Governance, Planning & Experimentation

Commissioning as the cornerstone of self-build. Assessing the constraints and opportunities of self-build housing in the Netherlands

This paper investigates the relationship between self-build housing and the wider planning and housing regime. Although there is growing policy and academic attention to self-build housing, there is a lack of understanding of the institutional and regulatory conditions shaping the prospects of such housing provision. This paper takes the case of The Netherlands and scrutinizes how institutional dynamics over time have made lower and middle residents dependent on densely organized consortia of municipalities, housing associations and developers. These norms of land development appear to be at odds with the logic of self-building. Through exploring evidence in a pilot study of a municipal self-building scheme in Almere, the authors suggest that making self-building the cornerstone of a resident-led land development strategy, also for low- and middle-incomes, implies a reconfiguration of the actors’ positions in housing provision. This entails a commissioning role for residents in the institutional domain of social and commercial developers.

Entrepreneurial Governance: Challenges of large-scale property-led urban regeneration projects

Large‐scale urban regeneration projects become highly complex as they involve multiple actors with different expectations. In general, the implementation of such projects entails building governance regimes at the city or regional level, but this often means forging partnerships between public and private actors to serve as policy instruments. Each city government formulates its own strategy for coping with the complexities of various levels of policy‐making, thereby establishing multi‐level governance regimes. And each city has its own particular experience with the implementation trajectory: long or short, successful or unsuccessful. This paper focuses on how the complexities of multi‐actor governance influence the implementation of these projects. The purpose is to show how the macro‐level institutional context affects the project's success and to analyse the challenges posed by multi‐actor governance. Comparative analysis of two old port regeneration projects, namely Rotterdam's Kop van Zuid in the Netherlands, and Het Eilandje in Antwerp, Belgium, reveals how similar challenges were dealt with in different institutional contexts.

Social-spatial narrative: A framework to analyze the democratic opportunity of conflict

Conflicts and contention increasingly challenge the capacity to govern the city. Social conflicts are not only problematic but also reveal a sense of active citizenship and engagement. Agonistic theories argue that governments should embrace contention to improve democracy, but this notion has rarely been made tangible in a framework of analysis. This paper proposes the ‘social-spatial narrative’ (SSN) framework to analyze if, when, where, and how conflicts can create opportunities to strengthen urban democracy. The SSN framework analyzes the social geography and political significance of street-level encounters in processes of urban conflict. It unravels exactly how the micropolitics of citizenship interacts with policy practices at the street-level. Narratives reveal the perspectives of stakeholders, but in order to study how some actors establish power and others get excluded, I argue for a social-spatial approach to critical moments. Critical moments may create liminal moments to (re)negotiate meaning, relationships and repertoires of action. The potential of conflict lies in the dramaturgy of these critical moments, which are therefore pivotal vantage points for critical reflection on the repertoire of urban politics. The paper coalesces theories from conflict studies, geography, and public policy to examine conflict empirically through case studies. I illustrate the framework with a case study in Amsterdam that addresses when and where opportunities to engage plural voices in decision making have emerged, and how local officials have missed these opportunities.

Adaptive and Strategic Capacity: Navigating Megaprojects through Uncertainty and Complexity

In an effort to combat the complexity and uncertainty that comes with mega-infrastructure development, planners often seek to simplify the process and scope of their projects, making plans that consist of rigid sequential steps. The question is how this approach influences planners' responsiveness to uncertainty and complexity in megaproject decision making and planning. To answer this question I introduce two concepts: Adaptive capacity and strategic capacity. I develop these concepts and apply them to three large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands in order to analyze the potential of these projects to deal with change and inertia. In this paper I first look at the concepts individually and then link them together. This shows that, to be successful, planning needs to navigate a project through uncertainty and complexity and that it is important that these concepts are taken into consideration.

Planners’ role in accommodating citizen disagreement: The case of Dutch urban planning

Citizen disagreement on urban policies and planning decisions is both ubiquitous and fundamental to democracy. Post-political debates debunk the ‘consensus approach’, which is grounded in Habermasian communication theory, for circumventing disagreement. This article presents a counter argument. Our analysis of the highly institutionalised and consensus-oriented Dutch planning framework shows that this system does not necessarily prevent effective voicing of disagreement. The empirical material demonstrates that consensus is not a pre-defined and static outcome but a dynamic and sensitive process in which urban planning is an instrument. We conclude that planners could facilitate consensus through accommodative roles that address disagreement by taking an adaptive, proactive and more human stance.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”: giving voice to planning practitioners

 

 

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Tasan-Kok, T. (2016). “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”: giving voice to planning practitioners. Planning Theory & Practice 17(4), 621-625. DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2016.1225711

Speeltuinen, burgers en participatie: reflecties op kritische momenten in Amsterdam Oost

Hoe kun je omgaan met conflict in participatie processen? Na aanleiding van een jarenlange samenwerking met de gemeente Amsterdam ontwikkelde wij een methode om te reflecteren op conflict in processen van burgerparticipatie.

Het doel van dit schrijven is tweeledig. We analyseren twee casussen van participatie in Amsterdam Oost. Maar deze casusbeschrijvingen dienen ook een voorbeeld voor de ‘kritieke-momenten reflectiemethode’ die wij hebben ontwikkeld. De kritieke-momenten reflectiemethode is een manier om te begrijpen hoe, ondanks alle goede intenties, participatie vaak toch kan escaleren of tot nieuwe conflicten kan leiden. De methode die wij aandragen geeft professionals die participatie- of andere samenwerkingsverbanden willen bewerkstelligen, een handelingsrepertoire om actoren (spelers en betrokkenen die een actieve rol innemen en invloed hebben op een proces) en herinneringen een plek en rol te geven in het proces. De reflectie die in de methode wordt aangedragen is in Amsterdam Oost toegepast op de praktijk, met als doel beleidmakers en politici de mogelijkheid te bieden hun eigen handelen te begrijpen en nieuwe participatieprocessen te versterken.

Governing the global locally: Agonistic democracy practices in The Hague’s Schilderswijk

Cities have become stages for (inter)national conflicts over political and religious identity, democratic values and ownership of place. These ‘glocal urban conflicts’ challenge local actors to respond immediately and effectively in ways that prevent escalation and strengthen democratic relations. The theory of agonistic democracy provides a valuable model that celebrates difference and inclusiveness to foster democracy. There is, however, little understanding of how these agnostic ideals are practiced in rapidly unfolding situations. This article provides a case study to further our understanding of dealing with conflicts where global tensions are enacted at the street level. It proposes an interpretative approach that brings into focus how a decentred network of local professionals practice agnostic democracy in action. The local government of The Hague was challenged to ‘govern the global locally’ when young Muslims waved flags allying with ISIS on the streets of the Schilderswijk neighbourhood. A series of local demonstrations required appropriate responses in a highly mediatised conflict. The analysis provides three ‘critical moments’ that function as a lens to study governance practices that underscore diversity as a political resource. Practices of ‘governing meaning’ and ‘governing the street’ addressed concerns about security, ownership and local grievances.

Responsibility, polity, value: The (un)changing norms of planning practices

To address the social, spatial and environmental problems of cities, planners often promote and engage with spatial practices that are intended to be experimental, innovative or transformative of existent processes. Yet, the actual nature of the novelty of these practices is often not explicit nor problematised by their proponents. This article develops an institutionalist framework to better appreciate the variegated nature of change in planning practices. It understands planning as embedded in, and simultaneously impacting on, three types of institutionalised norms: operational norms that define and allocate responsibilities among actors, collective norms that (re)produce planning polities and constitute the spatial-temporal context of their actions and constitutional norms that substantiate the idea of value defining the eligible stakeholders of a particular process. The article mobilises this framework and argues that contemporary planning practices convey a (a) shifting of responsibility towards individuals and households, (b) disaggregation of city regions through polycentric localism and (c) the reproduction of the process of accumulative valorisation of land. The article concludes reflecting on the complexity institutional change.