Robust policy-mixes for land use management of commercial areas: policy-design and scenario analysis with CIB

Future-oriented policy-mixes for commercial land use management must address multiple goals simultaneously: (1) improve city-regional and inter-municipal cooperation, (2) reduce land take, and (3) assure the long-term economic development of a region. This paper is based on a case study of the Northern Black Forest region in Germany, where consistent and synergetic policy-mixes with cross-impact balances (CIB) had been developed, but without considering uncertain future developments. As a result, there is limited knowledge about the robustness of these policy-mixes and about how to use integrative scenario methods to identify not only consistent and synergetic, but also future-robust policy-mixes. We thus ask: What policy-mixes for commercial area management are robust, i. e. maintaining effectiveness under different future contexts with regard to the overarching regulatory framework of land use, the future of work, and overall economic development? To answer this question, we address the following sub-questions: a) How to integrate context scenarios until the year 2050 into the policy-mix design for commercial area management in the Northern Black Forest? b) How to measure robustness of policy-mixes in the face of contextual uncertainties? To this end, we use scenario-based context and performance variables that were also developed using CIB for commercial space management in the same region: a) we merged both CIB matrices, contexts and policies, and analyzed resulting policy-mix scenarios; b) we integrated performance indicator descriptors from the scenario analysis into the policy-mix scenario matrix; c) for the subsequent analysis, we developed a robustness concept that encompasses three elements and two degrees of robustness. Content wise, we find no "no-regret" policy that appears effective in all contexts, but the analysis points at a bundle of policies, that are well 'compatible' in very different future worlds. These are, in particular, regional policies such as a regional development concept, shared infrastructure, and a joint settlement strategy. Method wise, we demonstrate possibilities to integrate CIB based scenarios and policy-design. We propose a multi-dimensional concept with varying degrees of robustness to enhance the understanding of robustness in qualitative policy design studies.