Measuring “equivalent living conditions”? The use of indicators in German federal spatial planning

4.2.1The use of the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’

In order to trace the use of the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’ in the Spatial Planning Report, we conducted semi-automated frequency counts of the phrase itself along with semantically related words that we identified manually when we analyzed the reports for other possible expressions with a similar meaning.

Figure 2.

Frequencies of the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’ and related terms in Spatial Planning Reports (1963–2017).

The frequency count in Fig. 2 shows that the phrase itself has become a relatively fixed expression within the report but it is far from being used as frequently as the two German terms that are usually translated as ‘living conditions’ (Lebensbedingungen, Lebensverhältnisse). The phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’ was used for the first time in 1974 when the Federal Program of Spatial Planning of 1975 was being prepared. The use of this phrase declined during the 1980s, increasing again after 1990 and peaking in the report from 2011, which explicitly aimed at the operationalization of ‘equivalent living conditions’ [12]. While both German terms that translate to living conditions (Lebensbedingungen, Lebensverhältnisse) are used with similar frequencies during the period under analysis, the obvious exception is the report from 2011 (Fig. 2). By using this term, the text refers more directly to the phrase codified in the Basic Law and other legal sources [85], striving to legitimize this potentially controversial endeavor of quantification. Generally speaking, political attention towards the idea of equivalent living conditions is reflected with a similar basic tendency in the Spatial Planning Reports; however it is not as pronounced as in the documents issued by the German parliament. How do these cycles of attention relate to the topics of the report that we identified?

Figure 3.

Distribution of topics over Spatial Planning Reports (1963–2017).

4.2.2Topics of the Spatial Planning Report

The contents of the Spatial Planning Reports up to 2005 have previously been described by other authors, each identifying particular conflicting objectives reflected in the reports [80, 83, 86]. As early as 1976, it was observed that federal spatial planning faced the crucial dilemma of shifting scarce resources either towards fostering agglomeration and growth or towards slowing down deglomeration and outmigration from rural areas [83]. During the late 1990s this dilemma became a trilemma due to the global discourse on sustainable development [86]. A rather general feature of monitoring regional disparities is that such an endeavor typically implies a place-based framing of problems and related policies, whereas alternative person-oriented framings, implying a mobility of the population, are implicitly disregarded [80]. However, none of the former analyses of the Spatial Planning Report focused on the preconditions or consequences of quantification.

Our approach of using NMF topic models to analyze these documents differs in its innovative methodology and, in part, in the results yielded. Like other authors, we were able to identify topics that are specific to several of the Spatial Planning Reports but less so to others (Fig. 3). Unlike earlier analyses, our results pay closer attention to the diversity of the aspects within the topics identified. The five topics that we identified are each characterized by a constellation of particular words that occur with a relatively high overall frequency throughout the entire text corpus but which are also concentrated in particular documents (Table 2). Hence, words that only appear infrequently, or words that appear frequently but are distributed relatively equally across all texts, are less likely to be part of the topics identified by an NMF model. The words of a topic identified by the NMF algorithm are, at first glance, more heterogeneous than one would expect from a sequential reading of the texts. Nevertheless, the overall distribution of the topics across the documents we analyzed has proven to be fairly robust when different model specifications are used.

Against this backdrop, we labeled each identified topic with a term that seemed best suited to intuitively capturing its specificity so that it could be more easily identified throughout the rest of the paper. Furthermore, we used the periodization of Spatial Planning Reports suggested by the topic modeling in order to select those topics for an in-depth analysis for which our semi-automated frequency counts suggested a high prevalence of the idea of equivalent living conditions. The topics were identified by 139 words overall (Table 2). Topic 1 (32 words), which we labeled the Transnational Topic, clearly was the dominant topic in the reports for the years 2005, 2011, 2017 and to a lesser extent for 2000 as well. It also occurred in the reports from 1990 and 1966 to 1970. Topic 2 (19 words), which we named the Subsidies Topic, dominated in the reports from 1963 to 1970 and occurred in 1972 as well. Topic 3 (24 words), which we called the Unification Topic, was the major topic of the reports for 1991 and 1993 and was also present in the 2000 report. Topic 4 (36 words), which we refer to as the Common Tasks Topic, was the most important topic in the years 1978 to 1990 but also occurred in 1966 to 1970. Topic 5 (28 words), which we termed the Federal Spatial Planning Program Topic, was the most salient topic in the reports from 1972 and 1974, also appearing in adjacent years. Very few words appeared in more than one topic. Hence, according to the frequency distribution depicted in Fig. 2, the Transnational Topic (Topic 1) and the Federal Spatial Planning Program Topic (Topic 5) were found to be the most relevant for in-depth analysis.

Due to the increasing political attention the German parliament has paid to the issue of equivalent living conditions in recent years (Fig. 1) and the obvious relevance of Topic 1 in the Spatial Planning Reports issued from 2000 onwards (Fig. 3), we expected this term to be salient in Topic 1. However, if we look at the 32 words constituting the Transnational Topic (Topic 1), the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’ (recoded to a single word: gleichwertigelebensverhältnisse) is not among them. Nor is it part of one of the other four topics. Hence, the phrase we expected to be salient does not seem to occur in a similar configuration of words. Instead we are led to assume that the phrase has been used in very different thematic constellations across time. This suggestion can be substantiated if we concentrate on analyzing the nouns and named entities constituting the different topics [75] – Topic 1 and Topic 5 in particular. In the analysis, words in single quotation marks are listed in Table 2.

Subsidies (Topic 2): During the period of 1963 to 1970, when Topic 2 was dominant in the Spatial Planning report, the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’ had not yet been coined. This did not occur until the early 1970s [79]. The coinage of a standard phrase is relevant to operationalization because indicators that are used systematically require clear labels in order to be able to announce what they measure. We refrain from a very detailed analysis of Topic 2 here; however, for the aspects examined by this paper, it is relevant to note that during this period there were three types of regions considered to be problematic and in need of political intervention or ‘subsidies’. First, rural areas that faced depopulation due to a lack of job opportunities were categorized as regions lagging behind average development. Second, cities confronted with suburbanization were categorized as ‘agglomeration zones’ and measured as ‘functional urban areas’. It was feared they would become overcrowded and overburdened. Third, ‘the zone bordering the GDR’ was considered in need of special support because there were significantly fewer opportunities of spatial interconnectedness and, as a consequence, also fewer job opportunities due to the essentially impermeable border. According to the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, national subsidies were only allowed under certain circumstances. In Germany, “the zone bordering the GDR” as well as “backward regions” were considered to meet the relevant criteria [26]. Problematizations of regional disparities focused on economic issues and had led to regional economic policy programs since the 1950s [87] – yet not explicitly under the label of equivalent living conditions.

Federal Spatial Planning Program (Topic 5): Topic 5 dominated in the reports from 1972 and 1974 but had also been around in previous years. These were the reports that prepared the ‘Federal Program for Spatial Planning’ which formally contained the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’. The program was intended to formulate concrete aims for the regional development of the national territory that were broader than those programs for regional economic policy already in existence. Two key instruments of regional economic policy had been created in 1969 in the form of the Common Task “Improvement of the Regional Economic Structure” and the Common Task “Improvement of Agricultural Structure and the Protection of Coasts”. Both have been a joint responsibility of the federal government and the states.

The report from 1974 describes the creation of equivalent living conditions as a key objective of the federal government in addition to the aim of preserving natural resources [21]. The aim was concretized as a minimum supply of jobs, housing, and opportunities for education, recreation and communication across the national territory. Equal opportunities for all citizens were to be improved by providing comparable material conditions within a reasonable distance. That would require political decisions on a) criteria for quantities and qualities of facilities, b) the spatial units for which these criteria would apply, and c) the actual allocation of facilities. With regard to such criteria, the report recommended minimum standards that would correspond to the conditions enjoyed by half of the population in more densely populated areas. This orientation towards a minimum standard based on the median of more densely populated areas shows that the issue was about raising standards of living [85]. Spatial scales for these standards should be adapted to the catchment areas of the service in question, which meant that functional areas were preferred over administrative units. Equivalent living conditions were to be achieved by a system of developmental centers and ‘developmental axes’ connecting them [21]. The analytical base for this developmental concept is the theory of central places [88]. In German federalism, the states assign centrality functions of three to four orders to particular cities and towns, creating a pattern of relative decentral provision of local public services. The 1972 report had already identified 38 territorial units that were comprised of a center of first order and its hinterland which had at least 400,000 inhabitants. The borders of these units were typically made up of several counties [22]. A central task of the federal regional policy was to coordinate the financial means invested by the federal government departments in a spatial perspective based on these territorial units.

Furthermore, within the context of the idea of equivalent living conditions, matters of environmental protection became more relevant in the Spatial Planning Report. Although the report from 1963 did devote a small chapter to the economic strain on natural resources, the salience of this issue increased in the 1970s. The word with the highest weight in Topic 5 was ‘carrying capacity’ which refers to the robustness or resilience of natural spaces in the face of growing stress over soil, water, air and vegetation resulting from the extension of economic activities, in particular settlement construction, mining, tourism, waste production and noise [24]. On the one hand, reasonable thresholds for the limitation of externalities from production and consumption were to be identified; on the other hand, certain landscapes were to be protected from these externalities.

Topic 5 also lists several actors that have played a role in territorial governance. One key actor is the ‘Main Commission’ of the Conference of Ministers for Spatial Planning (MKRO), which was institutionalized in 1967 as a forum of cooperation between the federal government and the states. Other actors listed in Topic 5 are government units of the states which issue legal regulations relevant for spatial planning. Today the MKRO is made up of 16 state ministers and the federal minister responsible for spatial planning. The fact that this responsibility has changed several times underscores the rather marginal position of this policy field among the federal departments. The rules of the MKRO specify that every member has one vote and decisions are passed with a simple majority. This gives the federal government a moderating role with no veto rights. It also has limited authority to pass detailed legislation in this policy field, which had been exclusively under state jurisdiction up until 2006. Although this has been formally changed, it has yet to have many practical consequences [89].

Common Tasks (Topic 4): Originally projected for the period up to 1985, the report issued in 1978 was already skeptical about the achievement of the aims set by the Federal Program for Spatial Planning. At the same time, the report pointed out that the social and economic environment of federal spatial planning had changed, which required some reorientation: First, there had been an improvement in the level of infrastructure supply in backward regions. Second, economic investment had declined which was interpreted as a need to put special emphasis on the creation of jobs - not only in rural areas but also in traditional industrial regions hit by the structural change in the economy. Third, declining birthrates were expected to require new forms of organization for infrastructure supply in sparsely populated areas [20]. As a consequence of the assumed convergence of regional living conditions and the new emphasis on economic development, there was a decline in salience of the notion of equivalent living conditions up until the 1990 report.

In terms of measuring equivalent living conditions, it should be noted that the definition of the 38 territorial units for federal spatial policy was met with criticism. The 1978 report admitted that these units were too large to enable the identification of meaningful regional disparities [20]. Furthermore, the departmental planning units in the federal ministries used different territorial units for their own planning purposes, which made coordination between spatial planning and functional planning difficult. Therefore, the report proposed harmonizing spatial planning units especially with respect to the planning regions used in traffic planning and with the labor market regions used in the ‘Common Task’ of regional economic policy salient in Topic 4.

Unification (Topic 3): The reports published in 1991 and 1993 are clearly marked by Topic 3, which underlines different issues that become salient as a consequence of German reunification. The incorporation of the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) led to the perception that a diverse range of infrastructure in the eastern part of unified Germany was perceived as being in ‘decay’ and in need of modernization: ‘sewage’, ‘industrial housing’, ‘telecommunication’ and much more. Unemployment rocketed due to the insolvency of many formerly state-owned companies that were not able to survive in an increasingly global capitalist environment. The key actor in the process of privatizing public enterprises after the end of the GDR was the ‘Treuhandanstalt’. Rising unemployment and the difficulty for young cohorts to enter the labor market prompted the ‘employment agency’ to intervene and provide benefits to ‘short time workers’ who were in danger of losing their jobs, as well as financing measures ‘in preparation of taking up a vocational occupation’. At the same time, a wave of suburbanization produced many ‘newly built housing areas’, because access to privately owned single-family houses had been very limited during communism. Although the sudden increase in regional disparities was an obvious issue during these years, their problematization in terms of the idea of equivalent living conditions only developed slowly.

Figure 4.

Evaluative words typically used to describe regional disparities.

Transnational Topic (Topic 1): Since the turn of the millennium there has been debate about what should count as equivalent from a regional perspective. In fact, the idea of equivalence has been interpreted by experts in contradictory ways [79]: At one end of the spectrum is the claim that the constitutional principle is meant to be a spatial expression of the welfare state, aiming to provide territorial equalization policies [90]. At the other end of the spectrum is the position that ‘equivalent’ should not be misinterpreted as ‘equal’ but lead to a valuation of spatial differences [91, 92]. From 1949 to 1994 Art. 72 of the Basic Law even contained the formulation of ‘uniform living conditions’ (Einheitlichkeit der Lebensverhältnisse) until it was changed to the phrase ‘equivalent living conditions’. Article 72 of the Basic Law regulates the legislative competence of the central state and the federal states and now grants the national legislature the right to issue laws that could overrule state laws if the equivalence of living conditions within the national territory is at risk. However the competence of competing legislation at the federal level came at the price of replacing a strong notion of equality with the more ambiguous phrase of equivalent living conditions [85].

In order to trace this controversy in the Spatial Planning Report, we conducted frequency counts of nine nouns and adjectives that are typically used in the description and evaluation of regional living conditions (Fig. 4). Their use in the Spatial Planning Report is remarkable in several respects. First, ‘uniformity’ and ‘uniform’ (Einheitlichkeit, einheitlich), the modifiers that had been used in the Basic Law from 1949 to 1994 to evaluate living conditions have never occurred much in the Spatial Planning Report even though it was juridically more precise than the current phrase. Instead, the language of the planning report has always been more oriented towards the notion of ‘equivalence’. Second, the term ‘equivalence’ is sometimes used in the report as an abbreviation of the phrase equivalent living conditions, which indicates to us that the evaluative part is the crucial aspect of the idea. Such condensing of meaning into one single word might even be prerequisite before an idea can become politically more influential. The use of ‘equivalence’ peaked in the report from 2005, where it was interpreted as a national expression of the global concern for spatial justice. The latter entered the report as one of three dimensions of the notion ‘sustainable development’ [13]. The term ‘justice’ is not used frequently in the Spatial Planning Report except for in that one report. Third, the word ‘disparity’ is used much more frequently than ‘inequality’ in order to describe spatial distributions. This is probably due to the fact that, among the modifiers analyzed, it is usually perceived to be the most neutral one. In contrast to using ‘inequality’ in the interpretation of indicators, ‘disparity’ suggests a weaker normative reading. Hence, its frequent use can be interpreted as a strategy to increase the epistemic authority of the report and to leave normative questions to policymakers. Interestingly its use increases from 2000 onwards when responsibility for the report was taken over from the federal ministry by the federal spatial research institute BBSR.

The Spatial Planning Report from 2000 argues that the increase in the range of regional disparities following the German unification has made the idea of equivalent living conditions once again politically relevant. Indeed, Topic 1 contains several cues in this regard. First, the word ‘aging’ is the term with the highest weight in this topic and second, several named entities (cities and states) are listed that are located in the eastern part of Germany. Another element is the adjective ‘eastern German’. Indeed, a declining birthrate and outmigration hit the eastern part of Germany hard as was the case in most formerly communist states. Uncertainty about the future caused delays in decisions to have children and, faced with a lack of job opportunities, many young and well-qualified people emigrated to the western part of Germany. Declining population numbers made it increasingly expensive for the public sector to provide technical and social infrastructures which became ever more oversized in many places [93]. Cutbacks and school closures, for example, were the frequent responses by policymakers in shrinking regions, especially in the eastern part of Germany.

However shrinking regions coexist with urban growth areas. In growing monocentric regions with rising housing prices, suburbanization processes have continued and have led to a further increase in average ‘commuting distances’. While suburban areas have long been a concern for spatial planning, an aging population presents a new facet. The young families that once moved to these areas very often became empty-nest households when their children moved out. This age structure needs special attention when it comes to elderly-care planning.

But aging and suburbanization are just two of the ‘challenges’ that Topic 1 identifies in the Spatial Planning Report (Table 2). Indeed, the notion of ‘challenges’ is part of a mobilizing vocabulary that first entered the documents under analysis in 1990 and is used more frequently from 2000 onwards. A similar vocabulary can be found in European regional development programs [68]. If we take into account that this is the period when the spatial planning office BBSR took over responsibility for the Spatial Planning Report from the federal ministry, it can be interpreted as an activating form of problematization addressed at policymakers. Furthermore, the fact that ‘challenges’ appears in the plural indicates a perception of complexity in Topic 1 that is not present in the topics dominating former periods. Very often descriptions and interpretations in the period 2000–2017 bear a reference to a particular ‘context’ that is relevant, indicating a differentiation of problem descriptions. Furthermore, the frequent use of ‘scenario’ shows a high awareness for the contingency of policy decisions.

A great deal of this new complexity and awareness of uncertainty stems from different ‘transnational’ processes: European integration not only brought about the introduction of the ‘euro’ in 1999, but also the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), agreed on by the ministers responsible for spatial planning at the Informal Council in Potsdam. As the consequence, attention was paid for the first time to ‘metropolitan regions’ and ‘metropolitan functions’ in the Spatial Planning Report of 2000. The ESDP envisaged metropolitan regions as nodes that connected Europe to other continents and increased its global competitiveness. Since spatial development concepts in Germany always struggled with a tension between economic growth and regional equalization, the idea of developing metropolitan regions and their interconnectedness increased this tension. It added another layer to the traditional German hierarchy of central places. ‘Community initiatives’ were an important part of the ESDP. One example was ‘INTERREG’, a program designed to contribute to the objectives of structural policy by funding integrative territorial development projects that had existed since 1989. With a view of further enlarging the European Union, the European Commission also announced an economization of the programs for structural development policy in 1999. First, it proposed reducing the maximum share of population in funded regions of member states as well as the number of community initiatives [14]. Another transnational process co-constructed in the Spatial Planning Report was the global discourse on ‘sustainable’ development as objectified for example in the action plan ‘Agenda 21’ of the United Nations in 1992. The report reflects the translation of this global discourse into regional and local processes, identifying indicators for measuring progress towards sustainable development. Within this discourse, rural areas acquire new functions as ‘cultural landscapes’ and ‘open spaces’ that have to be protected against destructive impacts e.g. economic activities. At the same time, their possible contribution to economic activities is reframed as locations for ‘wind power plants’, a source of renewable energy. As part of Germany’s engagement with the Agenda 21 process, the Spatial Planning Act was reformed in 1998 and the guiding idea of equivalent living conditions became embedded in a ‘paradigm of sustainability’ [14]. This catalyzed the first attempt to operationalize the idea of equivalent living conditions in the 2005 report [13].

4.2.3Measuring equivalent living conditions and the competition between instruments

Several decisions need to be made in order to measure equivalent living conditions. From a methodological perspective, it has to be decided which dimensions are relevant, which indicators to use, which (spatial) units to observe and if cross-sectional or longitudinal observations are preferable. From a political perspective, a measure for the normative evaluation of living conditions, a target, a target value or a threshold has to be defined. What counts as equivalent? Should compensation between dimensions be allowed or not? Among the documents analyzed, the Spatial Planning Reports from 2005 and 2011 provide suggestions for an operationalization of equivalent living conditions and pick up potentially contentious aspects of – at first glance – purely methodological decisions.

The report from 2005 presents an operationalization of social and spatial justice as part of a national contribution to the global Agenda 21 process [13]. In this report, equivalent living conditions are equated with social and spatial justice and become one of three potentially conflicting dimensions in the concept of sustainable development. The other two are economic competitiveness and environmental protection. Sustainable development is operationalized using 17 “key indicators” [13], nine of which represent the subdimensions of social and spatial justice (Table 1). The selection of these indicators is briefly made plausible, however the choices are presented as more obvious than contingent. The brevity in justifying the decisions made might be due to the fact that the indicator concept had already been presented to a meeting of the United Nations and was an updated version [13].

Subdimensions of social and spatial justice were conceptualized as non-substitutable and each subdimension was measured by one indicator. Target values were meant to represent a minimum standard to be reached; otherwise there was an indication of a deficit in social and spatial justice or a lack of equivalence of living conditions. Target values were set as percentages of national averages with the exception of housing supply, which was compared to the average for the type of region based on the settlement structure. Calculations were made on the BBSR’s scale of 92 spatial planning units which typically comprise several counties. The definition of these target values was, in part, justified by reference to other conventions that had been defined politically e.g. the 75% threshold used to demarcate the EU assisted areas. Others were set without explicit reference to existing conventions, a procedure that was admittedly “imperfect but necessary”, having been practiced since the 1970s [13]. In 1976, shortly after the Federal Spatial Planning Program had been put in place, the Council for Spatial Planning (Beirat für Raumordnung), an advisory body of scientists and interest groups at the federal ministry, recommended the most extensive catalog of indicators and minimum standards for the entire national territory as a basis for political discussions. It contained a total of 167 indicators in six dimensions and 67 subdimensions [94]. Data in the report from 2005 was normalized in order to be able to compare indicators of different subdimensions. Indicators with a deficit over the target value were used for calculating an average regional deficit. Cross-sectional data was used to assess regional disparities at one point in time, as well as the development of these disparities over a period of five years. The magnitude of disparities was measured by the coefficient of variation and by counting the regions with a deficit. In 2001, between 9 and 41 regions exhibited a deficit in one of the assessed subdimensions of justice.

The report from 2011 operationalized equivalent living conditions using six subdimensions and 23 indicators, which were measured on the county level. Dimensions were presented as rather obvious; indicators were made plausible, for example, with regard to their practical relevance for political decision making. The subdimensions were conceptualized as non-substitutable; an additive index was constructed for each subdimension, which meant that the values of individual indicators could compensate each other. The construction of these additive indices was made possible by a Z-transformation of the data. Individual indicators entered the equation with equal weight, except for the GDP per employed person in the subdimension ‘economy’, and unemployment rate in the subdimension ‘labor market’ which were double weighted. The report interpreted the idea of equivalent living conditions as aiming to provide minimum standards across the national territory, an interpretation that is in line with the extensive recommendation of unitary indicators and thresholds by the Council for Spatial Planning from 1976. At the same time, the report quotes a more recent statement by the Council for Spatial Planning, which argued against uniform standards across the national territory and for spatially differentiated standards. On the one hand, it can be assumed that this argument reflects the academic criticism, which bemoaned the fact that quantitative indicators might have different meanings depending on the regional context in question [95, 96]. On the other hand, it reflects the fact that, in German federalism, the states, not the federal government, are responsible for spatial planning and hence for the definition of standards in the first place. The federal government should only intervene if equivalence across the national territory is at stake. Yet, without a unitary national benchmark, it is not possible to evaluate that question because normative standards vary considerably across states. As a consequence, the Spatial Planning Report used the federal average as a benchmark and defined deviations larger than one standard deviation from the average as ‘strongly below average’. An accumulation of ‘strong deviations below average’ were considered to represent unequivalent living conditions [12]. The report identified 21 counties with living conditions ‘very strongly below average’ (at least in four of the six dimensions), all of which were located in the eastern part of Germany. It further identified 20 counties with living conditions ‘strongly below average’ (in at least three dimensions and above average in a maximum of two dimensions). Fifteen of these counties were located in the eastern part of Germany and five in the western part.

When we compare the two operationalizations of equivalent living conditions briefly presented here, it becomes clear that there is a relatively stable consensus that economic development and participation in the labor market are crucial dimensions of this concept. Furthermore, the approach from 2005 is clearer in the sense that possible tensions between the dimensions of economic growth and justice are explicitly highlighted in the report. At the same time, a policy instrument for monitoring and supporting economic development already existed in Germany, namely the Common Task targeting regional economic development. This means that there would have been a certain redundancy in monitoring and, consequently, in intervening. Against the backdrop of possible competition between the instruments of regional economic policy and a potential instrument targeting equivalent living conditions, the report from 2017 focused on the theme of safeguarding the provision of material and organizational infrastructure (Daseinsvorsorge sichern). This report was the first to officially choose a particular theme for the entire report. It referred to the idea of equivalent living conditions (Fig. 2), yet not to the operationalizations proposed in the reports from 2005 and 2011. The report analyzed possible strategies for safeguarding the provision of material and organizational infrastructure across the national territory, a particular challenge in depopulating areas. Hence it explicitly carved out a narrower policy focus than the measurement concepts presented in earlier reports that spanned several dimensions of living conditions. Moreover, compared to the early 1970s, a recent discussion on equivalent living conditions has focused on how to keep from falling below a certain threshold instead of on increasing minimum standards [85]. A less encompassing thematic focus and a lower aspiration level might enhance the prospects for formalizing the idea of equivalent living conditions in a unitary way. Although a political think tank has proposed the creation of a Common Task ‘Daseinsvorsorge’ [97], a program for which there would be shared federal and state responsibility, no such plans by relevant state actors have been announced.

One requirement of a unitary operationalization of equivalent living conditions would be a consensus on a relevant set of indicators among the crucial actors of German spatial planning policy, most notably the policy makers in the MKRO [96]. A step in this direction was made by an article that extensively sought to justify the setting of target values by referring to existing (politically decided) conventions in different policy fields [98]. Additionally, the federal government used the measurement concept from 2011 in order to answer a so-called small request in the German parliament about how many “left-behind regions” there were in Germany [10]. However, the measurement suggestions proposed so far were not picked up by the federal Equivalent Living Conditions Commission. Yet, the commission explicitly supported a current initiative of the BBSR to develop a measurement concept of equivalent living conditions that should be used for regular monitoring. That initiative has been explicitly designed as a “model project”, integrating experts and local politicians [40]. The commission further stipulated that subjective indicators for life satisfaction should be analyzed with respect to their (causal) relevance for outmigration as part of this monitoring [99].

4.2.4Changing actor constellations and the localization of problems

During the period under analysis, informal indicator use for representing the idea of equivalent living conditions in the Spatial Planning Report has shifted from analytical spatial categories towards a more individualized representation of territories. While this representational change still supports a place-based framing of problems, it does not facilitate collective action to cope with those problems. In order to substantiate our argument, we specifically compare the two topics that dominate those periods in which the idea of equivalent living conditions is most salient: Topic 1 (2000–2017) and Topic 5 (1972–1974). We focus on the constellation of actors and on the localization of problems in both topics.

Figure 5.

Number of figures, maps and tables per Spatial Planning Report (1963–2017).

From the description above, it has become clear that Topic 5, the Federal Spatial Planning Program Topic, is mainly populated by national actors and their instruments. The main issue of national actors and their confidence in the standardizing power of measurement and rational policymaking in the early 1970s was how to raise living standards, especially in regions classified as ‘backward’ [85, 94]. One exception to the national constellation of actors in Topic 5 is the projections of the agricultural land needed to self-sufficiently feed the German population. These projections, made by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development as well as individual scientists like George E. ‘Rossmiller’ from ‘Michigan’ State University, are intensely discussed in the report from 1972 (Table 2). They were used to estimate (make a ‘prognosis’ on) how utilization conflicts between settlement areas and different forms of open space usage could be ameliorated in the face of rising productivity in agriculture. Furthermore, matters pertaining to international relations and cooperation have been a regular part of all the reports since the very beginning.

Nevertheless, the salience of international actors, primarily the European Union and the United Nations, and their instruments in the more recent Transnational Topic (Topic 1) is striking. In this respect, the operationalization of the concept of sustainable development catalyzed attempts to formalize the idea of equivalent living conditions [13]. How about national actors? National actors are mentioned in the Transnational Topic, however their relative importance has declined relative to the Federal Spatial Planning Program Topic. A significant number of national actors in the Transnational Topic consists of the names of individual cities and states. While the names of cities and states can be interpreted as representing political actors, they are also a way to localize problems, especially on maps. The Transnational Topic names 8 political territories and 5 analytical spatial categories, whereas the Federal Spatial Planning Program Topic names 2 political territories and 4 analytical spatial categories. This individualizing way of localizing problems presents an alternative to the construction of analytical spatial categories. While the latter would be compatible with the formal establishment of intervention programs, the former is rather compatible with more informal and participatory ways of intervention, such as the ‘model projects’ that have existed in federal spatial planning since the late 1990s [11]. In addition to this, individualizing forms of localizing problems responsibilize local or regional actors rather than national ones.

Since the mid-1990s, depopulation, aging and problems related to spatial planning, such as school closures, have mainly occurred – though not exclusively – in the eastern part of Germany. In the analyzed reports, this localization is increasingly indicated through an individualizing representation of space (names of cities and states) instead of through analytical categories that could be connected more clearly to a need for (federal) intervention. While the report from 2005, for example, partially categorized metropolitan regions, suburban areas and rural areas in a quantified way as ‘spaces with a need for intervention’, the definition of these spaces was not related to the operationalization of equivalent living conditions in the same report [13].

Why do we see this individualizing shift in the representation of space? In the first place, it seems to be the result of a change in the way quantitative results are presented to policymakers and the wider public in the Spatial Planning Report (Fig. 5). Simultaneously, it has the – probably unintended – consequences of mobilizing the individual agency of local governments while hampering the formation of space-based interest groups. Roughly speaking, the number of tables, maps and figures (graphs) – illustrative techniques that are typically used to highlight results – increased quite steadily during the period under observation up until 2005, at which point they declined. The report from 1978 is an exception because it contained an extensive annex that has not been published in a digital format. At the same time, from 1978 onwards, the proportion of maps has increased at the expense of tables and, to a lesser extent, at the expense of figures. This development was further boosted with the report issued in 2000, when responsibility for the report was transferred from the ministry to the federal research institute BBSR. The relative increase in the proportion of maps remains unchanged in the reports from 2011 and 2017 when the total number of illustrations decreased. This observed shift in Spatial Planning Reports is no coincidence but seems to be part of a broader strategy of communicating policy advice in spatial planning [100]. Maps are visual representations that can usually also be read by laymen in a very intuitive way. At the same time, the Spatial Planning Report typically uses political maps as a base layer for depicting descriptive or analytical results. Political maps divide space into territories with clearly marked borders and often also label the state capital. Such depictions not only suggest the capital’s ability to govern the territory but also implicitly address the individualized political territories as political actors capable of developing strategies for coping with their particular situation. In contrast, the construction of an analytical category would theoretically facilitate the establishment of interest groups that could lobby for the establishment of an indicator-based federal policy instrument favoring their interests [84, 101].