What Happens to Spatial and Physical Planning in Denmark after the Local Government Reform

Abstract

The paper explores how Danish policies and regulatory frameworks for ur- ban, rural and regional planning have evolved and changed since the implementation of the last administrative reform of the local government structure in 1970. In doing so, the paper analyses the logic of the present reform and how it will influence future spatial planning. Thus, the aim of the paper is to evaluate to what extent the preparatory, analytical work im- pacts on the reform and it attempts to identify the main driving forces in the reform process and the relevance of the reform in relation to spatial planning. The participants in the Annual Meeting of the Danish Association of Urban Planners looked at each other in disbelief when the Director General of Spatial Planning of the Ministry of the Environment made the above statements in his key note address to the gathering of practitio- ners, civil servants and academics in the spring of 2004 (Ostergaard 2004). Was it true, that the most radical changes in the geography of public administration in Denmark for more than thirty years, and in the functional responsibility for spatial and physical planning, would hardly be accompanied by proper analyses? Neither with respect to an analysis of past per- formance nor when it comes to assessment of the impact of the reform, especially in terms of guidance and control of urban and rural development. Denmark is now getting near to the end of a rather fast journey that really only started for good in January 2004. A journey, which will lead the country to an administrative structure with larger and more powerful municipalities, establishment of new and less powerful re- gional authorities, and a significantly stronger emphasis on national control of the new local government units. In the following, we shall attempt to amplify some of the likely conse- quences as they appear a year later, and we shall try to say more about where Danish physical planning is going.

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