Framing Cultures of Spatial Planning

If one compares different advanced systems of spatial planning, it is surprising that even similar systems show rather different results. This raises the question of what causes these differences. One obvious hypothesis is that in addition to the similarities between planning systems, a number of different ‘soft’ cultural factors also play a crucial role. Starting from this hypothesis and using an actor-centered approach the article suggests the use of frame analysis as a suitable tool for investigating these ‘soft’ cultural aspects of spatial planning. The main objective of such an investigation is not to develop a prescriptive method for spatial planning itself, but rather to gain a social scientific understanding of the structure and the dynamics of the framing process, which could then serve as an inspirational basis for developing diverse practical schemes of spatial planning. It is argued that culture plays an important role in spatial planning and that the role of culture can be addressed with an actor-centered approach. The article gives a short overview of the development of different forms of frame-analysis in social sciences and policy research. The concluding section argues that an analysis of cultural frames in spatial planning is richer and carries more potential than other approaches, for example, the more traditional and usual actor analysis or discourse analysis.