Gert de Roo

Environmental Conflicts in Compact Cities: Complexity, Decisionmaking, and Policy Approaches

In most parts of Europe compact city policies have become a popular means of planning for sustainability. Dense compact cities were seen as solutions to reduce continually increasing mobility. They were also seen as a way to avoid urbanization of the countryside. Lately planners have been expressing serious doubts about the impact of these positive effects of the compact city concept. Planners in the Netherlands are instead shifting their attention more to environmental dilemmas which result, in part, from compact city policies. A number of these dilemmas are caused by frictions between environmentally sensitive and environmentally intrusive functions in a compact urban setting. Traditionally these dilemmas or conflicts were taken care of by using a functional rationality approach, that is one emphasizing direct causal relations between cause and effect. In the Netherlands this has resulted in a top-down policy, urging local authorities to keep enough distance between conflicting functions. Unfortunately the compact city concept adds an extra dimension to the problem, favouring mixed use and a dense urban area. Keeping distance can therefore no longer be the primary solution to environmental conflicts in urban areas. Environment conflicts have become, so to speak, more complex owing to spatial pressure and to a growing number of different interests that have to be taken into account. Functional rationality approaches may no longer be sufficient to solve these complex dilemmas or conflicts. Rather than keeping distance as the only possible solution to deal with conflicting functions, in the Netherlands local participation is also recognized as an effective approach towards some of the more complex conflicts. This communicative approach is gradually gaining acceptance in the Netherlands—and in other parts of the world as well—as a potential method for dealing with planning issues. In this paper functional and communicative rationality are seen as two extremes of the same spectrum, with complexity as the key word linking the two together. This has lead to the following thesis: the effectiveness and efficiency of a solution will depend on the assignment of the conflicts complexity. In this case, complexity is no longer seen as a metaphor, but instead as essential for examining planning issues, including environmental conflicts in compact cities.

Urban Expansion and Transportation: The Impact of Urban form on Commuting Patterns on the City Fringe of Beijing

A key issue in the development of Chinas growing megacities in the transport-related environmental costs due to rapid urban expansion. In light of this issue, the authors examine the impact of urban form on commuting patterns on the city fringe of Beijing. Based on household-survey data, the results of the analysis suggest that the forms of land use adopted in the suburbs have a significant impact on commuting distance when a workers socioeconomic characteristics and the level of transport accessibility are taken into account. Sprawling expansion, characterized by a low degree of self-contained development and low-density land use, tends to increase the need for long-distance commuting to the central urban area. In contrast, compact urban development in the suburbs, particularly in the peripheral constellations of Beijing, would reduce the probability of long-distance commuting. The current trend in improving transport accessibility on the city fringe is likely to lead to further long-distance commuting. In particular, huge road projects could cause more traffic congestion in the centre. The findings suggest that land-development management on the city fringe could have significant implications with respect to containing the dramatic costs to the environment entailed by transportation in the context of the rapid process of motorization. Reducing travel needs through the integration of land use and transport-infrastructure provision is likely to be the key to sustainable urban expansion.

Positioning Planning in the World of Order, Chaos and Complexity: On Perspectives, Behaviour and Interventions in a Non-linear Environment

Planners have done with the idea that urban and rural landscapes can be shaped, controlled and maintained entirely to their liking. But are we ready to admit that most spatial developments would have occurred even without planners? Could we accept the idea that spatial developments emerge largely autonomously as the result of a mix of factors? If we were to embrace this idea, what implications would it have for the planning discipline, and for the role of the planner? We will address these questions here, incorporating a theoretical perspective that underlines evolutionary growth rather than artificially created space: complexity theory.

Planning of undefined becoming: First encounters of planners beyond the plan

Since the 1980s and due to the ongoing complexity and diffuseness of global networked societies, planners have tried to move beyond classic technocratic and/or sociocratic ideas of planning towards new approaches, which address the multiplicity and fuzziness of our perceptions and actions in time and space. Innovative ideas have been developed concerning discursive, collaborative, informal and post-policy planning, as well as relational geography, multi-planar, non-linear and actor-relational approaches. Nonetheless, techno- and sociocratic approaches remain dominant conceptions for much teaching and practice in Europe and elsewhere. This is partly because these innovative contributions of the past 20 or 30 years have been fragmented and isolated. However, they can also be regarded as the beginning of a bigger transition towards what we call a movement of ‘planning of undefined becoming’. In this article, we will sketch a framework in which these innovative ideas about the planner’s perceptions of fuzzy, complex and co-evolving space and time will in some way be interrelated. From this background, we will also critically reflect on some planning experiments in practice inspired reciprocally and incrementally by these ideas, developing applications for practitioners along the way.

Adaptive planning: Generating conditions for urban adaptability. Lessons from Dutch organic development strategies:

The development of cities includes a wide variety of uncertainties which challenge spatial planners and decision makers. In response, planning approaches which move away from the ambition to achieve predefined outcomes are being explored in the literature. One of them is an adaptive approach to planning. In this paper, we argue that adaptive planning comes with a shift in focus. Instead of content and process, it is first of all about creating conditions for development which support a city’s capacity to respond to changing circumstances. We explore what these conditions may comprise and how they can be related to planning. First theoretically, by portraying cities as complex adaptive systems. Then empirically, through an evaluation of the practice of organic development strategies in which development trajectories are only minimally structured. Based on a review of 12 Dutch urban development projects, two of which are analysed in detail in this paper, we identify a series of conditions on spatio-functional configurations and the capacity building of local actors which enhance urban adaptability.

Dutch spatial planning policies in transition

Traditionally, Dutch spatial planning practices are comprehensive within a centrally imposed frame of conditions. However, these conditions are steadily eroding, partly because of societal changes, partly due to a growing plurality of planning issues and partly because of an ideological reorientation resulting in changes in planning legislation and routines. The leading role of Dutch planners in planning spatial interventions has transitioned towards a more facilitating position in which societal changes are supported rather than initiated. In addition, various institutional and policy reforms have taken place and are on-going, resulting in an increased neoliberal and decentralized planning system. Reforms on-going today are strongly driven by the notion “small is beautiful”, which refers to the desire to reduce planning institutions and simplify their procedures as these have become a complexity in themselves. Here an overview is given of most prominent changes in Dutch planning policies during the last decade, and subsequently the key questions in the debate on the future of spatial planning in the Netherlands are explored.

China: What About the Urban Revolution? Rapid Transformations in Chinese Planning and Its Links with a Slowly Emerging European Planning Theory

This new global financial crisis has required us to recognize how closely and deeply different regions and countries around the world are connected and how they interact with each other. In this interconnected context, planning theory and experiences also become fluid rather than being confined within certain boundaries. This paper explores the links between Chinese planning and European (or “Western”-oriented) spatial planning by critically analysing the development of Chinese planning. In China, modern European planning theories have been under discussion and partly in practice for years. Indeed, they have been playing an important role over the past 30 years in, for example, urban growth management, land-use regulation and environmental protection, and also in helping achieve sustainable development. However, the evolution of Chinese planning, now in a highly dynamic phase, has distinguished itself from that of European planning by adopting a highly rational, coordinated and top-down approach. This paper argues that there are several reasons for this. However, beyond this mere observation, there are a wide range of possibilities to be considered and reflected on with respect to these two different trajectories of planning development, which could enhance planning theory and practice. In other words, there are lessons to be learnt in comparing contemporary Chinese and European planning.

Performance and dilemmas of urban containment strategies in the transformation context of Beijing

The implementation of urban containment policies is increasingly attracting attention in environment management. Rapid urban growth and the coexistence of decentralisation and marketisation challenge containment strategies that are implemented to control urban sprawl. This challenge is likely to be greater in a transformation country than in developed countries. This paper evaluates the performance of containment strategies in Beijing. The analysis shows that, to a large extent, containment strategies perform well; however, the decreased compactness of the fringes of the inter-suburban areas, caused by dispersed and illegal development, suggest that municipal containment strategies are being challenged by new trends towards local autonomy. Two similar dilemmas to those faced by developed countries are confronting those involved in the implementation of containment strategies in the current transformation process in Beijing: first, the municipal environmental goal might not be achieved by all local jurisdictions when local economic motivations are involved; and second, macro-scale containment policies are unlikely to control an urban sprawl fuelled by the growing power of market forces.

Assuming it is all about conditions. Framing a simulation model for complex, adaptive urban space

In this paper, we explore the route beyond the conventional, linear attitude within planning and its rationality debate. We combine our theoretical reasoning with a multiscale approach and with fractal-like argumentation which results in a frame of conditions which is supported by the outline of a theoretical conceptual simulation model which would also allow non-linear, iterative simulations of the urban space. The understanding of autonomous non-linear spatial development has a direct impact on planning. Addressing the underlying thinking behind Haken’s synergetics we develop a framework within which the interdependencies between different levels of scale are key. We are aware that bottom-up and top-down processes often have a mutual influence on one another. We therefore propose a conceptual simulation model for planning where conditions have an impact at various levels of scale. In coherence with the idea of the ‘dynamic behaviour of the system after a planning decision was made’, this feedback gives us information on the surviving and non-surviving planning scenarios and decisions and is reminiscent of systems which are open to self-organizing pattern formation. Our reasoning with regard to planning and decision-making and their multilevel consequences is strongly influenced by the arguments presented in complexity studies.

Urban Land Changes as the Interaction Between Self-Organization and Institutions

There is interest among planners in autonomous behaviour and non-linear processes supporting urban development. Self-organization has attracted attention as a potential driver for urban transformations. This paper aims to explore the mechanisms behind urban land use patterns resulting from the interdependence of self-organization and institutions. Our argument is based on an empirical study of two land development cases in urban Beijing. The paper argues that urban land transformations include characteristics of symmetry breaks, self-organizing processes, unintended collective behaviour and spontaneous patterns while simultaneously being institutionally framed. The interdependence between self-organization and institutional rules builds upon a circular causality framework at various spatial levels.