Disclosing the logics of non-statutory regional planning: the case of Sweden

In many European countries, regional planning is an established institutional framework. In recent years we have observed a resurgent research interest in regional planning with a specific focus on governance and institutional design and on the strategic and practical relevance of regional planning in pursuing sustainable development. However, in Sweden, regional planning traditionally has a weak position in practice as well as in research. Yet over the past 15 years, we have seen an increasing political interest in experimenting with different forms and formats of regional planning. In this paper, we explore the emerging logics of non-statutory regional planning, which the majority of Swedish regions have chosen. Drawing upon a qualitative research design we identify, compare and discuss three different logics and their inherent rationales, practices, challenges and prospects. Our analysis shows that our three case regions can do very little non-statutory regional planning unless they are part of properly working multi-level networks, and have well-established regional informal arenas for interaction and political backing. More specifically, we point at a number of tensions caused by the large degree of freedom to design non-statutory regional planning, which foster conflicts, confusion and insecurity.