8. The Role of Leadership in the Current Contexts of Central European Planning Culture

Spatial planning is a set of managerial activities focused on support and protection of sustainability in spatial development across different scales. The role of planners is recently dramatically changing from the position of the designers of the future towards the mediators and leaders of the development processes as (post)modern spatial planning has to deal intensively with immaterial and qualitative variables and phenomena like community, identity, place, social behaviour, or human values. The character of planning culture is determined by the value system, which is reflected in the acting, communication, and leadership patterns. Understanding of cultural dynamics, the ability to develop a clear vision of the desired planning culture based on the democratic leadership and its active fostering should be an essential competence of any planner. Recent global development has highlighted the need for special attention dedicated to these issues especially in the context of territorial fixing of the mobile capital. It has been shown that highly profiled planning cultures based on the active leadership generating typical set of principles, values, and approaches play an important role in the spatial development of any territory. Moreover, planning culture significantly shapes not only territorial and spatial processes, but also the dynamics of the entire society. Analysis of the past has often shown that especially planning cultures based upon the authoritarian and beaurocratic leadership failed in the process of dealing with challenges of high complexity. This contribution introduces fundamental theoretical and methodological models of planning cultures and tries to investigate and define specific features and characteristics of Central European planning culture, including the field of leadership.