PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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the Social Science Research Center Berlin (Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung
Berlin - WZB) utilize it, namely to connote a trend-setting and action-guiding notion
about a viable and desirable future that acts as a common orienting, motivating and
coordinating frame of reference for representatives from different cultures of knowledge
(Dierkes, Hoffmann et al. 1992; Hoffmann and Marz 1992; Dierkes and Marz 1998;
Hoffmann and Marz 2000). In the German-language literature, Leitbilder are normally
regarded as serving rather specific functions. In planning, Leitbilder are central
categories demarking the goal-oriented governance of planning schemes. Initially, these
(spatial) Leitbilder are often coined without particular actions in mind; but due to their
imagery and linguistic content they typically end up providing implicit and intuitive
guidance throughout the planning and implementation process, be it with regard to the
overall conceptualization, or with regard to the planning, the operationalization, the
implementation or even the evaluation of a decision-making process. In short, Leitbilder
connote a particular vision for a desirable urban or regional future.
To briefly illustrate the point: German discussions on urban, regional and spatial
planning have been dominated by three main urban Leitbilder in the last 50 years, all of
which are also applicable to the wider European context: 1) the car-oriented
(“autogerechte”) City, 2) the Compact City, and the 2) Network City or Zwischenstadt.
Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the modernist Leitbild of the car-oriented city, which
was to be functionally separated and dispersed (“gegliedert und aufgelockert”),
prompted a backlash call for the Compact European City. While this alternative vision of
a walkable, transit-oriented city with a dense urban core is still held in high esteem by
most planners (including many New Urbanists, who have simultaneously reified and