Stjernström, Junker and Thorsen isolate a structural peculiarity of Norwegian planning: formally public land-use authority coexists with a system in which private actors initiate and substantially prepare detailed zoning plans. The iconic idea is therefore not privatisation in the conventional sense, but the insertion of private initiative inside a legally public planning apparatus. Using two municipal case studies, document analysis and stakeholder interviews, the paper tests whether this arrangement retains the claimed advantages of public-private partnership while preserving participation and coherence with comprehensive municipal plans. Its conceptual contribution lies in exposing a recurrent institutional asymmetry: private initiative can accelerate plan production while weakening the connection between project logic and broader public objectives. The work therefore shifts attention from ownership to agenda-setting, from who formally decides to who effectively frames the plan. Its wider significance lies within planning theory’s concern with democratic legitimacy, intermediary governance and the redistribution of planning power under market-oriented urban development.
URBANISM MEETS ART