Strateginen kaupunkiseutu - Spatiaalinen suunnittelu radikaalina yhteensovittamisena

I see the city-region as a space of strategic collaboration. I inquire the conceptual nature of the "city-region", as well as the framings and models of collaborative action in those city-regions. My work emphasizes the "emerging" local character of self-governance, state guidance and local development spheres: a strategic city-region is a dynamic partnership forum that, on the one hand, has institutional sustainability, but which, on the one hand, only exists contextually for addressing problems and development issues. The works and practices of the strategic city-region are "loose" and prone to change. The ability of strategic co-operation to create and promote coordination in turbulent and antagonistic environments is a key success factor in imagining the city-region and realising its potentials for creating transformative action for better futures. Contextually, my work focuses on the theoretical discussion of and institutional approach to strategic spatial planning. My second contextual viewpoint deals with the dimensions of governance and the "new regionalism" discourses concerning the formations of power relations between economy, state and localities, in the context of city-regions. My research strategy emphasizes a pragmatist approach to research and the theories and activities of city-regional strategic spatial planning alike. In my work I ask what could be a useful pragmatist interpretation of strategic spatial planning co-operation for identifying, reflecting, and addressing social and local contradictions and confrontations. My work is particularly concerned with the emerging criticism of communicative planning theory by agonistic democracy theory and ideas of agonistic planning. I probe the foundations of agonistic planning theory, and present a useful view of agonistic power relations to support my pragmatism. The central conclusion is a model of and for the construction and dynamics of agonistic planning co-operation. The model developed is based on the theoretisation of the concept of "contact zone" emanating from transcultural studies, postcolonial research and linguistics, as well as the concepts "trading zone" and "boundary object" from science and technology studies and organisation studies. My model emphasises voicing power, creating mutual talk and learning with differences, in the materialities of planning practice. I see city-regional strategic spatial planning to be radically coordinative in nature. This means that coordination is unavoidable, both in theory and in practice. My job leans on the normative, so I present both, my original research questions and my model, with intent to improve the understanding of strategic planning cooperation, and at least indirectly the practice itself.