Between Urgency and Inertia: Spatial Planning in Transformation Authors Antje Bruns ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9266-5530 DOI: https://doi.org/10.14512/rur.3562 Keywords: Spatial planning, Transformation, Sustainability, Exnovation, Unlearning, Reflexivity Abstract The urgency of fundamental socio-ecological transformation is scientifically uncontested, yet institutions – including spatial planning – predominantly act sluggishly, reinforcing existing paths of unsustainability. Despite normative orientations such as the sustainability principle within the German spatial planning law, planning practice has so far struggled to enable and accelerate socio-ecological transformations towards sustainability. This comment highlights the tensions between planning’s ambitions and its realities, emphasizes the importance of exnovation and unlearning as key dimensions of socio-ecological change, and argues for a reflexive reorientation of spatial planning. Only by critically examining its own role between stabilization and transformation can spatial planning become an active agent of change. Downloads Download data is not yet available. References Blühdorn, I. (2020): Nachhaltige Nicht-Nachhaltigkeit. Warum die ökologische Transformation der Gesellschaft nicht stattfindet. Bielefeld. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839445167-fm Bruns, A. (2022): Verlernen lernen – eine intervenierende Forschungs- und Arbeitsweise in der Politischen Ökologie. In: Gottschlich, D.; Hackfort, S.; Schmitt, T.; von Winterfeld, U. (Hrsg.): Handbuch Politische Ökologie. Theorien, Konflikte, Begriffe, Methoden. Bielefeld, 571–580. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839456279-059 Kropp, C. (2015): Exnovation – Nachhaltige Innovationen als Prozesse der Abschaffung. In: Arnold, A.; David, M.; Hanke, G.; Sonnberger, M. (Hrsg.): Innovation – Exnovation. Über Prozesse des Abschaffens und Erneuerns in der Nachhaltigkeitstransformation. Marburg, 13–34. = Ökologie und Wirtschaftsforschung 99. O’Brien, K.; Carmona, R.; Gram-Hanssen, I.; Hochachka, G.; Sygna, L.; Rosenberg, M. (2023): Fractal approaches to scaling transformations to sustainability. In: Ambio 52, 9, 1448–1461. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01873-w Downloads PDF (German) HTML (German) XML (German) Published 2025-11-27 Issue Online First Section Commentary License Copyright (c) 2025 Antje Bruns This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Articles in Raumforschung und Raumordnung – Spatial Research and Planning are published under a Creative Commons license. From Vol. 79 No. 2 (2021), the license applied is CC BY 4.0. From Vol. 77 No. 1 to Vol. 79 No.1, articles were published under a CC BY-SA license. Earlier volumes have been re-published by oekom 2022 under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CC BY 4.0. How to Cite 1.Bruns A. Between Urgency and Inertia: Spatial Planning in Transformation. RuR [Internet]. 2025 Nov. 27 [cited 2025 Dec. 16];83(5). Available from: https://rur.oekom.de/index.php/rur/article/view/3562 More Citation Formats ACM ACS APA ABNT Chicago Harvard IEEE MLA Turabian Vancouver Download Citation Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS) BibTeX Share
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