The Process of Informal Spatial Planning: A Literature Overview

For years now, spatial planners have played a vital role in managing and balancing the different interests of a wide range of stakeholders in a specific region. With the help of formal and informal instruments, the design of spatial plans is created, but sometimes there are either flaws or gaps in the plans by which the stakeholders would have benefitted. It is important to witness the changes being made in the pattern of planning and analyse the suggestions being made by the intellectual involved. In this article, existing scientific literature has been reviewed, as well as dynamic and comparative analysis and synthesis techniques have mainly been employed for the study. The aim of this article is to study the spatial planning practices in Europe and analyse the governance in spatial planning, which as a result shows different planning modes. With the help of literature, formulating the characteristics of informal planning is an eccentric part of this analysis to understand the direction of development in formal institutions. Test planning process is analysed using the ten characteristics of informal formal planning. From the best practice perspective, decision making in spatial planning must be decentralised, and the tools of spatial planning must be less binding, which has been broadly practiced in Switzerland. The outcome of the research will help avoid floccinaucinihilipilification in spatial planning.