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Manual de Urbanismo (Bogota, 1939): Karl Brunner
No full textUnlike European countries, where the consolidation of town planning was based on legislative reforms, Latin America’s urbanismo mainly stemmed from urban plans for national capitals and metropolises. Austrian academic and planner Karl Brunner was hired in Chile, Colombia and Panama from the late 1920s to advise in the professional and academic domains, marking a shift from the so-called í‰cole Française d’Urbanisme (EFU) of Haussmannesque descent towards the Austrian-German Städtebau.
While coordinating the municipal office and plan for Bogotí¡, Brunner translated his Manual de Urbanismo — the first textbook published in Latin America about the new discipline and the first to incorporate examples from local cities. Based on his 1924 course at Vienna’s National Faculty of Architecture, Brunner’s Manual emphasized the ‘scientific system’ of the discipline. Brunner was the most influential figure of his time in the urban planning of the region, but has become overshadowed by Le Corbusier’s and CIAM’s prevailing influence after World War II.
Complete with a supporting introduction written by Arturo Almandoz, this volume includes the full copy of the original Manual de Urbanismo with an English translation of the synthesis. Further materials, including an extract of Karl Brunner’s “Problemas actuales de urbanizacií³n” and an accompanying English translation of the text can be accessed at www.routledge.com/9781138778573
Public Versus Private Planning: Themes, Trends and Tensions
No full text13th IPHS Conference (2008, Chicago, USA) of the International Planning History Society (IPHS) and its proceedings place presentations from different continents and on varied topics side by side, providing insight into state-of-the art research in the field of planning history and offering a glimpse of new approaches, themes, papers and books to come.
Proceeding
Cities and Citizenship in Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean
Get PDFThe Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (NALACS), in cooperation with the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology, organised the joint conference, ‘Cities and Citizenship in Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean,’ held on 16-17 June 2016 in Delft, the Netherlands. The 2-day conference embraced a wide range of topics related to urban development and citizenship in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Premises of the conference
In their pioneering collection of essays ‘Cities and Citizenship’, Holston and Appadurai (1999) as well as other prominent scholars, stressed the importance of cities in the making of modern citizens. At the end of the twentieth century, they demonstrated that urban environments are salient sites for examining the renegotiations of citizenship, democracy, and national belonging. This is arguably particularly the case in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean, where cities seem to embody the aspirations of citizens and to showcase the best and the worse of their respective societies. It is here that we can observe major opportunities and threats to development, security and human rights, as well as major struggles for rights, inclusion and democracy
This conference was organised in 4 tracks
Track 1. Cities and Violence: Cities as salient sites where violence and conflict develop and affect the lives of citizens.
Track 2. Cities and sustainable development: Cities as salient sites where (spatial) planning and (sustainable) development ideas are applied, and where grassroots and governments alternatingly clash or collaborate in order to simultaneously build cities and structures of citizenship.
Track 3. Cities and identity: Cities as salient sites where citizen’s identities and resistances are expressed and repressed.
Track 4. Open for suggestions: Cities as salient sites for other themes related to urban life and urban development
Amsterdam 2050: Complex Projects
Get PDFBy using Amsterdam as a living laboratory, graduate students, researchers and teachers of the architectural design chair of Complex Projects at the Department of Architecture at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment have been interested in seeing how ‘growth’ and rapid ‘changes’ — growth of numbers of inhabitants and tourists, and change of energy, mobility, health and leisure concepts - will affect the City of Amsterdam on a time horizon 2050. How can innovations be introduced to the domain of architecture and urban design? The creative exploration presented in this publication aims to understand today’s structure of the City, to explore possible future scenarios and to speculate on new architectural typologies new technology and ways of living may construct.
Complex Projects teamed up for almost two years with Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and the municipality of Amsterdam, to focus on the theme AMSTERDAM 2050. The book is a systematization of the work of more than 80 graduate students and 6 tutors with the input from researchers and invited critics on a case study on 9 different locations in Amsterdam. The research-through-design process of documenting and analysing the present urban conditions of the City of Amsterdam and investigating various trends directing future urban development resulted in design solutions and visualisations of the predicted development of these locations
Ghent Planning Congress 1913: Premier Congrí¨s International Et Exposition Comparí©e Des Villes
Get PDFThe Ghent Congress on town planning was the first genuinely international conference to address all aspects of civic life and design. Attended by representatives of 22 governments and 150 cities, as well as by hundreds of architects, planners, politicians, and scientists, it marked the culmination of a series of events which helped to form the world of town planning at the start of the twentieth century.
Ghent illustrates three key themes for the history of town planning. First, the Transactions of the Congress include papers from some of the most significant theorists and practitioners of the period, such as Patrick Abercrombie, Augustin Rey, Raymond Unwin, and Joseph Stí¼bben.
Second, the Congress as a whole reflects just how global the business of town planning had become by 1913: papers and exhibits included studies of colonial projects as well as European designs. The delegates themselves provide wonderful evidence of a transnational process at work.
Finally, the text brilliantly illuminates the way in which town planning was critically linked to other reformist movements of the era. The whole event, like the International Union of Cities that it spawned, was the product of the peace movement. Even as war draw nearer, the International Union was being spoken of as a future world government. Significantly, one of the organizers of the event — Henri La Fontaine - won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.
The Premier congrí¨s international et exposition comparí©e des villes is a major publication, but it is one that is now almost impossible to obtain. This republication, a century after this seminal event, will be of considerable interest not only to those who work on town planning, but also to transnational historians and writers on the peace movement more generally
Europe Rehoused: Elizabeth Denby
Get PDFEurope Rehoused was one of the most influential housing texts of the 1930s, and is still widely cited. Written by the housing consultant Elizabeth Denby (1894—1965) it offered a survey of the nearly two decades of social housing built across Europe since the end of World War I, with the aim of informing British policy makers; as a reviewer declared ‘it has a decidedly propagandist flavour.’ Denby was a leading figure in housing debates in the 1930s. Adopting a line in sharp critique of what she saw as the entirely materialist approach of state housing policy, Denby advocated the incorporation of social amenities alongside well-designed and well-equipped flats and houses, ideally sited within urban areas; by the late 1930s she was a pioneering advocate of the concept of mixed development.
Europe Rehoused is divided into two parts. The first considered the origins of the housing problem of the inter-war decades, which Denby dated to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. She then examined the various national factors which influenced the problem: climate, post-war economy and the nature of land ownership. Finally she discussed the financial aspect: the bodies responsible for house building and the nature of the subsidies available for building. This was very much a schematic survey and the second, and largest, part of the book was devoted to individual studies of European practice, and discussed ‘two winners in the War, two losers and two neutrals’: Sweden, Holland, Germany, Vienna, Italy and France. This section was completed with a concluding chapter in which she compared continental work with the British system, and the lessons that could be learnt in this country from abroad.
Although Denby’s book was not the only one of its sort, its importance lies in its polemical nature and its advocacy of a rehousing policy which would become widely adopted after World War II. Significant too, is that the book is the voice of a woman who had assumed a significant status as a housing expert in the inter-war decades; Walter Gropius, who wrote the introduction to the US edition of the book, observed that the book ‘carried the weight of perfect expertness’. Such voices have for too long been overlooked, yet Denby formed part of a very strong tradition of women reformers who worked to reshape the inter-war and post-war British built environment
The Boston Contest of 1944: Prize Winning Programs
No full textDuring World War II, many European government authorities and planners believed that the damage caused by bombing constituted a great opportunity to transform their cities. Even as the fighting continued, a great many plans were drawn up, and this has been the subject of much scholarship. However, what is often overlooked is wartime planning in cities not damaged in the war. United States cities were not bombed, but in Boston, one of its leading cities, the last years of the war brought a major effort to encourage both new plans to modernize the city and also means of implementing those plans.
The wartime initiative to transform Boston had several sources. Both the Great Depression and the war had led to major measures by the federal government to try to deal with fiscal challenges and the need for new housing for the many people who relocated during the war because of the creation of new industries to help the war effort. Boston hoped it could benefit from these measures. Moreover, in the late 1930s, Harvard University had become a key residence for figures important in modernist planning, including Joseph Hudnut, Walter Gropius, and Martin Wagner.
These factors combined in 1944 to inspire what was called The Boston Contest. Its goal was to suggest solutions to many problems found in the metropolitan area. These issues included commercial and industrial developments, housing, transportation, education, recreation, welfare, urban finances, metropolitan government, and citizen participation in solving problems. This book, published in 1945 contains the top 3 prize winning entries and excerpts from 9 of the other nearly 100 entries. It gives a fascinating insight into the developing ideas of urban planning in the United States at a critical juncture
Celebrating Spatial Planning at TU Delft 2008-2019: Summary of Achievements of the Spatial Planning and Strategy Section of the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment Delft University of Technology
Get PDFThe Department of Urbanism of the TU Delft is organised in five sections: Spatial Planning & Strategy (SPS), Urban Design, Environmental Modelling, Urban Studies, and Landscape Architecture. SPS has three distinct and complementary pillars: (i) Spatial Planning & Strategy, (ii) Regional Design and Planning, and (iii) International Urbanisation & Development Planning. Spatial Planning at TU Delft has an evident, but unique relationship with spatial design, focusing on the development and transformation of spatial form, composition, patterns, structures, and networks.
Spatial Planning, together with Design and Technology, form the key pillars to Urbanism at Delft University of Technology. This integrative approach to urbanism has a long history at TU Delft and makes the University’s academic profile in spatial planning highly distinctive and also highly ranked.
All over the world, cities and regions are challenged by the risks and opportunities associated with accelerating challenges arising from migration, climate change, the fourth industrial revolution, globalisation, rising inequality, and political instability. They face urgent questions with respect to sustainable growth and transformation that can only be tackled in an interdisciplinary integrative way that promotes social, economic, and environmental sustainability and spatial justice. In other words, they are not only concerned with what to do (i.e. the objectives of spatial planning) but also with how to do it (i.e. processes of democratic citizen engagement and governance).
Over recent decades, spatial planning, policy-making and territorial governance have changed drastically. First, trends of deregulation and decentralisation have had a large impact on traditionally strong spatial planning authorities, such as national governments and national bodies of planning. They have repositioned themselves and gotten new responsibilities, but regional and local planning authorities have had to adapt as well. Additionally, at least in the European Union, private stakeholders and civil society have been given much more room to co-create spatial plans and interventions with those planning authorities. Spatial planning has developed into an inter- and transdisciplinary activity, especially in advanced economies.
Secondly, vision and strategy-making have become mainstream in spatial planning with an increased understanding of the complex, uncertain, networked, and dynamic nature of cities and regions. Planning for resilience and sustainability, for organic growth, for flexibility, and for adaptivity means that planning has become a process of intensive interaction, negotiation, and communication between involved stakeholders, looking for shared visions and strategies to go forward. Such a process is helped by diverse tools and ways of approaching the tasks at hand, with the formulation of alternative spatial scenarios and by vision and strategy-making. These tools contribute to a new planning paradigm that focuses on communication and consensus-seeking in collaborative decision-making processes. This has increased the need for urbanism-planning professionals who can lead, guide, facilitate, mediate, manage, and steer those processes, across a variety of spatial scales, from neighbourhood to city-region and beyond.
Thirdly, spatial planning has become a more digitised and digitally supported process in many ways. In several places, spatial planning processes are based on E-participation and innovative ways of citizen engagement. Urban (big) data and sophisticated 2D and 3D analysis, visualisation, modelling, and decision-making tools are providing urbanism professionals with more input on the city than ever before, making urban policy-making processes potentially more transparent, explicit, and democratic, and strongly underpinned and supported by actual and dynamic data that allows for evidence-based decision- making.
The changes within the professional field of spatial planning come with many questions that can be researched at the University , focusing on issues of:
fairness, spatial justice, and democracy building;
the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in spatial development processes, including the roles and values of planners
spatial decision-making processes and how they are informed by socio-spatial data (analysis).
SPS contributes to teaching and research on these questions and contributes to the understanding of theoretical perspectives on the nature, scope, and effects of spatial planning. Our section focuses on (i) international and European territorial governance and policy-making, including their potential for democracy building, (ii) contemporary methods of spatial planning, spatial planning instruments, and spatial planning systems, (iii) territorial evidence and impact assessment. By doing so, the Section contributes to theories of spatial planning and builds on SPS’s strong tradition of international comparative studies.
TU Delft is the leading institution in the Netherlands for research and education on Urbanism. It has an established track record of excellence in research, teaching, and learning, confirmed by external assessments
Metamorphosis: The transformation of Dutch Museums
Get PDFIn 1990 the then Minister for Culture, Hedy d’Ancona, issued the Delta Plan for Cultural Preservation: a large-scale and national program to thoroughly improve collection storage conditions in Dutch museums. This signalled the start of a transformation of the Dutch museum.he reason for this radical transformation of Dutch museums was the pending privatization of the country’s national museums. From the beginning of the 1990s, national museums had to stand on their own feet. That gave the museum visitor a new position: the museums were forced to engage the public and did so with conviction. This new approach bore fruit: the public has been flocking to museums in increasing numbers and by doing so, have further transformed the Dutch museum. Museums want to open up their collections to everyone while protecting these collections as well as possible. To align these ambitions Dutch museums have engaged in an unprecedented construction boom. The desire to be able to study the results of those building activities brought the TUDelft to approach the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) to undertake a joint investigation into the transformation of museums in the Netherlands since 1990 together.
This study shows that much has been achieved to realize the two ambitions of better collection management and increased visitor numbers. The RCE continues to endeavour to further align those two conflicting ambitions, which is why we develop and disseminate knowledge about the safety of heritage including researching climate control possibilities for collection storage and display. In her policy letter Heritage Counts (2018—2021), Minister Van Engelshoven (Education, Culture and Science) opted to further both ambitions: conservation of, and employing the unifying power of heritage. Museums particularly embody the contradiction between preservation and accessibility. They exist to preserve valuable and often vulnerable objects of art, history, science and daily life. But they are also there to make us take ownership of those objects.
The challenge for museums is to find the best relationship between their need to ensure the safety of their top pieces and prevent any risk of damage. At the same time, they want to be hospitable and open to everyone who wishes to enjoy their collection. An object has to be preserved for many generations and the current generation must be able to become acquainted with and enjoy it in large numbers. In other words: the museum must be comfortable for both visitors and collection, now and in the future.
The RCE and the TU Delft Section for Heritage & Architecture often collaborate. This time we found common ground in research into the transformation of museums. Architects and museum managers are constantly faced with the task of realizing this transformation as fittingly as possible. Their mutual communication and coordination is crucial. This study hopes to contribute to that. The cooperation of the museums investigated has been of great importance in this regard. By making data available and sharing insights and experiences, they have made it possible to investigate the transformation on museums in the Netherlands. The result presents a fascinating picture of the metamorphosis of Dutch museums
Regional Design: Discretionary Approaches to Planning in the Netherlands
Get PDFIn the 1980s, planning approaches in European regions have changed as a result of increasing attention to regional spatial developments and a diminishing reliance on government-led statutory planning schemes. Emerging new approaches, often called spatial planning, shifted the focus from planning predefined territories to the planning of spatial networks, which stretch across multiple administrative boundaries. In this specific context of spatial planning, new decision-making approaches have emerged, involving coalitions of plan actors from multiple tiers and levels of government as well as market and civil actors. In near absence of formally approved statutory planning frameworks, broad involvement became a way to legitimize planning decisions and, at the same time, amass organisational capacity for their implementation.
A decision-making approach that has gained prominence in the context of spatial planning in the Netherlands is regional design. Building upon a tradition of using design-led approaches in planning, expectations on the performances of regional design in the realm of spatial planning are high. Regional design is thought to be an imaginative and creative practice, which leads to planning innovation. It is expected to enhance the spatial quality that planning strategies and projects produce. Regional design is also assumed to perform in governance settings. It is supposed to clarify political options, forge societal alliances, and remove conflict around planning solutions during early moments of decision-making and speeding up their implementation in this way.
Despite these high and varied expectations, an in-depth understanding of the interrelations between regional design and spatial planning is not yet achieved. The rich body of professional writing on regional design in the Netherlands is often focused on single practices. It is fragmented. The body of scholarly writing dedicated to regional design is small and has deficiencies for this reason. A particular knowledge gap is caused by a one-sided perspective on the performances of regional design. Most existing analyses focus on the expected impacts of regional-design practices on planning decisions. Various theoretical notions on spatial planning and governance are used to assert these expectations. A reversed approach, in which the impact of aspects of prevailing planning frameworks on design practice is of concern, is missing. Performances of regional design practice are often considered disappointing and sometimes even averse, due to this lack of indepth understanding.
Research aims and questions
In consideration of the above sketched background, the main aim of this research is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of interrelations between regional design and spatial planning. There are three secondary aims. This research seeks to first integrate notions from various domains and fields for an enhanced transdisciplinary understanding of regional design. Whereas many Dutch regional design initiatives refer to multiple objectives simultaneously, it remains unclear how regional design-led approaches influence planning decisions. A second sub-aim of the research is to develop a distinction of regional design practices in relation to spatial planning frameworks and to improve the prediction of key performances based upon this distinction. It remains also unclear how planning frameworks influence the performances of design. A third sub-aim is to arrive at an enhanced understanding of key aspects of spatial planning frameworks that determine performances. Aims and secondary aims are reflected in the following research questions:
How do the interrelations between regional design and spatial planning influence the performances of design?
What are key performances of regional design in the realm of spatial planning? How can these key performances be analysed?
What aspects of spatial planning frameworks influence the performances of regional design?
How can these aspects of spatial planning frameworks be analysed?
Research approach
Regional design is a collaborative social practice, which involves a multitude of actors, and has a concern about the complex built environment. Expectations that are triggered by the practice are divers and have rarely been studied comprehensively. The above research questions were therefore investigated by means of an exploratory case-study analysis, which is an appropriate research methodology to stabilize and detail propositions in a context of uncertainty. In the first in-depth single case-study key performances of regional design in the realm of spatial planning were investigated. A second multiple case-studies analysis was used to compare interrelations between regional-design practices and spatial-planning frameworks. The study enhanced a greater understanding of the aspects of frameworks that influence the divers performances. Analysed regional-design practices were selected by their principle concern about urbanisation, a relation with Dutch national spatial plans, and their prominence in the Dutch planning discourse. All practices were developed between the mid-1980s, when regional design first appeared as a distinguished discipline in the Netherlands, and the 2010s, when the most recent Dutch national plan that could be considered at the time of this dissertation was published. The majority of empirical analyses was based on publicly available policy documents. Particular attention was given to geographic representations. Besides drawing on empirical evidence, the analysis involved a continuous process of theory formation, which used notions from the fields of architecture and urban design, spatial planning and territorial governance. Results of the exploratory case-study analysis were published in the form of peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles. The content of these publications that form the Chapters 3 to 7 of this thesis, is summarized below.
Chapter 3 — From concepts to projects: Stedenbaan, the Netherlands
Chapter 3 was earlier published as a co-authored chapter in the book Transit Oriented Development: Making it Happen (Balz and Schrijnen, 2009). The chapter presents an initial review of a regional-design practice that was conducted between 2005 and 2007 by South Wing Studio (Atelier Zuidvleugel). This was a publicly funded policy institute concerned with regional spatial planning and design in the Southern part of the Dutch Randstad region. In the chapter, it is argued that the practice has contributed to establishing the Stedenbaan project, a regional transitoriented development strategy, on the political agenda of governance arrangements in the region. It was decisive to involve plan actors in building the argument for the strategy. This observation has led to the initial proposition of this dissertation: that regional design is an argumentative practice that performs in planning decisionmaking.
Chapter 4 - Regional design in the context of fragmented territorial governance: South Wing Studio
Chapter 4, earlier published as a co-authored journal article in European Planning Studies (Balz and Zonneveld, 2015), presents results of an in-depth single casestudy analysis that answers the questions: what are key performances of regional design in the realm of spatial planning?, and how can these key performances be analysed? The chapter first establishes a theoretically grounded analytical framework that positions regional design in the context of spatial concepts. Spatial concepts are perceptions of geographies that actors pursue during planning decision-making. It is argued that regional design assists in the building of arguments for spatial planning interventions through structuring the reservoirs of analytical knowledge and normative values that these concepts incorporate. As in the initial review of regional design, the South Wing Studio’s contribution to the formation of the Stedenbaan strategy is under investigation. The empirical analysis identifies performances in the form of shifts in policy argumentation from analytical verification to the normative validation of the strategy. The research also highlighted a pragmatic use of design. Analysis showed that design argumentation involved a strong consideration of capacities of actors for planning in territories. Insights led to an adaptation of the original analytical framework: spatial concepts became perceived to have not only an analytical and normative dimension, but also an organisational one.
Chapter 5 - Transformations of planning rationalities: Changing spaces for governance in recent Dutch planning
The second multiple case-studies analysis in this dissertation sought to answer the following questions: what aspects of spatial planning frameworks influence the performances of regional design?, and how can these aspects of spatial planning frameworks be analysed? Chapter 5 of this thesis, first published as a co-authored journal article in Planning Theory & Practice (Balz and Zonneveld, 2018), presents one part of this analysis. Building upon the earlier established notions on dimensions of spatial concepts as a context of regional design, as well as additional theoretical notions on in particular argumentative planning, it is first argued that the ambiguity of spatial concepts shapes room for interpretation in spatial-planning decisionmaking and thus influences territorial governance. In the main empirical section of the chapter, spatial concepts that have been used in Dutch national plans between the 1980s and the 2010s are assessed on their degree of ambiguity. Analysis led to a detailed and critical reading of the transformations of spatial rationales that were used to justify Dutch national spatial planning over time. On a theoretical level, the chapter proposes a methodological approach to investigate such changes. It contributes to the discussion on how governance responses to the use of geographies in planning decision-making can be explained.
Chapter 6 - Regional design: Discretionary approaches to regional planning in the Netherlands
Chapter 6, earlier published as a sole-authored journal article in Planning Theory (Balz, 2018), presents the overall outcomes of the multiple case-studies analysis and addresses the central proposition of this dissertation: that regional design is a form of discretionary action and is meant to qualify spatial planning guidance by means of reflecting upon its implications for particular regions. Building upon the earlier established analytical framework and additional notions from design theory, it is first argued that, depending on the ambiguity of premediated spatial concepts, regional design proposals have fundamentally different interrelations with these concepts. They either are a refinement of analytical knowledge, normative values, and territorial instructions that concepts incorporate, or a challenge to these reservoirs of meaning. Performances of regional design differ consequently. Regional design either evolves as a pragmatic approach where actors commonly operationalise an agreed-upon planning framework by applying it to a particular spatial situation or forms an advocacy where actors disagree on a premediated framework and use design proposals to call for its revision. These findings are supported by an analysis of interrelations between four regional-design practices and the earlier mentioned analysed spatial concepts. In the discussion section, the relevance of insights for Dutch national planning is reviewed. Theoretically relevant results concern the use of regional design in the realm of spatial planning. It is concluded that regional design mediates between a collaborative and strategic rationale of spatial planning through its engagement with both, general and specific perceptions of regions and areas.
Chapter 7 - The institutionalisation of a creative practice: Changing positions and roles of regional design in Dutch national planning
Chapter 7 was earlier accepted for publication as a co-authored chapter in the forthcoming book Shaping Regional Futures: Designing and Visioning in Governance Rescaling (Balz and Zonneveld, 2019). It investigates the organisational implications of perceiving regional design as a form of discretion. In discretion, there is a distinction between discretionary action, which criticises existing rules, and discretionary control, which determines if criticism should lead to a revision of rules. A distance between actors with roles in these functions is required to enhance legitimacy and accountability. In the empirical section of the chapter, the distinction is used for an analysis of a broad range of regional design practices that were used in Dutch national spatial planning during the period between the 1980s and 2010s. The analysis elaborates who initiated practices, who conducted design, and who judged the quality and relevance of design outcomes for planning decisions. In addition, the analysis identifies patterns in the institutionalisation of regional design by the repetition of practices, adoption in formal policies and enshrinement in dedicated organisations. The chapter demonstrates how institutionalisation has facilitated a shift from using regional design as a form of advocacy, oriented at nurturing a critical public audience of planning, to one of pragmatic use, oriented at the implementation of projects of national importance. The conclusions emphasize a need for discernible roles in regional design practice when it is used in discretion.
Conclusion
Chapter 7 was earlier accepted for publication as a co-authored chapter in the forthcoming book Shaping Regional Futures: Designing and Visioning in Governance Rescaling (Balz and Zonneveld, 2019). It investigates the organisational implications of perceiving regional design as a form of discretion. In discretion, there is a distinction between discretionary action, which criticises existing rules, and discretionary control, which determines if criticism should lead to a revision of rules. A distance between actors with roles in these functions is required to enhance legitimacy and accountability. In the empirical section of the chapter, the distinction is used for an analysis of a broad range of regional design practices that were used in Dutch national spatial planning during the period between the 1980s and 2010s. The analysis elaborates who initiated practices, who conducted design, and who judged the quality and relevance of design outcomes for planning decisions. In addition, the analysis identifies patterns in the institutionalisation of regional design by the repetition of practices, adoption in formal policies and enshrinement in dedicated organisations. The chapter demonstrates how institutionalisation has facilitated a shift from using regional design as a form of advocacy, oriented at nurturing a critical public audience of planning, to one of pragmatic use, oriented at the implementation of projects of national importance. The conclusions emphasize a need for discernible roles in regional design practice when it is used in discretion.
This dissertation has evolved as an exploratory case-study research. Its first and most important outcome is in the above listed notions: on (1) key performances that regional design has in the realm of spatial planning and on (2) aspects of spatial planning frameworks that influence these performances. Through building an analytical framework that assesses these propositions, it contributes to an enhanced understanding of interrelations between regional design and spatial planning.
A second outcome of the thesis is the results of the empirical analysis which is centred on the use of regional design in the realm of Dutch national spatial planning between the 1980s and 2010s. It is argued that the institutionalisation of practices has favoured a rather one-sided, pragmatic use of regional design. As a result, distances between actors with roles in discretionary action and control became undiscernible. The criticism that the thesis poses is meant to inform reflection on the involvement of regional design in Dutch national planning. It calls for a more comprehensive, accountable and legitimate future use. There are limitations to critical positions. The empirical analysis took account of a selection of regional design practices only, notably ones with a principle concern about urbanisation. The analysis also does not fully consider the Dutch national government’s additional and less pragmatic efforts to stimulate good regional design practice, e.g. through providing funding for academic research and publications that critically discuss the use of regional design.
A third outcome of this dissertation is the recommended directions for future research. The thesis argues that regional design equals discretion and thus attempts to mediate between generally accepted and applicable spatial planning principles and spatial rationales linked to problems in particular local situations. An enhanced understanding of such attempts first requires a more sophisticated assessment of how perceptions of geographies transform as they are used — how ambiguous spatial concepts turn into detailed designs and vice versa. The ambiguity or softness of spatial planning frameworks is a prominent issue in scholarly discussion on how spatial planning evolves in a context of decentralisation and deregulation. However, there are no benchmark methodologies to detect such ambiguity or softness. The thesis developed an analytical approach to deduce the ambiguity of geographic perceptions from the amount and relative degree of detail of notions in their analytical, normative and organisational dimensions. It requires further validation. Scholars in discretion have highlighted the importance of professional organizations in controlling rule-building. On the grounds of these notions, this thesis argues that the role of regional design professionals in spatial-planning decision-making requires deeper understanding. In particular the values and norms that professionals pursue need more attention. Due to a tradition of using design-led approaches in the realm of planning, regional design is a frequently used practice in the Netherlands. However, similar approaches occur in other (European) countries, albeit in a less prominent and visible way. As planning systems and cultures differ in countries, a comparative perspective on these may lead to a deeper understanding of not just the practices themselves, but also of ways how spatial development finds attention in spatial planning elsewhere. An implicit proposition developed is that flexibility, in the form of ambiguous geographies, relates to the creativity of planning and its ability to find novel and innovative solutions to problems on the ground. This proposition calls for a broader integration of theoretical knowledge about planning and design.