Committed to Coordination? How Different Forms of Commitment Complicate the Coordination of National and Urban Planning

This article focuses on the coordination of national infrastructure planning and municipal urban planning in Sweden. A case study of a current planning project, where a planned high speed railway meets the centre of a medium-sized city, serves as a basis for a discussion about the commitment of the main parties to cooperate for coordinated planning. The study reveals a gap in terms of the commitment signalled to joint efforts, and thus also the expectations of their respective counterpart. Depending on the definition of commitment, both parties can be seen as highly committed, but while the railway agency has its commitment orientated primarily towards the transport system as such, i.e. the content of the cooperation, the concern of the municipality is more about commitment to the continuity of the cooperative efforts, i.e. the process of cooperating. The paper concludes by pointing at some wider implications of the analysis. In particular, the lack of a coherent spatial perspective in the national planning system, and the prospects for institutional conditions for coordination to be made more explicit, are discussed.