Temporality and Strategic Planning - The Timing of Strategy Changes exemplified by the Emscher Restoration Project
Strategies should provide orientation and be characterized by stability over time. Changes in strategy are therefore particularly in need of explanation. However, in long-term projects of strategic spatial planning, changes in strategy are to be expected regularly in view of complex, uncertain and conflictual framework conditions. TEMPUS investigates these changes by means of a longitudinal single case study on the restoration of the Emscher river in the Ruhr area in the years 1980 to 2022.
The project can draw on extensive earlier work on strategic spatial planning and on regional strategy development for the restoration of the Emscher river and therefore focuses on descriptive and causal data analysis. Two guiding questions are in focus: (1) Which phases and strategy changes are characteristic for the strategy development for the Emscher restoration? (2) Which causes explain the timing of strategy changes within strategy development?
TEMPUS, with its focus on strategy changes, time and temporality, makes an important contribution to the international state of research on strategic spatial planning by extending the descriptive and causal power of existing models. This is because planning research has rarely dealt with strategy change in a deliberate way. Also, little attention is paid to time and temporality, even though planning theories have traditionally been procedural.
The main objective of TEMPUS is to further develop the process model of regional strategy formation (Wiechmann 2008) in order to incorporate time and temporality explicitly, more comprehensively and more systematically than before in the model. The empirical goal is the descriptive and causal analysis of regional strategy development for Emscher restoration.
The work program comprises five work packages (WP). WP 1 goes beyond an "archive study" and also includes interviews with experts on the strategy of Emscher restoration. WP 2 is based on a detailed chronology of the Emscher restoration and deals in depth with the case-specific periodization or phase analysis, sequencing, duration and pace of strategy development. A test of hypotheses to explain the "timing" of strategy changes ("process tracing") is carried out. Data analysis is based on recent developments in the methodology of causality-oriented case study research (e.g., Mahoney's typology of causal effects). WP 3 and WP 4 address the development of results (case study evidence and model development). WP 5 addresses planning scientists and practitioners in two project-specific workshops.
At the AESOP Congress in Paris, the project team organised the roundtable “Temporality in Planning Thought – Ideas for Strengthening the Temporal Dimension in Research, Education and Practice” on 10 July 2024. Simin Davoudi, Raine Mäntysalo, Andy Inch and Miriam Jensen participated in the discussion.
Presentations at the subsequent AESOP Congress in Istanbul in July 2025 built on the previous year’s theoretical reflections by examining more deeply the processes through which strategies change. Gérard Hutter and Thorsten Wiechmann addressed “Temporality and Strategic Spatial Planning – Towards an Analysis of the Emscher Restoration Process Beyond Path Dependence”. Benno Schroeder and Martin Schinagl explored “Strategic Regional Planning and the Role of Regulatory Instruments: Insights from the Emscher Transformation”.
On 22 June 2026, the project team presented its interim findings and discussed them with leading representatives from academia and professional practice. The expert workshop demonstrated the considerable interest that the project topic has generated within the specialist community and provided valuable guidance for the project’s subsequent work.
The World Planning Schools Congress in June and July 2026 again provided an opportunity to present the project’s progress. Gérard Hutter and Thorsten Wiechmann delivered a presentation entitled “Time and Power in Strategic Planning: Historical Institutionalism and the Emscher Restoration”. In a special session, Martin Schinagl examined “Infrastructuring Space-Time: the Emscher-Höfe or How Emergent Regional Strategy Takes Shape”.
For spring 2027, the project team plans to hold its second workshop, at which it will present key project findings to an international academic audience. It also intends to publish a monograph on the Emscher transformation as a strategic process.
Publications:
Wiechmann, T., Hutter, G. (2026). Reframing Temporality in Planning: From Neglect to Opportunity. In M. Dobson & G. Parker (Eds.): Time, Politics and Place. (To appear) Policy Press.
Hutter, G.; Wiechmann, T.; Schinagl, M.; Schroeder, B. (2025): How Planning Changes – Doing Process-Oriented Work on Strategic Planning and Temporality, in: Planning Theory & Practice Vol. 26, Nr. 5, S. 737–741. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649357.2025.2593809
Hutter, G.; Wiechmann, T.; Schinagl, M.; Schroeder, B. (2024): Temporality in planning thought – a new turn?, in: disP - The Planning Review, Vol. 60, Nr. 2, S. 64–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/02513625.2024.2424109
Hutter, G.; Wiechmann, Th. (2022): Time, Temporality, and Planning – Comments on the State of Art in Strategic Spatial Planning Research, in: Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 23, Nr. 1, S. 157 – 164 (open access article)
Contact:
TU Dortmund: Prof. Dr. Thorsten Wiechmann (project lead), Benno Schroeder
IÖR Dresden: Dr. Gérard Hutter, (project lead), Dr. Martin Schinagl
Duration: 01.04.2024 - 31.03.2027
Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)