VALPLAN - Values and valuing in political spatial planning processes

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Diller; Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank Othengrafen
• Subject Area: Urbanism, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 463567980

The reasearch-project deals with two gaps in planning theory: on the one hand the question of processes of weighting, on the other hand the handling with questions of values and processes of value-aggregation. These questions mainly are relevant in the planning-phase of consideration of and choice between planning alternatives. Indeed this phase has a central position in the classic model of the planning process, but is partly no longer explicitly named in recent planning-theory approaches und stays underexposed as a „black box“ in plenty empirical investigations on planning practice. The following research questions are put in focus: How are varieties handled in planning processes? Which methods are therefore applied? Which meaning, impacts, advantages and disadvantages do several planning methods of several planning-theory models (rational, incremental, strategic, communicative) have related to the handling of planning-alternatives? In which way does the communicative setting of the application of methods of alternative-consideration and the combination with methods of the communicative plannig model have an influence on their impact? Which individual and institutional values play a role in consideration-processes? How do planner handle (divergent) questions of values? How do collective processes of value aggregation occur and which methods therein have which functions? How can formalized planning-methods of the several planning models for handling varieties can be designed in a communicative manner and thereby get optimized? How can particularly methods of valuating und decisioning can be developed in a communicative manner?As a follow-up of two DFG-founded projects, who wer concernend on the one hand with the everyday life of planners and on the other hand with planning methods, this project draws near its issue with several methodological approaches: Firstly with inhouse experiments with students; secondly with eight ex-post case studes as well as from the area-orientated legal planning as from the project-orientated informal development planning; thirdly with focus-group-discussions with experts from planning practice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants