Estadística descriptiva

What can we learn from France? And if there is learning to be done, how might we best go about it? These were the questions that faced me when, nearly thirty years ago, I began to undertake comparative research in a country that is physically the nearest neighbour to the UK within the European Union, and yet seems in so many ways different from my own country.

Not many of the assumptions that could be made about spatial planning in a British context seemed to work when applied to France. Knowing where to begin and what questions to ask and then to discover what might be the best explanations for differences was not an easy task.

My quest was not helped at the outset by the lack of literature both on French spatial planning itself and on the theories and methodologies of comparison. What follows, therefore, is a refl ec-tion on a progress through the study of planning in another country in the light of literature which is now a great deal richer than when I started.

The chapter begins with a refl ection on the nature of comparative research and some of the assumptions that are made, erroneously it will be argued, about the nature of the planning activity. It looks at reasons for undertaking comparative research and the understanding that has emerged of planning as a cultural construct, not an objective technological phenomenon. It then considers strategies for comparative research, using the work of Tilly (1984) and Brenner (2001) that categorises comparison according to underlying objectives. The fi nal section considers the diffi culties associated with language and the importance of history in understanding cultural variance.

The nature of comparative research

Learning from other countries and the desire to make comparisons have been fundamental to research activity in the fi eld of spatial planning. In some senses all research in the fi eld is about comparison, whether explicitly or implicitly, in that all study of particular cases or activities involves a framework that is drawn from examples with which we are already familiar. This is of course a gross oversimplifi cation, and it is quite possible to argue, as Lijphart (1971) does for

the social sciences in general, that comparative research is only one element in a larger array of appropriate methodologies. But in the fi eld of spatial planning, given that so much research effort is directed towards evaluating policy or assessing the performance of places, it remains the case that comparison is a major part of what we do. In this light, comparing places or policies within one country might not be so very different from comparing places and policies in dif-ferent countries.

Indeed, the urge to compare across national borders is in many ways a highly laudable one.

It demonstrates an explicit desire to learn from experience elsewhere. It is an antidote to insular thinking and local exceptionalism. It recognises that particular ways of doing things are not necessarily the best, or indeed the only, ways of dealing with the problems of spatial planning.

That in turn means that research that compares spatial planning (in whatever way) in different countries must be of particular importance. And, on the face of it, comparative research across national borders should not be much more diffi cult than comparison within countries.

Such a view of comparative research is based on a series of assumptions which, in my view, are highly constraining. It implies fi rst of all that the purpose of comparison must be to facilitate transfer, and that therefore comparative research must identify what is suitable for transfer and how the transfer might occur. It assumes, secondly, that the problems that confront planners are of the same order anywhere in the world, give or take some minor variations. It is built, thirdly, on the understanding that spatial planning is essentially a technical exercise, which once again is of broadly the same order wherever it is encountered. And fi nally, cross-national comparative research has tended to adopt in very broad terms a scientifi c methodology. That is to say, there has been an assumption that it is possible to identify a constant – a particular kind of planning problem, perhaps, or a certain type of development – against which the variables of different policies might be tested. Or again, it might be a question of taking a policy as the constant, as for example in the European Capitals of Culture programme (see Sykes 2011), with locality and governance, say, as the variables to be tested. All of these assumptions are problematic, however.

For practitioners the obvious purpose of comparative research is to improve practice by ref-erence to experience elsewhere. However, research may have other ends which may lead only indirectly to the improvement of practice. Here, the example of other social sciences is helpful.

Berting (1979) identifi ed fi ve reasons for undertaking comparative research in sociology, all of which might reasonably be applied to the fi eld of spatial planning. The fi rst of these is the devel-opment of theory. The second is the explanation and interpretation of social phenomena. The third concerns the description of social reality. The fourth and fi fth are, respectively, understand-ing the effects of policy intervention and evaluatunderstand-ing policy processes (see Table 2.4.1 ). Research in the fi eld of spatial planning has tended to concentrate on the last two. The fi rst three of Bert-ing’s reasons for research might at fi rst glance have less to offer the fi eld of spatial planning, but

Table 2.4.1 Five primary goals in sociological research Five primary goals in sociological research

• Develop theory

• Explain specifi c social phenomena • Describe social phenomena

• Understand the effects of policy intervention • Evaluate policy processes

Berting (1979), pp 159-160 .

Philip Booth

in fact the particular insights that comparative research may offer for the development of theory, the explanation and interpretation of social phenomena and the description of social reality could be quite as valuable in informing refl ective practice as the other two.

The other two assumptions implicit in ways of thinking about comparative planning are based on an understanding of spatial planning that sees it as essentially a technocratic exercise exercised by technically profi cient experts, in the same way that mechanical engineering or medical science are understood. Such a view has a range of important consequences for both practice and the conduct of research. It allows the application of a scientifi c method of the kind sketched out earlier, on the grounds that there are indeed identifi able constants. It assumes that the instruments of planning – the plans, the mechanisms and procedures for controlling urban-isation, the policies – are of essentially the same order wherever they are encountered and are intended to have the same kind of effect. It assumes that planners are technicians whose methods are comparable wherever they are exercised and who are working towards the same kinds of ends. And indeed, as Vigar et al. have noted, “most comparative studies of planning systems focus on the tools of the system (plans and regulatory powers) and on competencies (which level does what)” (Vigar et al. 2000, p. 7, Davies et. al 1989).

There are reasons for thinking that such a view of planning is at best a very partial truth. By starting with the instruments and competencies of planning systems, it becomes very diffi cult to account for difference, or indeed sometimes to recognise that there are differences. A failure to account for difference makes meaningful comparison virtually impossible.

An alternative view of planning sees it as an end product of social, political and administrative forces that are place-specifi c. This is to say that planning is a cultural phenomenon, not solely a technical exercise. This has signifi cant consequences for both practice and research. It means, for example, that plans are not necessarily intended to achieve the same results in different parts of the world, and that the very objects of planning vary according to the particular circumstances of different places. This view situates planning in what might be called a culture of decision making, in which the institutions of the state and the law form a crucial aspect of national cul-ture that affects profoundly the way that planning is practised (see Booth 1993). The importance of this understanding is that it enables us to explain differences between planning systems that would be impossible to grasp if spatial planning were understood as purely a technical exercise.

The understanding that planning systems and practices are embedded in national cultures has been taken further, notably by Keller (1996), Friedmann (2005) and Sanyal (2005). They have proposed that planning itself is a cultural phenomenon, which varies from country to coun-try. As Sandercock has concluded, this planning culture is not simply “a subset of the broader political, institutional, and ideological systems at work in any country” but “redefi nes politics, producing new sources of power and legitimacy, changing the force fi eld, sometimes for better, sometimes not, and rarely in predictable ways” (Sandercock 2005, p. 330). For Sandercock, then, planning culture is not just the end result of more general cultural forces at work in different places. It may actually be a force that itself shapes a national culture.

Those studies that have attempted international comparisons have in every case found them-selves forced to face this problem of national culture and the diffi culty that it poses for fi nding explanations for difference and the effectiveness of policy and procedures. One of the earliest com-parisons in the fi eld of spatial planning was the Oxford-Leiden study, which sought to compare the performance of planning systems in England and the Netherlands in their capacity to plan for residential development. In it, great care was taken to fi nd comparable examples of development in order to assess the response of spatial planning in the two countries, founded on very different

principles. Teams were established in each place and the results were subjected to sustained scrutiny.

In the end, however, the authors of the study were forced to conclude, with admirable honesty, that:

at times the task of explaining our fi ndings was found to be problematic. This was due to the diffi culty of constructing an adequate framework for comparison in the early stages of the research, before empirical work on plan making and control had been completed. For, despite the obvious differences in the legal and administrative charac-teristics of the Dutch and English planning systems, there was a tendency to assume initially that there was an overriding similarity in the types of plan produced and in the relationship between plans and operational decisions.

(Thomas et al. 1983, p. 261) The Oxford-Leiden study authors concluded that it was possible to make meaningful compari-sons and that they had indeed avoided some of what they took to be the most obvious pitfalls in comparative research. One such pitfall was the problem of the internationalisation of language and the loss of nuances of meaning that might result. A second pitfall they identifi ed was a ten-sion between imposing from above a rigid conceptual framework that might not accommodate the particularities of cases, and an ad hoc bottom-up study of cases which offered no coherent basis for comparison.

The Oxford-Leiden study was based on a series of general propositions which formed the framework within which teams in each country would work. The focus on the implementation of projects, rather than taking plans and their production as a starting point, was to be the means of resolving the problem that plans and the relationship between plans and operational deci-sions were conceived differently in each country and were intended to achieve different results.

But the study still made assumptions about fundamental similarities – of the nature of planning, of the type of development – that were not necessarily self-evident. This point becomes even clearer in the study by Macrory and Lafontaine (1982) that compared public inquiries in Britain and France, as the concept of public inquiry (used to translate the French enquête publique ) is not understood in the same way in the two countries. It becomes all too easy to conclude that things are different in other countries because they are different.

The Oxford-Leiden and the public inquiry studies were bilateral. The problem becomes more acute with the attempts that have been made over the years to conduct multilateral comparisons. Studies such as that conducted into planning control in fi ve European countries (Davies et al. 1989) show a good deal of sensitivity to local administrative and legal culture. In the end, however, Davies et al. found it diffi cult to make any overarching comparison between the countries investigated. The EU Compendium of Spatial Planning and Policies (Commission of the European Communities 1997) attempted no more than a catalogue of the planning systems of the European Union, but once again ran the very considerable risk of presenting as compa-rable what could not reasonably be compared.

Recent studies in the fi eld of urban policy have begun to plumb this dilemma in a more refl ective way. Harloe’s (1995) account of social housing and Fainstein’s The city builders (2001) were based on the premise that the development of global capitalism had had a profound and uniform effect on the production of urban development and that it was therefore possible to tease out the effect of local policy. Yet even Fainstein could comment with apparent surprise in The city builders that the developers she investigated did not “merely react to an objective situation but operate[d] within a subjective environment” (2001, p. 25). Local conditions in New York and London were more highly differentiated than she had expected. Nelson (2001)

Philip Booth

came to much the same conclusion in her comparison of partnership in urban regeneration in London and Paris. Her starting point, too, was that globalisation had affected the nature of partnership in ways that were fundamentally similar. But she came to think in the light of the evidence that inter-organizational relationships and the nature of the state were at the heart of the differences she established in the two cities.

If spatial planning is culturally embedded and gives rise to its own culture, the prospects for comparison look distinctly problematic and the likelihood of effective transfer of policies or procedures at best doubtful. Indeed it could be argued that comparison is a pointless, and per-haps even dangerous, exercise that is best avoided. There are three reasons why such a pessimistic conclusion is not warranted. The fi rst is that, diffi cult or dangerous though it may be, the urge to compare, and to compare between countries as well as within them, seems to be well-nigh irresistible. Studies that compare spatial planning in different countries have grown in number in the course of the past twenty-fi ve years, and the search for ways of conducting such research remains an important priority. A second reason is that much the same might be said of the desire to transfer practice from country to country. Regardless of whether it is appropriate, transfer of policies, procedures and instruments has taken place and continues to do so. The British Empire exported its vision of spatial planning to its colonies, in many of which, long after independence, planning practice is still based on British prototypes. It is clearly not enough, therefore, to say that comparison and transfer are dangerous and must be avoided. Rather the challenges sharpen the search for appropriate research methodologies that will in some way or other assume the cultural embeddedness of spatial planning that commentators have increasingly recognised.

There is a third reason for thinking that a wholly pessimistic view of comparative research is unjustifi ed. In the fi eld of law, for example, Markinis (1997) has argued that a convergence between two very different systems of law, the English common law tradition and that of the Napoleonic civil code, is not only possible but has actually been happening. In his view, a pro-found understanding of the very different cultural origins of the two systems was necessary, but comparative study dispelled the idea that convergence of the two systems was impossible. Con-vergence, rather than transfer, has also been a theme of European policy, in spatial planning as in other fi elds. Waterhout, Mourato and Böhme (2009) concluded that some Europeanisation of planning was taking place and explored the ways in which it was happening. They were forced to recognise, nevertheless, that local context is very important and that the extent to which Europeanisation was taking place was variable and the evidence fragmentary. But the work by both Markinis and Waterhout suggests that comparative research and transfer across borders, undertaken in a culturally sensitive way, are both possible and productive.

Strategies for comparative research

Strategies for comparative research have, therefore, to be set against the understanding that spa-tial planning is not just a set of culturally neutral techniques and procedures. As we have seen, commentators insist that spatial planning is the product of particular cultures and in turn cre-ates its own culture combining attitudes to space and place with the means of intervention and control. Important though such an understanding is, it is not in itself suffi cient to identify appro-priate strategies for conducting comparative research. Reference to the wider fi eld of research on urban policy is helpful here. As with spatial planning, comparative research in urban policy has had to contend with the idea that policy is not neutral and that different cultures identify problems and their solutions in different ways.

We have already noted Berting’s (1979) fi ve reasons for undertaking comparative research in sociology. Having a clear objective for undertaking such research is an essential prerequisite for identifying appropriate methodologies. But we need to look further afi eld for underlying theories of comparative research. The argument has been taken further by Tilly (1984), and his ideas have been applied more recently to the fi eld of urban policy by Brenner (2001) in a review article of Abu-Lughod’s book New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global Cities (1999). Tilly proposed that comparative research fell into one of four separate categories. These were: the individualising comparison, in which understanding the particularity of cases was paramount; the universalising comparison, in which the argument was directed at showing that all cases followed the same rule; the encompassing comparison, where the attempt is made to show that difference between cases is a function of their relationship to a whole system; and the variation-fi nding comparison, in which the focus is on exploring systematic differences in the intensity and type of variation (see Table 2.4.2 ; see also Booth 2011). These categories were not exclusive. In world city theory, Brenner argued that “the most prominent contributions . . . have been grounded on encompassing comparisons” (2001, p. 137) but that even where researchers have taken individual cases and stressed their individuality, there may be an implicit

We have already noted Berting’s (1979) fi ve reasons for undertaking comparative research in sociology. Having a clear objective for undertaking such research is an essential prerequisite for identifying appropriate methodologies. But we need to look further afi eld for underlying theories of comparative research. The argument has been taken further by Tilly (1984), and his ideas have been applied more recently to the fi eld of urban policy by Brenner (2001) in a review article of Abu-Lughod’s book New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global Cities (1999). Tilly proposed that comparative research fell into one of four separate categories. These were: the individualising comparison, in which understanding the particularity of cases was paramount; the universalising comparison, in which the argument was directed at showing that all cases followed the same rule; the encompassing comparison, where the attempt is made to show that difference between cases is a function of their relationship to a whole system; and the variation-fi nding comparison, in which the focus is on exploring systematic differences in the intensity and type of variation (see Table 2.4.2 ; see also Booth 2011). These categories were not exclusive. In world city theory, Brenner argued that “the most prominent contributions . . . have been grounded on encompassing comparisons” (2001, p. 137) but that even where researchers have taken individual cases and stressed their individuality, there may be an implicit