Research in action: enhancing the policy impact of planning research through an interactive approach

ABSTRACT

Planning researchers often engage in international comparative research oriented to improving domestic planning practices. However, policy transfer is seldom sucsessful because the identified ‘best practices’ are insufficiently applicable or transferable. To address this, we employed a reflexive action-oriented methodology valorise the results of an ESPON project on sustainable urbanisation in two specific contexts: Lithuania’s national strategic plan and Croatia’s post-earthquake reconstruction. In collaboration with stakeholders, we assessed the local context and then used the European knowledge as a means for reflection. The results are encouraging, suggesting that this method could improve the impact of planning research.

KEYWORDS:

• Interactive planning
• action research
• joint fact-finding
• sustainable urbanisation
• ESPON

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion.