Tejo Spit

Planning the compact city: The randstad Holland experience

Abstract All over the world compact urban development is a topic of debate. However, practitioners and academics in many countries seem slow to synthesize suitable policies. Therefore, in this paper 30 years of experience with compact urban development is projected against the backdrop of the international discussion on this issue. The Dutch experience confirms the legitimacy of many arguments and findings presented in the international literature. Yet, Dutch practices put the policys success into perspective. It appears to be less successful when related to mobility effects and the spatial consequences of urban growth. The relative success of compact urban development was mainly owing to the specific conditions under which the policy was implemented. As these conditions are now changing, it remains to be seen whether this policy will be seriously jeopardized. In the event that planners elsewhere pursue compact urban development within their territory, cognizance of the Dutch experience may help them to ...

Urban Climate Map System for Dutch spatial planning

Abstract Facing climate change and global warming, outdoor climatic environment is an important consideration factor for planners and policy makers because improving it can greatly contribute to achieve citizens thermal comfort and create a better urban living quality for adaptation. Thus, the climatic information must be assessed systematically and applied strategically into the planning process. This paper presents a tool named Urban Climate Map System (UCMS) that has proven capable of helping compact cities to incorporate climate effects in planning processes in a systematic way. UCMS is developed and presented in a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform in which the lessons learned and experience gained from interdisciplinary studies can be included. The methodology of UCMS of compact cities, the construction procedure, and the basic input factors – including the natural climate resources and planning data – are described. Some literatures that shed light on the applicability of UMCS are reported. The Municipality of Arnhem is one of Dutch compact urban areas and still under fast urban development and urban renewal. There is an urgent need for local planners and policy makers to protect local climate and open landscape resources and make climate change adaptation in urban construction. Thus, Arnhem is chosen to carry out a case study of UCMS. Although it is the first work of Urban Climatic Mapping in The Netherlands, it serves as a useful climatic information platform to local planners and policy makers for their daily on-going works. We attempt to use a quick method to collect available climatic and planning data and create an information platform for planning use. It relies mostly on literature and theoretical understanding that has been well practiced elsewhere. The effort here is to synergize the established understanding for a case at hand and demonstrate how useful guidance can still be made for planners and policy makers.

A State of the Art of Governance Literature on adaptation to climate change. Towards a research agenda

Rapport uit een serie verkenningen, uitgevoerd om de stand van zaken op het gebied van klimaatverandering en adaptatie te inventariseren. Governance of Adaptation bevat een literatuuranalyse van bestuurskundige en planologische aspecten van klimaatadaptatie.This report provides a state-of-the-art overview of governance literature on adaptation strategies. What has recent research taught us on adaptation from the perspective of governance and to what research agenda does this lead? This report is structured as followed. Firstly, it will be argued why adaptation is a matter of governance. Secondly, the research methods for the literature study will be outlined. Thirdly, the results of the literature study will portray the findings in terms of the themes and foci with, respectively, environmental studies, spatial planning and development studies, and public administration studies. Finally, a comparative analysis of these findings will lead to a research agenda for future research on governance of adaptation

Political commitment in organising municipal responses to climate adaptation: the dedicated approach versus the mainstreaming approach

We develop conceptual understanding of political commitment in two approaches to organising municipal responses to climate adaptation. The dedicated approach, based on direct political commitment to climate adaptation, implies political agenda setting, resource allocation, and clear policy objectives which are expected to facilitate rapid implementation due to political pressure and new structures. The mainstreaming approach is based on indirect political commitment: climate adaptation ‘piggybacks’ on the established commitment of policy domains in which it is integrated, and institutional entrepreneurs and framing are considered necessary to establish policy synergies and to mobilise actors and resources. An implication is that implementation may be erratic, as entrepreneurs have to pioneer within existing structures. The cases of two Dutch cities – Amsterdam and Rotterdam – help to illustrate and refine our propositions on the nature and implications of political commitment.

Bridging the financial gap in climate adaptation: Dutch planning and land development through a new institutional lens

Based on a case study of the Stadshaven port redevelopment in Rotterdam, this paper explores whether existing spatial planning mechanisms and processes can be used to facilitate local-level investment in climate-resilient public infrastructure and/or whether new processes and mechanisms are required to encourage investment in climate adaptation. The study reveals several key findings. First, a lack of conventional funding sources or formalised regulatory framework allowed room for experimentation with existing mechanisms and flexible strategies. Second, project planners are currently ambivalent towards introducing new mechanisms as a means to overcome implementation challenges. The case provides evidence about the role of the governance process, not simply as a means of system coordination that exists in isolation from institutional norms and values, but rather as a space for innovation, which can contribute towards reducing the financial gap associated with climate adaptation.

Implementing the European flood risk management plan

In response to the extreme flood events of recent decades, the European Union has released the Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), which requires the creation of flood risk management plans. These plans do not yet exist in practice, as water management agencies have until 2015 to put them into action. This contribution will discuss two questions regarding the European flood risk management plan: First, how is the new instrument integrated into the various member states, particularly with respect to the scenario approach? Second, how prepared are the institutions for the collaborative planning paradigm of the flood risk management plan, particularly with respect to the river basin districts approach? Citing examples from France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, this paper offers both a pessimistic and an optimistic perspective on the implementation of the new flood risk management instrument.

Performance of National Policies

National spatial policies are usually indicative and strategic. As a result, this kind of policy does not have a direct bearing on the spatial organisation of society. Instead the performance of these policies depends on whether or not they are used in subsequent decisionmaking and planning procedures, where and when this seems relevant. Consequently, straightforward evaluation procedures, based on a combined methodology of before – after design and the measurement of conformity, do not help us to understand the real influence of these policies. Insight into the ‘black box’ of subsequent decisionmaking is necessary for this purpose. In this paper we discuss some recent research findings on this topic.

Frontiers of land and water governance in urban regions

A society that intensifies and expands the use of land and water in urban areas needs to rethink the relation between spatial planning and water management. The traditional strategy to manage land and water under different governance regimes no longer suits the rapidly changing environmental constraints and social construction of the two key elements in urban development. The dynamics of urban development and changing environmental constraints cause an urgent need for innovative concepts in the overlapping field of land and water governance.1 The claim for more space for rivers for flood retention (Hartmann, 2011) and environmental protection (Moss & Monstadt, 2008), the fragmentation of the drinking water sector (Moss, 2009), or unsolved upstream– downstream relations (Scherer, 1990) are illustrative of these dynamics. Therewith, increasingly, water management steps into the governance arena of spatial planning, and spatial planning needs to reconsider its notions of water issues. Particularly in urban regions, engineering and technical solutions of water management reach their boundaries; new frontiers for the common governance of land and water emerge (Figure 1). Although agriculture remains important for land and water governance (Calder, 2005), and it is the biggest consumer of water and occupies large areas of land, this special issue focuses on the urban realm because in the tense relation between water and land, the need for innovative approaches is more urgent. Urban regions are intensively used by many different stakeholders with competing interests, so that frictions between socio-economic dynamics and environmental constraints of land and water are more complex and more intense. Hence, the challenges of finding creative and path-breaking solutions in those areas are most pressing.

European Corridors as Carriers of Dynamic Agglomeration Externalities

Abstract Transport corridors are viewed as a promising way forward in European Union (EU) transport policy, assumed to contribute positively to regional economic development. However, the validity of this assumption is not evident. The aim of this paper is to empirically test whether agglomeration economies in European transport corridor regions are positively related to indicators of regional economic development compared to regions outside the scope of corridors. The results build on the notion that the type of agglomeration economy in combination with the structure of the economy matters for prospects of structural economic growth in different regions. In this way, the analysis not only contributes to enhancing the empirical scrutiny of the corridor concept in EU transport policy, but also provides new insights into how corridors contribute to regional economic growth. We find only limited evidence for a corridor effect across European regions on productivity and employment growth externalities. Instead, we find a large degree of spatial heterogeneity interacting with corridors—a heterogeneity that has been little recognized in EU policies. We suggest that recent attention to place-based development strategies may accord well with the kinds of agglomeration effects related to corridor development observed in this study.

Book Review: Strong Stories—How the Dutch Are Reinventing Spatial Planning

“This book makes a case for the power and importance of the narrative, emotional, and symbolic aspects of spatial planning” (p. 246). In Dutch and English, the editors of Strong Stories—How the Dutch Are Reinventing Spatial Planning present a theoretical planning concept: strong stories. The authors reflect on practical planning examples throughout the Netherlands, selecting many water-related planning cases, such as river bypasses, polder developments, etc. After introducing the concept of strong stories in the first section, the book presents sections on knowledge and participation, planning with stories, anchoring stories, and finally on responsibility for quality and democracy, with the concluding section summing up the findings. In the introductory section, “The Power of Strong Stories,” the editors state that “without a strong story there can be no successful planning” (p. 13). They reflect on the roles of planners and of their expertise in the planning process, presenting a definition of planning that emphasizes the key roles of communication and coordination (p. 14). The editors conclude this section with the explanation that strong stories lead to spatial quality by tying together visions, knowledge, and democratic legitimacy. After this introduction by the editors, four sections with a similar structure follow. Each section consists of a general introduction and some case studies presented by Hajer, van’t Klooster, and Grijzen. Different authors in independent essays then reflect on the overall topic of the section (without referring to the case studies). This structure shows the inductive way of elaborating on the idea of strong stories. Methodologically, however, this structure is not always pursued consistently—instead of using the same case studies in different sections for discussion from various facets, some case studies just run through all the sections while others are just used selectively in particular sections. The selection of cases is not well reasoned either. The essays do not all reflect on the case studies presented by the editors and sometimes present their own cases (e.g., in Hemel’s essay).