listing the observations and expert analyses. Our goal is to operationalise this concept as a set of values and attitudes shared by a particular group of people. For this purpose, we use experimental economics to gain empirical evidences on planning practices.
Our presentation will be structured in three parts. At first, we will develop the concept of planning culture and illustrate it by the comparison of planning in Belgium and in the Netherlands. Despite many common characteristics, planning in those two countries strongly differs. On the one hand, both countries are densely populated and their territories are relatively similar. Although, on the other hand, their urban form are highly contrasted. Indeed, Belgium is characterized by an extreme sprawl whereas Netherlands has controlled the sub-urbanization processes.
The second part of our presentation will be dedicated to the explanation of experimental economics. Experimental economics are experiments motivated by economics questions. “Experiments are a controlled data generation process. ‘Control’ means that most factors which influence behaviour are held constant and only one factor of interest (the “treatment”) is varied at a time”(Croson and Gächter, 2010, p. 124)3. To illustrate the field, we will realise an experiment in real time with the audience.Finally, we will finish our presentation by presenting some results of our current research that intends
to objectify the role of planning culture in urban development. Based on experimental economics, our research aims to study the risk aversion as well as the importance of trust and cooperation in the development of partnership. To do so, we have organized four experiments with urban planning stakeholders in three different countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway.
