Four levels, one project. The redefinition of territorial scales and the innovation of physical planning in Catalonia

PABLO ELINBAUM

Utrecht

Congreso; Association of European Schools of PLanning (AESOP) Conference. From control to co-evolution. 9-12 July, 2014; 2014

University of Utrecht/Delft

Territorial scales are always in a process of transformation and tension between trends of territorial stabilization and destabilization. Given the on-going process of spatial transformation, however, conventional planning systems are structured in levels that usually crystallize in discrete, permanent and fixed scales. Thus, the articulation of multiple scales of planning requires certain methodological considerations. One is the combined implementation of five tools of physical planning: thematic layers, structural synthesis, models, project areas and performance areas. These heuristic devices are relevant because they influence the administrative subsidiarity, the relationship between material phenomena and processes, and between the operational scope and content of planning systems. The aim of this paper is to explore the methodological innovation of physical planning as a device for linking planning system?s levels and redefining territorial scales. In particular, the focus is on how territorial scales, strategic projects and policies relate to each planning level, and how these levels ?and scales? interrelate as a claim for a unitary territorial project. Finally, we?ll focus on how the idea of ?scale? is developed as a context for the description of the territory, but also for the performance of the instruments, considering the territorial project as an ?exercise of realism?. To this end we will study the case of the Catalan planning system, analysing a plan of each level (national ?autonomous community?, regional, sub-regional and urban), concurring in a common territory: the Central Counties region. Thus, we argue that the project-based approach of physical planning allows not only to clarify the role and the interrelationship between the different levels of planning and territorial scales, but also shows that spatial planning is not an orderly, linear and incremental succession of plans and scales. Instead, it?s an iterative, open, and co-evolutional process that is necessarily both technocratic and socially built.