Henk-Jan Kooij

Open Concepts as Crystallization Points and Enablers of Discursive Configurations: The Case of the Innovation Campus in the Netherlands

In this paper, we reflect on the role of concepts in spatial planning as reproductive devices of discursive configurations. In contrast to instrumentalist interpretations of spatial concepts, we start from the idea that spatial planning concepts are inherently political. Building on post-structuralist strands of thought, we discuss the theoretical concepts of “empty signifier” and “master signifier” and instead, after analysis, put forward “open concepts”, in order to grasp the richness of meanings and functions of seemingly vague concepts. This manoeuvre allows us to analyse the trajectory and performance of the spatial concept of the “innovation campus” in the Netherlands. This, in turn, opens the door to an analysis of planning concepts as crystallization points and enablers of discursive configurations. The Dutch innovation campus is shown to be a result of a confluence of various national and international discourses, an open concept, flexible enough to enable the continuation of the planning game within the familiar set of coordinates. Because of the particular set of expectations associated with the innovation campus, promising structural change, it is bound to produce disappointment.

Object formation and subject formation: The innovation campus in the Netherlands

A central question within planning theory is how changes between the relations of ‘grand institutions’ such as state, market and education influence the formation of objects ‘on the ground’. Drawing upon Foucault’s work, this article contributes to the understanding of these relations and argues that Foucault’s work provides a powerful set of tools to understand the formation of subjects and objects in spatial planning. It presents the case of the ‘innovation campus’ in the Netherlands, a model which originated from the ‘university campus’. Through an analysis of multiple campus-building ‘events’, the innovation campus appears as a model to entice and shape a new object: the entrepreneurial researcher.

Heated debates: the transformation of urban warming into an object of governance in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands climate adaptation policies and measures have been dominated by a strong water-centered discourse. However, the heat waves of 2003 and 2006 raised political and public awareness for adaptation to warmer temperatures. These events triggered the reification of a new object: urban warming. In this chapter, we use EGT to analyze the (re-)emergence and (de-)stabilization of new objects within governance and we follow them during distinct moments of transformation. We observed four moments of transformation of the object from science into governance, and will illustrate these transformations in two cities in the Netherlands: Arnhem and Rotterdam. Both cities jump on the bandwagon of climate change adaptation, introducing urban warming as an object of urban governance, while putting emphasis on different techniques of object stabilization. We show the transforming effects of attempts to objectify objects through connecting them to scientific discourses, and the destabilizing effects of these attempts. Stabilizing primarily through institutionalization risked stabilizing an object no-one cares to adapt to. While urban warming was quickly naturalized as a matter of fact in both cases, establishing it as a stable matter of concern proved far harder. Constructing the object into a legitimate concern for urban planning, public health or social policy affected the solidification and codification, transforming it into a multiple object.