The tale of two regions: Planning for resilience in Finnish Regional Planning, does planning culture matter

Cities and regions encounter growing complexities in their operational environment, requesting ability to acknowledge the accelerating change dynamics and uncertainties in their planning processes. By nature, being formed of different municipalities and cities regions are complex territories for planning. In fact, the conventional regional planning has been lately criticised to be defunct (Harrison et al., 2021). On the one hand, regions spatially are multifaceted and constantly in a state of flux (Allen et al.,1998). On the other hand, regional planning lay between two governments, the national and the local; thus, setting the agenda of regional planning is problematic (Friedmann & Weaver, 1979). With such a territorial and governing heterogeneity, regional scale is under-researched in planning studies (Purkarthofer et al., 2021). Furthermore, in creating visions for regional growth, two factors are essential to be harmonised: planning as an idea and planning as practice (Beauregard, 2020). Therefore, approaches of research on system-centred and practice-oriented regional planning can provide valuable insights. However, both research perspectives were also criticized for their shortcomings; thus, studies focusing on planning culture can offer a comprehensive understanding bridging both approaches (Purkarthofer et al., 2021). Planning culture is a country-specific concept rooted in and structured by the national scale priorities (Stead et al., 2015). This research builds on case studies of the two neighbouring Finnish regions Uusimaa and Southwest Finland. Uusimaa is a region of 26 municipalities and 1,723,000 inhabitants and Southwest Finland comprises 27 municipalities and a home for 481,403 inhabitants. The research sets out to explore the role of planning culture in enabling a region sensitive to the increasing complexities and the consequent need for resilient knowledge practices in processes. The research focuses on the processes of learning in each region and whether their planning culture contributes to easily integrate properties such as connectivity, robustness, flexibility, persistence and resilience in their growth visions. The research further examines the difference in planning culture of each region and thus the institutional sequence of actions and reflectivity to the knowledge complexity and the increasing need for resilience in the midst of the accelerating multiscale change dynamics that the regions need to acknowledge. The study deploys qualitative methods by combining semi structured interviews with officials in regional planning bodies with document analysis. Noting that this paper is in process, the initial findings indicate differences between the regions considering both the knowledge practices and the priorities of their development agendas. However, the findings also demonstrate that in both regions the local level municipalities and major cities, prioritize local objectives over regional ones; thus, inserting fragility into the planning system. The paper concurs with Harrison et al. (2021) and urges improving an integral approach of regional planning in order to create more resilient and cohesive regions.