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Planning cultures in transition: institutional transformation
According to Sanyal, "planning cultures are cultures of planning practice. They are the collective ethos and dominant attitudes of professional planners toward the appropriate roles of the state, market forces, and civil society in urban, regional, and national development." As Reimer notes, this ethos refers to the "basic ideas, traditions and values of planning professionals."

Furthermore, Reimer suggests that planning cultures are "complex and multi-dimensional institutional matrices comprising formal and informal institutional spheres that need to adapt to ever-changing external and internal circumstances." In this context, planning cultures operate in an institutional setting and any evolution of the planning culture faces a persisting institutional stability. Reimer evaluates planning cultures as "an analytical concept (and not as a normative paradigm in theory and practice)." Planning is embedded and operates in specific cultural contexts and subject to changing planning cultures. This transformation plays out in institutional spheres, a form of social transformation. Institutional change can be theorized as a process comprising six stages: equilibrium, shock event, deinstitutionalization, preinstitutionalization, theorization, diffusion, and reinstitutionalization.