The ‘Landscape Planning and Communication’ research group presented insights into its current research at the World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) in Helsinki in July. Markus Leibenath, together with Ludger Gailing (BTU Cottbus) and Tanja Mölders (University of Freiburg), chaired a panel discussion on the perspectives of political ecology on planning. They had invited Mick Lennon (University College Dublin), Jonathan Metzger (KTU Stockholm) and Deike Peters (Soka University) to participate as panellists. The concept of political ecology, which is still relatively new to the field of planning studies, met with widespread interest and sparked lively discussions.

Svenja Bochinski gave a presentation that tied in with the WPSC’s central theme, ‘Peripheral Visions’. As part of her doctoral research, she presented findings from the research project 'City-regional, participation-oriented landscape policy "in the making"' within the research group New Suburbanity, founded by the German Research Foundation. Employing the case of the Dietenbach urban expansion project in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, she highlighted the significance of scaling of competing concepts of sustainability for the development of suburban open spaces. She argued that scale-sensitive discourse analyses can deepen the understanding of planning conflicts on mega projects, moving beyond the alleged dichotomy of ‘public interest in sustainable spatial development versus NIMBYs’.

Markus Leibenath presented further findings from the research project ‘Urban-Regional Landscape Policy “in the Making”’: he reported on paradoxical participatory practices in the context of current large-scale urban expansion projects in Berlin. He classified the observed behaviour of planners in such conflict-ridden planning processes from a planning-theoretical perspective, as a communicative planning culture that oscillates between cooperation and control. These different approaches to channelling politically charged urban expansion projects into orderly planning procedures are held together by planners’ self-image as working in a professional and rational manner.