Spatial planning as policy integration: The need for an evolutionary perspective. Lessons from Uzbekistan

We start out from the premise of a continued need for policy integration to address both economic and environmental issues in society, arguing that spatial planning is a privileged site to locate such endeavor. While policy integration in planning can acquire many forms, we understand those forms as ways to manage interdependencies between organizations. Spatial planning can contribute to the integration of policies in comprehensive visions, but a planning system, in the sense of a network of organizations, does not escape from the evolutionary rigidity introduced by interdependence and path-dependence. In a study of the evolutionary path of spatial governance in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, we investigated the shifting patterns of policy integration that affected the organization of space. Policy integration in planning, it is found, is path-dependent, worked out positively and negatively, and necessarily relied on informal coordination mechanisms. Thus, a planning system striving to manage interdependence has to be highly reflexive, to understand the extent to which its transformation options are constrained by history and by present linkages between organizations.

► Sustainable development requires policy integration through spatial planning.
► Policy integration in planning affects integration through planning.
► Histories of integration affect new integration and planning options.
► Mapping of policy paths has to discern formal and informal coordination.
► Opacity in transitional countries is multi-functional.