Doing puzzles with village motifs
In a figurative sense, municipalities have had to put together a puzzle of how they will implement the new legal requirement for strategic village planning. And the introduction of strategic village planning is an opportunity to sharpen the motives that should characterize the puzzle in the future, writes rural area researcher Annette Aagaard Thuesen in this opinion piece.
In 2019, it became law that municipalities must carry out strategic village planning as part of their municipal planning. This is a follow-up to the Committee for Viable Villages' recommendations to the government in 2018. During the Corona pandemic, it is not only in private homes across the country that puzzles have been put together. In a figurative sense, municipalities have also had to put together a puzzle for how they will implement the new legal requirement for strategic village planning.
The requirement for strategic village planning has been adopted to ensure an overall and coherent approach to the development of a municipality's villages. Municipalities must support the development of viable local communities in villages, promote a differentiated and targeted development of villages, and they must specify overall objectives and instruments for the development of villages.
The Danish Centre for Rural Research has conducted an interview-based mapping of the implementation of the legal requirement in around 40 rural and peripheral municipalities. The mapping shows three ways in which the municipalities have initially chosen to approach strategic village planning.
In other municipalities, it is assumed that all the pieces of the puzzle are already in place. To live up to the requirement for strategic village planning, it's just a matter of putting them together in a new way. Strategic village planning is brought into play here via analyses made in connection with other initiatives, such as cultural-historical environments, the green map of Denmark, transformation villages, area renewal, village cluster initiatives, settlement analyses, etc.
Since the structural reform in 2007, some municipalities have worked closely and in a structured way with the villages. They have a good feel for the local communities and try to build bridges to village initiatives in their planning. For example, this could be the preparation of local development plans for each local community, which is what ties together a municipal rural strategy/policy and village development. In these municipalities, figuratively speaking, most of the pieces of the strategic village planning puzzle have already been put in place.
Inspiration catalogue
The mapping of the strategic village planning can be read in the inspiration catalogue "Løft blikket".
In other municipalities, it is assumed that all the pieces of the puzzle are already in place. To live up to the requirement for strategic village planning, it's just a matter of putting them together in a new way. Strategic village planning is brought into play here via analyses made in connection with other initiatives, such as cultural-historical environments, the green map of Denmark, transformation villages, area renewal, village cluster initiatives, settlement analyses, etc.
In yet other municipalities, the situation is that at the time of the interviews, the task had not yet begun and they were just starting to find the pieces, some of which may have been lost. This is because they either don't have a tradition of reaching out to their local communities or don't have many resources to throw into this part of the municipal planning process.
Of course, planning is more than just lines on a map or puzzle pieces. It's about people's everyday lives and the attractiveness and development opportunities of local areas. Therefore, there may be something to be gained from conducting creative and citizen-involving place analyses that can uncover the potential of villages in terms of settlement, tourism, culture, climate, nature, business, etc. In creative place analysis, the focus is on seeing new opportunities and not just following already established paths or development trends.
”Of course, planning is more than just lines on a map or puzzle pieces. It's about people's everyday lives and the attractiveness and development opportunities of local areas
The survey showed that many municipalities have an approach that is all about helping those villages that can and will. From a strategic point of view, this kind of differentiation can contain problematic elements. It can easily end up with the municipality not taking a unified and active stance on what it wants to do with its villages, especially those with a quieter civil society. In line with this, the qualities and challenges of quiet villages risk being overlooked, as the town's development potential is only assessed after citizens show initiative.
The question is whether it is not the intention of the law to try to reach out more to the rural communities that are otherwise not so much heard of within the municipality, and which have never really started organizing themselves, creating development projects, applying for municipal funds, etc. Here, we can build on theories of institutional capacity, understood as the ability to act and promise, which is about the fact that in order to create development, you need to work on activating local knowledge, social relations and the ability to attract political attention.
The introduction of strategic village planning is an opportunity for both villages and municipalities to take a closer look and sharpen their focus on the motives that they want to characterize the strategic village planning puzzle in the years to come. Municipal actors are now committed to this. Local communities are not - but many are in the process.
Meet the researcher
Annette Aagaard Thuesen is an associate professor at the Danish Centre for Rural Research. Her research interests include strategic village development, local council organization, democracy and the EU's rural development programme.