Arie Romein

Realizing Potential: Building Regional Organizing Capacity in Polycentric Urban Regions

Regional planning for and in polycentric urban regions may entail certain competitive potentialities over a stand-alone development of their individual cities or city-regions. These potentialities relate to the pooling of resources, complementarities and spatial diversity. It seems that planners are increasingly aware of these potentialities as in several European countries attempts are made to identify such polycentric regional systems of formerly independent and distinct cities that are located close to each other, often building on increasing functional relationships between them. This article argues, however, that in order actually to exploit the theoretical potential planning for polycentric urban regions has, one needs to do more than just identify a polycentric system on the map. Rather, an active building of regional organizing capacity is needed - that is, the ability to regionally co-ordinate developments through a more or less institutionalized framework of co-operation, debate, negotiation and decision-making in pursuit of interests at the regional scale - to shape a polycentric urban regions competitive advantages. This need for regional organizing capacity may sound obvious, but in practice successful examples of proclaimed polycentric urban regions developing networks for regional co-ordination and action are rather thin on the ground. Basing our argument on evidence from four polycentric urban regions in North West Europe, it was found that the building of regional organizing capacity is conditioned by a number of spatialfunctional, political-institutional and cultural factors. Major constraints in the examined regions include institutional fragmentation, an internal orientation of key persons and the lack of identification with the region at large.

THE MULTI-SCALAR COMPLEXITY OF INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING: EVIDENCE FROM THE DUTCH-FLEMISH MEGACORRIDOR

Abstract The interests of infrastructure development, urbanisation and quality of life are becoming increasingly intertwined while at the same time becoming detached from any one administrative area or level of governance. Consequently, infrastructure planning is becoming more a multi-scalar and multi-actor process. It is expected that the leading role of national governments in large-scale spatial planning will gradually evolve towards types of multi-level governance. This paper focuses on the question to what extent this will lead to a corresponding change in national spatial planning. A case study will illustrate how the planning of cross-border rail infrastructure in the megacorridor from the Randstad to Flanders is taking place. Finally, some suggestions for improvement are presented.

The role of organisational capacity and knowledge-based development: the reinvention of Eindhoven

The Dutch city of Eindhoven constitutes a remarkable case of knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). Less than 25 years ago, Eindhoven was an industrial town deeply affected by economic and social decline due to processes of deindustrialisation. Since then, Eindhoven and its surrounding region have successfully transformed into the major technology node of the Netherlands. This achievement is mainly based on high and medium tech development, carefully complemented with activities and institutions linked to (creative) design, as well as a careful attention to socio-spatial issues, all them steered by public-private cooperation. The paper examines the roles of knowledge and technology, quality of place and organisational capacity in mutual coherence to produce prosperity, delivering projects that could benefit all people of Eindhoven and its region South East Brabant. The results point out the capital importance of achieving consensus between the regional partners to elaborate and commit to a shared vision of the future development. The main conclusion is that the industrial reconversion of Eindhoven has been shaped by projects and processes which have been the fruit of regional synergy, driven by the regions remarkable organisational qualities.

Polycentric Structures in Latin American Metropolitan Areas : Identifying Employment Sub-centres

Fernández-Maldonado A. M., Romein A., Verkoren O. and Parente Paula Pessoa R. Polycentric structures in Latin American metropolitan areas: identifying employment sub-centres, Regional Studies. The significant spatial transformations that have occurred within Latin American metropolitan areas since the 1990s have triggered many local studies claiming the formation of polycentric structures. This study explores the extent of that process, identifying sub-centres of employment using the double threshold methodology of job concentration and employment density in Mexico City (Mexico), Lima (Peru) and Fortaleza (Brazil). The results, although partial due to an absence of data on informal employment, indicate that Latin American metropolises are moving towards polycentric structures. But the identified employment sub-centres are mostly located in or near the metropolitan core, which practically excludes the formation of polycentric nodes in the metropolitan periphery.

Cruise Passenger Terminals, Spatial Planning and Regeneration: The cases of Amsterdam and Rotterdam

Recent growth in the cruise tourism industry has been accompanied by the development of new cruise passenger terminals in many port cities, in part to assist aims for spatial planning and urban regeneration. Such terminals can bring specific benefits but also problems, though application of spatial planning and related policy can help to maximize benefits and ameliorate or mitigate problems. The cases of cruise terminal developments in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands are illustrative in this context, and offer lessons for spatial planning and regeneration involving cruise tourism elsewhere.

Creative City Policy and the Gap with Theory

Abstract The creative city concept is popular among researchers and policy-makers. On the one hand, academic literature elaborates, on a conceptual level, the importance of creativity and innovation for urban competitiveness; on the other, numerous cities develop and implement creative city policies in practice. The connection between these two is rather weak and, accordingly, creative city policy tends to be ad hoc. Our purpose in this paper is to narrow the above-mentioned gap between theory and practice, by addressing the question of how conceptual insights into the creative city can be converted into an elaborated operational approach for local policy practice. We propose a three-step approach: (1) to position a citys current creative places and communities within the context of social and economic structures, urban narratives and prevailing governance structures and style by means of a systematic analytical framework; (2) to assess the spatial, social and symbolic place qualities of the creative production and consumption; (3) to identify options for effective policy intervention. We further examine how these steps may be applied in practice, and use the city of Delft in the Netherlands as an example. A discussion of the applicability and implementation of this approach concludes the paper.

Delft blues: the long road from university town to knowledge city

Besides their teaching and research tasks, universities are increasingly expected to valorise knowledge into innovation. This involves new products, but also transdisciplinary knowledge exchange with people, technologies, firms and markets. This relates to knowledge-based urban development through a variety of locally-specific variables and features. This paper discusses the role of knowledge capacity in the development of the Dutch City of Delft. It emphasises the role of Delft University of Technology as a main player of Delft’s knowledge capacity, the qualities of the local production and consumption milieus and the role of local knowledge city policy. It explores the role and impact of knowledge capacity in urban development in a setting with mixed advantageous and disadvantageous qualities. The results suggest that the reason for the disappointing employment creation in Delft may be found particularly in the triple helix cooperation between government, knowledge institutions and industry.