Ward Rauws

Exploring Transitions in the Peri-Urban Area

Spatial planners and policy makers currently struggle to understand the peri-urban area, with its mixture of land uses and its transitional status between the urban and the rural. This paper presents the concept of transition, derived from complexity science, to allow planners to analyse peri-urban development in terms of a number of interacting processes, some induced, some evolving autonomously. Drawing on four case studies of European urban regions, the research finds that many of the dynamic processes underlying peri-urban development are not susceptible to the influence of planning agencies. This should enable planners to develop a more adaptive approach in the future, identifying areas where productive and case-specific interventions can be made.

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.

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.

How to make development plans suitable for volatile contexts.

Development plans are central tools in spatial planning practice. They create a vision of how places should develop and prescribe how desired patterns of development will be realized. However, development plans are increasingly regarded as inflexible and even rigid when confronted by changes in their context. Conceptualizing urban districts in terms of complex adaptive systems (CAS), this paper identifies ways in which more flexible development plans can be designed. This is investigated through a case study of a development plan for Blauwestad in the Netherlands, which enabled sources of rigidity to be analysed. The paper concludes with the view that from a CAS perspective, development plans are part of the structures necessary to facilitate self-organization, and if designed with certain principles in mind, can play a key role in assisting the endogenous evolution of spatial developments.

Embracing Uncertainty Without Abandoning Planning: Exploring an Adaptive Planning Approach for Guiding Urban Transformations

Abstract The uncertainties that are part of the development trajectories of cities challenge spatial planners in designing productive interventions. This paper explores how complexity theory can support planners in dealing with these uncertainties intelligently. It presents a dynamic, time-sensitive understanding of spatial transformations that helps to clarify the interconnected and changeable nature of the underlying processes. The paper continues by proposing an adaptive planning approach that strengthens the responsiveness of urban areas to both expected and unexpected changes. The argument is made that adaptive planning first and foremost implies a focus on influencing and creating conditions for development, followed by attention to content and process. Based on an imaginary case of inner-city transformation, the paper distinguishes key conditions for guiding spatio-functional configurations and supporting capacity building of local actor coalitions.

Planning and complexity: Engaging with temporal dynamics, uncertainty and complex adaptive systems

The nature of complex systems as a transdisciplinary collection of concepts from physics and economics to sociology and ecology provides an evolving field of inquiry (Laszlo and Krippner, 1998) for urban planning and urban design. As a result, planning theory has assimilated multiple concepts from the complexity sciences over the past decades. The seemingly chaotic or non-linear urban phenomena resulting from the combination of hard and soft systems (Checkland, 1989) or physical and environmental aspects of the city with human intervention, motivation and perception have been of particular interest in the context of increasing criticism of top-down approaches. Processes such as self- organisation, temporal dynamics and transition, previously ignored or assumed problematic within equilibrium-centred conceptualisations or mechanistic theories, have found their way back into planning through complexity theories of cities (CTC) (Allen, 1997; Batty, 2007; de Roo and Silva, 2010; Marshall, 2012; Portugali, 2011b). While there is an overlap with Structuralist-Marxist and humanistic perspectives (Portugali, 2011c) and a continuity from an older science of cities (Batty, 2013), it is interesting to observe the engagement with bottom-up phenomena, structural and functional co-evolution and resultant adaptable and self-organisational systems within complexity planning. It has taken time for planning to adopt complexity thinking beyond metaphor or common usage of the term, but we now appear to be at a tipping point where complexity planning is exploring methods of engagement and cognition, rather than the question of whether cities are complex.

Why planning needs complexity : Towards an adaptive approach for guiding urban and peri-urban transformations

Fundamentele onzekerheden in ruimtelijke ontwikkelingsprocessen vormen een uitdaging voor planologen. In contrast met andere onzekerheden kunnen fundamentele onzekerheden niet worden weggenomen door meer kennis of betere informatie. Dit betekent dat planologen beperkt regie kunnen voeren over de ontwikkelingspaden van wijken, steden en regio’s. Daarom is er behoefte aan planningsbenaderingen die minder nadruk leggen op het beheersen van ontwikkelingspaden en meer zijn gericht op het versterken van de capaciteit van gebieden om in te spelen op zowel verwachte als onverwachte veranderingen. In Why Planning Needs Complexity wordt onderzocht hoe planologen slim kunnen omgaan met fundamentele onzekerheden, in het bijzonder bij het begeleiden van urbane en peri-urbane transformaties. Vanuit het perspectief van complexiteit presenteert het proefschrift een dynamisch, tijdsgevoelig begrip van ruimtelijke transformaties dat de verwevenheid en veranderlijkheid van de onderliggende processen helpt duiden. Ondersteunt door verschillende case studies in Nederland en Europa verkent de publicatie een adaptieve planningsbenadering die het vermogen van gebieden om op deze dynamische processen in te spelen vergroot. Onderdeel van deze benadering zijn bijvoorbeeld plannen en regels die zo zijn opgesteld dat ze verschillende ontwikkelingspaden kunnen faciliteren. Daarnaast worden planologen uitgenodigd om naast de meer traditionele rol van expert of bemiddelaar te functioneren als ‘trendwatcher’, verbinder en ‘facilitator’.

AESOP's Thematic Groups – Part 2: Complexity & Planning

How do we create an enhanced understanding of changing urban dynamics? What are the implications of acknowledging the self-organization capacity of cities for planning strategies? And how do we deal with the fundamental uncertainties that are related to a world in constant flux? These are some of the questions that fascinate members of AESOP’s Thematic Group on Complexity and Planning. The group aims to contribute to the creation and maintenance of a network of lecturers and researchers who are willing to explore and debate new develop- ments influencing both planning theory and practice in the light of complexity theories.