collective farm leader - a powerful man, who succeed to “beat out” both state and
community money for the construction of that hall. His message is clear too: we should
finish first the partly built complex.
Two similar ideas. Two ambitious projects. Two powerful persons. One highly
important political conflict question.
But this fight is actually for nothing, because normally only 40 men play a
basketball in Sürgavere during the winter weekends. This means about 3 hours per
weekend. When divided by two, the result is 1,5 hours.
Conclusion from the normative/positivist planning: both projects are unfeasible,
because there is no demand.
Conclusion from the network approach: let’s cooperate in order to utilise better
existing resources and encourage people to have more sports!
Conclusion from the port-soviet practice: let’s have a better lobby in capital city!
5. Conclusion
This paper introduced a new research field for the next years. The result of this first writing
was description and comparison of two different, Eastern and Western, planning systems
cross the history with a particular stress on planning and development of service centres
and community infrastructure (CI).
A much deeper analyse of literature, legislation and practices would be still needed.
According to our discussion based on observations and literature review, “transition” of
planning ideology and practice from the “hard” normative-positivistic post-war tradition to
the “soft” collaborative network approach took place only partly in Estonia. Politicians
actually do not understand the ideas behind the new planning doctrine (law) like wide
participatory and proactive networking. In reality, old management procedures are still
dominant.
During the post-socialist transition period, spatial structures went through drastic
change. Especially rural and old industrial areas lost major part of their employment and
remarkable share of population. CI: schoolhouses, kindergartens, cultural houses and the
like, extensively built by collective farms during the 1970s and 1980s, are partly out of use
because of low demand and high operation costs.
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