Planning practices in Galicia: How communities compensate the lack of statutory planning using bottom up planning initiatives

Planning practices performed by non-governmental actors are often not considered as part the spatial planning domain. Spatial planning is generally associated with governmental activity: coordination that is aimed at a formal regulation of land uses and distribution of public goods. Nevertheless, the influence of other actors, like communities, is becoming increasingly important in planning studies. In this paper we argue that planning practices performed by local communities do deliver an important contribution to the improvement of local living circumstances. From the perspective of dialectics we explore how planning practices performed by communities and governments evolve and continuously shape and reshape the performance of spatial planning. These processes are studied qualitatively in rural Galicia, an Autonomous Region in North-Western Spain. Here we studied how two local communities developed and implemented their own plans for local public services and economic development. These two cases were studied in-depth through interviews with involved community members and field visits. Case study results show that a comprehensive recognition of dialectics is necessary to understand how a spatial organization is shaped. Without this understanding it is difficult to value the contribution of planning practices performed by communities to a better spatial organization