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This article analyses one dimension of the local mode of regulation in Sweden, namely national laws and institutions steering local urban planning and housing. Regulation theoretic analyses have traditionally focused on 'extralocal' political and economic factors. This article attempts to explain the concrete construction of regulatory mechanism at the local level as a part of a broader regulation process. It suggests that there is a strong connection between economic shifts and shifts in urban policy in Sweden. It rejects, however, the idea of the state serving capital accumulation à la carte.

While evaluation practice is still disposed towards rational quantitative methods, evaluation research has increasingly utilized qualitative dialogical methods. In this article, the increasing gap between practice and research is examined by analysing how evaluation research has evolved from within three perspectives: a policy programme perspective, a welfare economics perspective and a planning theory perspective. The article also discusses the implications of the emerging gap between evaluation research and practice.

The communicative turn in policy analysis and planning has resulted in increasing interest in the issue of what the text of the plan has to narrate to different categories of readership. The quality of the text of the plan is a central aspect of this new concern. According to rational planning theory, a plan should be an exposition of various directives. The plan is based on the scientific examination of issues and the readership is assumed to consist of persons with technical and/or juridical proficiency. Evaluation in rational planning amounts to the examination of the effectiveness and legitimacy of the plans. Communicative planning theory, on the other hand, conceives of the plan as the result of a broad democratic discourse, comprising a large number of stakeholders. The plan acquires different functions according to different readerships. Besides examining effectiveness and legitimacy, evaluation in communicative planning involves an appraisal of how plans promote a broad stakeholder involvement and help in building relational resources. The reading of plans becomes a rich assessment of the policy discourses that characterize the planning process. This article presents three approaches to reading plans as part of evaluation in communicative planning: (1) the plan as an account of a drama with many actors; (2) the plan as an instrument for uniting rational rhetoric with a multitude of opinions; and (3) the plan as the product of a democratic discourse. The empirical analysis consists of a reading of five Swedish strategic spatial plans. The aim of this exercise is to examine the attributes of the plans when their texts are analysed from different perspectives, and in turn to determine the implications for the quality of the planning process and the programme of actions.

In order to implement the sustainable development principles of Agenda 21 some municipalities in Sweden have developed scenarios for sustainable local societies. These scenarios differ from the two previous generations of scenarios in the sense that they require the participation of citizens in their preparation and implementation. This article discusses the premises of the three generations of scenarios: expert, hybrids and participatory. It describes the efforts to prepare a participatory scenario by the municipal government of Orebro (Sweden) in order to provide guidelines for a sustainable society. The article also discusses a method for preparing such a scenario.

In vielen westeuropäischen Ländern ist das Kulturbudget der Stadtverwaltungen wirklich beträchtlich. In Schweden umfaßt es mehr als 50 Prozent der gesamten öffentlichen Ausgaben. Trotz der Tatsache, daß die Kommunalverwaltungen eine so bedeutsame Rolle im kulturellen Leben spielen, hat es bislang nur wenige Forschungsarbeiten über die lokalen öffentlichen Ausgaben für die Kunst gegeben. Die meisten dieser Studien waren darauf beschränkt, den ökonomischen Nutzen von lokalen Investitionen in Kunsteinrichtungen unter Anwendung verschiedener Formen von ökonomischen Grundmodellen zu untersuchen. Zweck des Beitrags ist es, öffentliche Entscheidungsfindung und die städtischen Kulturbudgets in zwei schwedischen Großstädten (Göteborg, Umea) zu untersuchen. Die Untersuchung konzentriert sich auf die folgenden Fragen: (1) Wie verteilen die Kommunalverwaltungen die begrenzten Mittel auf kulturelle Aktivitäten? (2) Welche Art von Aktivitäten erhalten die bevorzugste Unterstützung? (3) Können öffentliche Angestellte die Verteilung der öffentlichen auf verschiedene Kunstarten beeinflussen? (4) Haben das Modell des Medianwählers oder andere Modelle der öffentlichen Wahl in diesem Kontext Gültigkeit? Im ersten Teil werden die theoretischen Zugänge beschrieben. Im zweiten Teil wird die Fallstudie über die öffentlichen Ausgaben in Göteborg und Umea vorgestellt. Empirische Grundlage dieser Fallstudie sind die öffentlichen Haushalte und Umfragen unter den Verantwortlichen für kulturelle Aufgaben in den Städten aus Politik und Verwaltung. (RW)

Purpose– This paper aims to make use of participatory scenarios to assess the multiple aspects of space with the help of future scenarios.Design/methodology/approach– This paper makes an attempt to appreciate multiple representations of space where past and present experiences merge with future desires and concerns. With the help of one case study, Izmir (Turkey), where a vision of democratic city is developed, the paper shows how future scenarios can provide deeper and richer appreciation of present space, thereby challenging existing spatial practices.Findings– The participatory approach used in the development of scenarios suggests interesting implications to operationalise a more relational concept of space in real planning strategies.Research limitations/implications– The use of scenarios in strategic planning to identify future possibilities and to make stakeholders aware of uncertainties has been increasingly recognised in planning research and practice.Practical implications– The appreciation of the multiple aspects of space with the help of future scenarios would enrich the spatial planning practice.Social implications– The use of participatory approach to preparing scenarios enables participants to make use of interactive method in social and political discourses.Originality/value– The use of scenarios to examine various aspects of space that may be relevant in spatial planning has not received similar attention. The latter poses methodological as well as practical challenges for researchers. This paper is an attempt to do just that.

In his review of notable planning disasters, Hall proposes two ways for avoiding future disasters. In a turbulent age, the improvement of forecasting methods is quite problematic. Ranking near and distant futures requires images of alternative future developments. This paper investigates the use of scenarios constructed through interactive knowledge in order to evaluate near‐future policies and programmes. However, since scenarios normally have long‐time horizons, there is a tenuous link between the ideas and aspirations outlined in alternative scenarios and near‐future policies and programmes. This implies that such scenarios can in the first place be used to assess preferences in the near future in relation to distant ideas and aspirations expressed in them. They may also help structure the context and its underlying plural values, and enlarge the range of possible criteria for evaluation. In this sense, they require that evaluation remains open to the discovery of societal preferences, interests and desires. For this purpose uses the concept "exploratory evaluation". The latter hopefully provides a useful instrument in evaluation. While the emphasis in this paper is on the methodological implications of using long‐term scenarios to evaluate current choices, it nevertheless indicates how scenarios might be used in evaluating policies for sustainable development in southern Mediterranean cities: Tunis, Izmir and Rabat‐Casablanca.