W.G.M. Salet

Enabling the Contextualization of Legal Rules in Responsive Strategies to Climate Change

The paradigm of adaptive governance is paramount in policy discourses on the mitigation and adaptation strategies of climate change. Adaptability, resilience, and cooperative approaches are promoted as the appropriate vehicles to meet the contemporary conditions of uncertainty and complexity. We claim that the legitimacy and effectiveness of these responsive strategies might be augmented via the use of legal perspectives. Rather than the instrumental use of command and control type of regulation, the legal perspectives should focus on establishing principal norms that enable the search for different solutions in different contexts. From these assumptions, the concept of legal obligation is explored as embodying the meaning of legality, and at the same time conditioning and committing the probing of different ways of purposeful action in different local circumstances. We explore the innovative potential of legal norms and demonstrate how responsive strategies to climate change can be guided by the contextualization of legal norms.

Institutional influences on the integration of multilevel governance and spatial policy in European city-regions

Spatial policies for the city-regions of Europe have to be formulated in increasingly complex conditions. These conditions are outlined in the first part of the article. It is argued that the key for a successful policy response is in the organization of connectivity between the domains of the private sector, the internal regional policies, and the transregional policies. However, city-regions exist within different institutional settings, and organizing connectivity has to adapt to such differences. The article constructs a typology of these varied institutional settings based on research of nineteen European city-regions. Each type of institutional framework has its particular risks and opportunities, and these need to be taken into account in generating the appropriate form of informal planning strategy and maximum connectivity.

Rescaling territorial governance in the Randstad Holland: The responsiveness of spatial and institutional strategies to changing socio-economic interactions

Abstract Strategies of territorial rescaling are investigated in face of the emergent metropolitan configuration of Randstad Holland. Recent governance practices are investigated at three levels of scale: the urban agglomeration around the major cities, the urban conurbations (the northern and southern parts of the Randstad), and the metropolitan level of the Randstad as a whole. The frame of analysis interconnects economic and social interaction, spatial trends and policies, and institutional conditions. The crucial question is how institutional strategies can respond to the changeable spatial context of economic and social interaction. New ways need to be found to create a “mutual fit” between territorially based governmental institutions and trans-scalar strategies of co-production.

Evolving institutions: an international exploration into planning and law

This article explores the interrelationship between planning and law from an institutional point of view. Interest in institutions and general norms in the social and behavioral sciences has led to interdisciplinary cross-pollination. Theories of planning and law occupy a special position because they are rooted in practice. In practice, the main concerns are how institutions are validated in daily policies and how the meaning of institutional norms may change in the course of action. This article addresses how institutions evolve in the practice of planning and law. General norms are evoked, and may be given new meanings, when problems and social conflicts arise. The author investigates how this process plays out in various systems of planning and law. He contrasts the induction of norms in Anglo-Saxon systems to the deductive reasoning behind the German system and discusses the pattern of political “self-limitation” in the Dutch system.

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.

Dilemmas of planning: intervention, regulation, and investment

Planning through processes of “co-creation” has become a priority for practitioners, urban activists, and scientific researchers. However, urban development still shows a close instrumentalism on goal-specific tasks, means, and outcomes despite awareness that planning should enlarge possibilities for social change rather than constrain them. The article explores the dilemmas of planning agency in light of the contemporary need to open spaces for innovative practices. Planning is understood as a paradox; a structural tension between organization and spontaneity. The article provides a detailed profile of three specific dilemmas stemming from this condition. We distinguish and conceptually explore the dilemmas of intervention, regulation, and investment in current practices. The article provides a specific understanding of today’s planning dilemmas, exploring the key notions of “space and time” in the intervention dilemma, “material and procedural norms” in the regulation dilemma, and “risk and income” in the investment dilemma. We suggest that planning practice today needs to make sense of these dilemmas, navigating through their extremes to find new contextualized forms of synthesis.

New concepts of strategic spatial planning dilemmas in the Dutch Randstad region

Purpose – Drawing on changes in the nature of European metropolitan development planning in general, and the example of the Randstad, in particular, the purpose of this paper is to argue for an improved interconnectedness between regions and their public and private sector agencies. These should be linked to “flows of social and economic interaction”, and, as such, complement conventional notions of “bounded spaces” and “nested territorial jurisdictions”. This is in response to the now crucial question for metropolitan planning of how to develop and renew effective institutional capacity to deal with the increasing spatial complexities at regional or metropolitan level.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a case study‐based theoretical review of types of metropolitan planning, drawing on original policy documents and interviews with relevant policymakers.Findings – It is shown that the answer to addressing the challenges of development planning at the city‐regional level is not primarily to enlarge ...

Building with Nature

The most urgent challenge of planning in our time is finding a new balance between the self-regulating potential of society and the intelligent use of regulation. Economic stagnation and austerity have challenged the authority of supply-led planning agencies that determined the post-war spatial expansion of city regions in Europe. Rather than delivering promising perspectives for a better future in this time of crisis – at the moment of truth – the planning machine itself is now being subjected to austerity and is being considered part of the problem rather than the solution. New planning practices have to be invented, based mainly on the self-regulation potential of society. Obviously, one may hardly call this a new message, but it differs highly from the established practices of planning: the planning authorities have to return to their roots from time to time in order to stay in touch with reality. In search of successful solutions, urban planners in Europe might learn a lot from the experiences of the adjoining discipline of nature development. Coping with the uncertainties and self-guiding forces of nature might be even more challenging than dealing with self-guidance in social systems, yet it is the similarities of the two different systems that we may learn from.

Adaptive Capacity Within a Mega Project: A Case Study on Planning and Decision-Making in the Face of Complexity

Abstract There is a tendency in policy to reduce the complexity of planning and decision-making by simplifying both the process and the scope of projects. However, by framing a planning projects scope or process in a narrow way at an early stage, the possibility of adapting to changes in the context, and thus dealing with unexpected challenges, is limited. This paper explores the mechanisms that enhance or limit the adaptive capacity within the process of decision-making and planning. We develop the concept of adaptive capacity using organizational learning theory and use empirical data from a mega project in The Netherlands to identify the moments of adaptation and to discern these mechanisms. Mega projects are especially useful objects of analysis as the complexity of their planning and decision-making is extreme, with characteristically very long and controversial processes dotted by recurring deadlocks. In this empirical research we find that incremental adaptations such as mitigation measures are the initial response to deadlocks, but that for deadlocks caused by strong opposition, radical adaptations are needed. A more proactive approach to enhancing adaptive capacity is desirable and might paradoxically even lead to cheaper and more relevant projects and faster planning and decision-making.

Urban peripheries: reflecting on politics and projects in Amsterdam, Milan, and Paris

In this paper we question the political and financial drivers of urban development in the contemporary context of multiactor and multilevel governance. We focus on the processes that drive spatial planning and large-scale development projects in the inner periphery of three metropolitan areas: Amsterdam, Paris, and Milan. Peripheral development is conceptualized as the outcome of the realignment of three major sources of urban power: the national government, the core city, and large market investors. Early research has largely demonstrated how each of these elements influences metropolitan transformations, often separately, with special focus on economic logics of development. We propose to instead empirically investigate the political drivers of the changing relationship between these three powers. Focusing on three particular projects, we show how different spatial outcomes of peripheral development spring from a particular articulation of the relationship between the three sources of power. These relationships are pinned over electoral strategies of power consolidation, political confrontation between emerging parties, and their (dis)connections with business interests.