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We analyse the migration of academic and policy discourses that contributed to (de)legitimise the formation of planning policies in Argentina since the 1950s. We focus on the communicative/collaborative rationality discourses emanating from Anglo-American academic circles that played a role in the revival of the Argentine planning system between 2004 and 2015. We adopt an evolutionary approach to policy travel and policy learning, deploying the concepts of discursive migration and discursive configuration to better understand how ideas, people and goods/resources reinvent themselves when transnationally circulating policy knowledge takes root locally. The migration process in Argentina led to the reinforcement of prevalent coordination mechanisms, redirecting concerns and conflicts into governance structures already existing, involving players already present and forms of expertise already dominant. The migrating collaborative discourse (self) transformed in relation to the receiving governance environment, becoming an effective compliance-gaining technique, while national actors found ways to engage and discipline provinces they depended on more than before.

In this paper we link contemporary thinking on craft and craftsmanship to concepts in community development. Craft is contrasted with popular development dogmas such as innovation, planning and the...

In this paper, we reflect on the evolution of place-based governance from a long-term (15 year) study of rural development initiatives undertaken in a region of Poland as part of its accession to the European Union. We decompose the recursive process of institutional learning arising from initiatives for heritage preservation and rural economic development. In our analysis, we elaborate a typology of unavoidable development dilemmas that must be explicitly managed in order to allow place-based governance to effectively harness the cultural value, social context, and developmental needs of certain locales or landscapes. Although creating and sustaining local value remain contingent on broader realities of governance, proactive management of these dilemmas can help prevent many of the usual contestations around goals and identity from becoming intractable in later periods. Our proposed approach to enabling place-based governance emphasizes conflict recognition and engagement as important complements to more common prescriptive models of governance.

In this paper, we explore the consequences of a flat ontology for planning theory and practice through the lens of Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT). We present a perspective in which the ontological hierarchies assumed in planning and beyond are left behind, but also one that allows for understanding how hierarchies and binaries can emerge from and within governance and specifically planning. From this perspective, planning is conceptualised as a web of interrelated social-material systems underpinning the coordination of policies and practices affecting spatial organisation. Within this web, different planning perspectives and planning practices co-exist and co-evolve, partly in relation to the wider governance contexts of which they are part. We explore and deepen our understanding of the consequences of flat ontology by focussing on the interrelations between power and knowledge and the varied effects of materiality on planning and governance, as materiality can play roles ranging from latent infrastructure to main triggers of change. We conclude our paper by assessing the consequences for the positionality of planning in society, stressing the need for more reflexive and adaptive forms of planning and governance, and reflecting on what such forms of planning could look like. We argue that despite the abstract nature of discussions on ontology in and of planning, the conceptual shifts that result from thinking in terms of flat ontologies can significantly affect planning practices as it can inspire new ways of observing and organising.

In this special issue, we present a number of distinct contributions to recent debates on the interlinkage between place branding with spatial planning theory and the embedded of both in governance. The idea to organise this special issue emerged from our common research interests. For us it was rather puzzling that planning and branding had not been connected in a systematic manner, either in theory or in practice. The encouragement towards this special issue occurred after a post-conference meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in September 2017. As guest editors, we had been convinced of the potential of place branding as a way to make planning more sensitive to its own potential for encouraging value creation and support spatial transformation. We never considered this a way to maximizing value or to subjugate spatial planning to a capitalist system. But we did believe that spatial planning in a capitalist context would make itself very vulnerable if it was not sensitive to issues of economic value, and also sensitive to arguments and lobbying by developers, property owners, and citizens. We had a strong feeling that place branding perspectives could render planning more sensitive in this regard, and we were, to some extent, exhausted with schematic discussions of planning being seen as an opponent of free enterprise and property rights and place branding represented as the ‘handmaiden of capitalism’. We believed that place branding had the potential to protect and preserve what is valuable to a community, but that it had to develop at least a greater awareness of the issues of democratic legitimacy engendered by its claims to importance. We wanted to get a deeper understanding of this problematic separation and invite authors from two sides of the divide to think about the other side. And it was not easy. The marketing roots of place branding made it hard for some authors to envision branding in the frame of governance, and in that frame to consider how it could get closer to planning. While in planning, intellectual but also administrative traditions made it hard to make connections at first. But we believe we did succeed in bringing together a group of competent and open minded authors who were willing to cross the divide and think about various possible ways to relate planning and branding. Sometimes, tough discussions were part of the game, and both contributors and guest editors had to re-examine their assumptions. We believe this happened, and we are proud of the result. This collection of papers, is certainly not the ‘last word’ in this debate but it is for sure a major step forward in the search for synergies between planning and branding. We assume that many possible relations are imaginable and practicable. When considering those possible synergies, one need to take into account the diversity of forms of planning and branding, as well as the diversity of situations, marked by different issues and assets. Many critiques of place branding and its former incarnation, place marketing, have focused on the bias towards economic development. This raised questions regarding the power of a small circle of experts (especially in places with a strong tourism sector), but also regarding the narrow focus of community development implied, the limited set of assets appreciated, the limited range of possible futures envisioned, or the small number of common goods articulated. The idea of spatial planning has been similarly captured, according to much of the academic literature, by narrow economic development goals, with old ambitions being routinely ditched to redefine planning as simply creating space for developers. A key argument of this special issue, one found in different forms in most of the contributions, is that effective synergies between planning and place branding requires a thorough understanding of planning and branding practices and the embedding of both in governance. This means looking beyond the labels, and beyond the self-presentations of both sets of professionals, and mapping out in detail how planning and branding really work in the given location. It also means that the actual (versus formal) position of each in broader governance configurations requires attention. Once an image of actual practices in a bigger governance system is sketched, the current impact of both planning and branding can be better understood, as can be their current relations, and some possibilities for re-configuring those relations. Furthermore, an understanding of the evolution of the governance system and its modes of self-transformation, helps to see how current forms of planning and branding might be transformed and brought into more fruitful relations. For most of the authors included in this special issue, two important concepts shared by planning and branding, are assets and narratives, with branding offering a promise to stabilize communities by creating place-based value sensitive to assets and narratives.

Focusing on the case of As Pontes, Spain, where coal mine production intensified rapidly in the 1970s through to the 1990s, we contribute to the literature on resource towns, and on boom and bust communities more generally. Here, mining was contested throughout the boom period, eroding the local economy and reducing social cohesion among residents. The effects of the subsequent bust were buffered by the Spanish welfare state, and by a power plant, which now imports coal, but still employed some locals. Despite As Pontes’ problematic past and present situation, which is marked by relative stability and prosperity, we still find deep nostalgia and community features usually observed in places where the boom provoked less resistance and the bust was more dramatic. A rigid ‘industrial’ identity started to structure governance post-mining; nostalgia for the ‘good’ times dominated. In our analysis of developments at As Pontes, we apply the concept of ‘concentration problem’, in an attempt to shed light on features of governance in resource towns and difficulties in local ‘reinvention’ mode, and develop the idea further by linking it to an erasure of infrastructures of memory.

In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis of shock and conflict in social-ecological systems and investigate the implications of this perspective for the understanding of environmental governance, particularly its evolutionary patterns and drivers. We dwell on the distinction between shock and conflict. In mapping the relation between shock and conflict, we invoke a different potentiality for altering rigidity and flexibility in governance; different possibilities for recall, revival and trauma; and different pathways for restructuring the relation between governance, community and environment. Shock and conflict can be both productive and eroding, and for each, one can observe that productivity can be positive or negative. These different effects in governance can be analyzed in terms of object and subject creation, path creation and in terms of the dependencies recognized by evolutionary governance theory: path, inter-, goal and material dependencies. Thus, shock and conflict are mapped in their potential consequences to not only shift a path of governance, but also to transform the pattern of self-transformation in such path. Finally, we reflect on what this means for the interpretation of adaptive governance of social-ecological systems.

This Special Issue explores evolutionary perspectives on environmental policy and governance [...]

Contains fulltext : 228954.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) GruezmacherQuarantine measures and the crises triggering them are never neutral in the sense that a return to the past is impossible. These measures are also a signal of other things like systemic risks and weaknesses. A period of quarantine is also a thing in and by itself. What happens after quarantine is thus shaped both by the state of the social-ecological system preceding quarantine and by what happened during quarantine. The selectivities introduced during quarantine span discursive, institutional and material realms. Old discourses can return with a new meaning. Social and economic relations can reappear seemingly unchanged, they can be more visibly altered and they can be dismantled. Ideologies, however, to be understood here as master discourses, read problems and solutions in their own way and do not necessarily come closer to each other or disappear. All this, offers food for thought regarding the possibilities and limits of resilience and transition. We argue that the current COVID- 19 pandemic casts doubt on the generic applicability of theories of resilience and transition, yet also sheds a new light on the value of both. We propose the concept of reinvention to describe what is happening and what could happen in a more coordinated fashion. We argue that the current crisis reveals mechanisms in systems dynamics that point at the existence of multiple pathways after dramatic system shocks. Some shocks and their system- specific responses (such as a particular kind of quarantine) are more amenable to resilience strategies afterwards, while others require a path of radical transition. They might also both be needed: a rather stark transition now might ensure future resilience. While the outline of the system after transition is not clear, some desirable features are clear as are the risks and damages of the current system. Also clear is the argument for transitional governance, a temporary governance system (beyond quarantine) which can enable the construction of new long term perspectives in governance and new governance tools meant to reduce chances of a crisis like this one reoccuring. 7 p.

We use the concepts of riskscapes and risk governance to analyze the tensions between land use for food (farms) and energy (dams) in Southwest Ethiopia. We analyze the linkages between risk perception, risk assessment and risk management for local and non-local actors. We distinguish, after empirical analysis, as main riskscapes the riskscapes of landlessness, food and energy insecurity and siltation. For the Ethiopian case, and more generally, we reflect on the potential of spatial planning as a site of risk governance, where risk perception, assessment and management can be discussed in their linkages, where different actor-related and topical riskscapes can encounter, can be deliberated and result in policy integration. We finally reflect on the ethical implications of our perspective and reconsider the idea of social cost.

Spatial planning and place branding are allies in the discovery and creation of place narratives and assets as well as in contributing to spatial transformation or the improvement of the socio-spatial and spatial-economic conditions of a place. However, the existing and potential linkages between spatial planning and place branding are yet to be explored by both scientists and policy-makers. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we reflect upon the central themes of this special issue by placing them in the context of larger debates on the position of place branding and spatial planning in society. Secondly, we show that this requires attention to the many ways in which planning and branding can cross-fertilize each other and to the embedding of both in evolving spatial governance structures. We then conclude with a typology expanding the understanding of this linkage between spatial planning and place branding.

•This editorial is an overview of the papers included in this special issue highlighting key concepts, findings and conclusions.•It also presents the intention of the special issue and the importance of addressing boom and bust cycles for land use policy.

In this framing paper for the special issue on land use tools for mitigating boom and bust dynamics we present a framework to analyze the effects of dramatic ups and downs on communities. The explicit aim of this framework is to identify the potential of land use tools, broadly understood, to mitigate the effects of these cycles. Application of our framework entails a deep analysis of the development path of the community, or its governance path. We make the argument that such analysis can help to get a precise picture of the effects of boom and bust and at the same time help find ways of moving forward and identify coordination tools that could work in the context of that particular governance path. We argue that land use tools are more effective when they are part of a cohesive strategy for long-term development, yet that such linking and embedding is not always possible. We highlight the importance of institutional capacity and flexibility in tempering boom and bust and allowing opportunities for adaptation. We list common pitfalls, problematic policy prescriptions and mention goals to be encouraged. In some cases unrecognized forms of coordination, both formal and informal, can be potentially helpful in capacity building towards mitigating boom and bust. In cases where strategy is unlikely, under particularly difficult conditions, we suggest to focus on capacity building in what we call transitional governance. This governance configuration is meant to have a limited lifespan and provides the conditions from which strategy and associated land use tools can be envisioned and implemented.

Smart growth is a comprehensive version of spatial planning that can guide sustainable development and tackle negative social and environmental consequences of urbanization. In this paper we explore how an integration of spatial planning and place branding strategies can further the concept of smart growth and improve its chance at implementation. A review of the parallel evolutions of place branding and smart growth shows their shared interest in comprehensive visions, sensitivity for narratives of place and self, and the proposed embedding in participatory governance. The concept of layered and segmenatary commodification offers a novel perspective on value creation in smart growth and helps to develop new forms of smart growth, that combine and integrate elements of spatial planning and place branding.

19 July 2009. A barn burns down in a small Dutch town. Afterwards, this invisible and insignificant ‘barn’ became widely known as ‘Barrack 57’. The destruction triggered attention and led to the barn’s association with a Nazi Second World War transit camp and with Anne Frank. Its material destruction made this barn/barrack both present and absent in various networks. We use the case of Barrack 57 to study the interplay between presence/absence and non-existence of objects in these networks, an exercise which connects to and contributes to the development of constructivist perspectives on object formation in heritage studies. Our analysis of presence/absence and non-existence therefore is based on different concepts developed in actor network theory and Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems. Of particular importance is Luhmann’s distinction between first- and second-order observation. We argue that heritage objects themselves are the result of different enactments of (non) human properties in various relational configurations. With this view, a new task for critical heritage scholars emerges. Understanding the dynamics of presence/absence and non-existence of heritage objects in different networks deepens insight into the broader issues of the formation of heritage objects and their delineating technologies and the policies of normalisation and naturalisation.

The aim of this contribution is to present a conceptual framework with potential application across the interdisciplinary field of border studies. This framework should embrace interdisciplinarity and the contextual nature of borders. Based on the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann, it elaborates an understanding of borders as being related to a dynamic process of social bordering/bounding processes that involves spatial, social, and conceptual boundaries. By introducing the notion of ‘empirical boundary’, our framework aspires to bridge the gap between (radical) constructivist theorising and the analysis of physical realities involved in the (re)production of boundaries.

We identify four choice dimensions that determine the configuration and evolution of governance: formal-informal institutions, network-central steering, local-scientific knowledge and representation-participation. Choices on one dimension affect choices on the other dimensions, which naturally leads to historical dependency. We integrate these insights in a model of governance evolution that revolves around actor/institution configurations and power/knowledge configurations. In a case study of ice fishing villages on Minnesota's Lake Mille Lacs, we investigate one specific set of couplings between the choice dimensions. As we can study the local ice fishing tradition from its very beginning, the evolutionary paths of technology and institutions provide insights into how choices were made along the different dimensions and how they interacted. The case study illustrates how to apply the model, but also contributes to its further development as it draws attention to possible extensions: concepts of scale and identity. peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=cjep20 ispartof: Journal of Environmental Planning and Management vol:57 issue:8 pages:1122-1144 status: published

In this paper we reflect on the relationship between planning and law. We analyse the Dutch interpretation and implementation of the European Union Habitats and Birds Directives by investigating the practices of delineation of protected areas. These directives provide a legislative framework for the designation of protected sites as well as for decision making about social and economic activities that might have negative effects on the conservation objectives. The formal boundaries of the protected area can have legal, political, and economic consequences and are therefore the subject of much debate. Using Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, we analyse the debates concerning delineation and the potential for planning to reduce tensions and balance interests. It is argued that the irreducible differences between the economic, political, and legal perspectives, in combination with the Dutch path of a legalistic interpretation of EU directives, have produced a situation in which the role of planning is reduced and new forms of planning are hard to implement. Keywords: planning, law, natural resource management, Natura 2000, autopoiesis

This paper revisits the potential contribution of semiotic analysis to heritage design. A case study analyzes lay interpretations of a number of urban landscape designs, displaying different ways to refer to the invisible (archaeological) past. A total of 12 draft designs were produced referring to the past of three sites on the fringe of the Dutch city of Almere, and the various design options were discussed during in-depth interviews. A semiotic framework made it possible to grasp the structure and process of interpretation of the plans and their embedded historical references. It is demonstrated that categories of place routinely override categories of time in the interpretation of a historical reference and that designs (and therefore references) steeped in design tradition, or, more broadly, artistic tradition, are rarely understood by the potential users. Further, the study shows that the interplay of spatial, temporal and cultural context does not allow for an ideal strategy of historical reference, a design strategy that would work in every setting. Designing with heritage cannot be decoupled from context

In this paper, we highlight the changing developmental patterns and planning strategies for the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, from late communism till the present day. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, interviews, analysis of documents and plans, we reconstruct the change of course from Soviet planning to fragmentation of plans and policies. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow, Moscow actors and Moscow knowledge disappeared behind the horizon. New actors and new knowledge were introduced in the planning and design system. Most notably, architects-turned-developers introduced Western architectural forms and development practices. Foreign advisors and Western-educated Georgians gave weight to Western economic visions of transition. With the Georgian leadership, as well as with the audience at large, attitudes towards planning are very ambiguous, disputing the relevance of government intervention in spatial development, at the same time cherishing certain results of Soviet planning or planning as such. ...

We start out from the premise of a continued need for policy integration to address both economic and environmental issues in society, arguing that spatial planning is a privileged site to locate such endeavor. While policy integration in planning can acquire many forms, we understand those forms as ways to manage interdependencies between organizations. Spatial planning can contribute to the integration of policies in comprehensive visions, but a planning system, in the sense of a network of organizations, does not escape from the evolutionary rigidity introduced by interdependence and path-dependence. In a study of the evolutionary path of spatial governance in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, we investigated the shifting patterns of policy integration that affected the organization of space. Policy integration in planning, it is found, is path-dependent, worked out positively and negatively, and necessarily relied on informal coordination mechanisms. Thus, a planning system striving to manage interdependence has to be highly reflexive, to understand the extent to which its transformation options are constrained by history and by present linkages between organizations.

In this paper, we explore the importance of silence in planning, an endeavor we deem relevant in an era where communication and planning are seen as nearly equivalent. We investigate the meanings and functions of silence in the interpretation of plans, planned space and the planning process. We distinguish silence in the literal sense, as absence of sound, and metaphorical silence, representing other forms of absence: of other voices, of oppressed discourse, of intentionality. The paradoxical nature of silence, as potential fullness and emptiness of meaning, increases complexity and unpredictability in the interpretation of space, plans and the planning process. It is argued that a process of participatory planning, including many actors, documents and interpretations of space, necessarily multiplies the ambiguities introduced by silence. This creates steering problems for planners, but it also introduces openness and flexibility. Silence can have the positive function of stretching up the interpretations of space, plans and the process.

Review of Stockholm: The Making of a Metropolis by Thomas Hall with contribution by Martin Rorby, 2009

In this article, we argue that Niklas Luhmann has a lot to offer present-day planning theory. Until now, planning theory has been engaged with Luhmann's work only minimally. Convinced of its potential, we want to show how Luhmann's systems theory offers fresh insight into both limits and possibilities of planning in contemporary society. We argue that Luhmann's understanding of society as functionally differentiated into self-referentially closed subsystems (politics, economy, law, science, etc.) creates space for a complex and subtle analysis of planning practice. In particular, we look at the role of planning within an autopoietic account of society, and its ability to steer other social subsystems. Planning is seen as the form of steering aiming to coordinate processes of spatial organization, therefore an activity dealing with steering problems. We illustrate key concepts of the systems theory in brief analyses of planning situations and interpret these situations using the systems theoretical framework. The analyses center around the questions of planning's steering capacity and the role of the planner, thus creating linkages with mainstream discussions in planning theory.

In this article we investigate the value and utility of Machiavelli's work for Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). We made a selection of five topics derived from literature on NRM and CBNRM: (1) Law and Policy, (2) Justice, (3) Participation, (4) Transparency, and (5) Leadership and management. We use Machiavelli's work to analyze these topics and embed the results in a narrative intended to lead into the final conclusions, where the overarching theme of natural resource management for the common good is considered. Machiavelli's focus on practical realities produces new, sometimes unsettling, insights. We conclude that this focus helps to understand the development and performance of management regimes and their consequences and that institutional design should be seen as an ongoing process, which requires a constant adaptation of these institutions.

From new towns to green politics. Campaigning for town and country planning, 1946–1990, Dennis Hardy, Abingdon: Routledge, 2011 [1991], 238 pp., £25 (paperback). This is the paperback edition of a ...

We investigate natural resource governance in three indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. We base our analysis on an evolutionary governance model in which governance dimensions emerge as relevant through time. The less accessible of the communities represents earlier steps in governance evolution, while the more physically accessible is more integrated into the western scene. We observe how increased physical accessibility in a community brings in western governance models which hybridize with more traditional ones, influencing the couplings between the social and ecological systems. We zoom in on changing management of three commonly used palm species and illustrate how detailed studies of natural resource management contribute to understanding governance evolution. By comparing governance evolutions we were able to gain insights and improve our understanding on how natural resource management changes in communities transiting into western ways of living. In doing so we recognized points of rigidity and flexibility which might influence the social ecological systems capacity to adapt to changing conditions.

In this paper we analyse the role and reception of poststructuralist perspectives on power in planning since the 1990s, and then ask whether a renewed encounter with the works of poststructuralist theorists Foucault, Deleuze, and Luhmann could add something to the points that were already made. We make a distinction between the power of planning (the impact in society), power in planning (relations between players active in planning), and power on planning (the influence of broader society on the planning system), to refine the analysis of planning/power. It is argued that an interpretation of Deleuze, Luhmann, and Foucault, as thinkers of power in a theoretical framework that is based on the idea of contingency, can help to refine the analysis of power in planning. Planning then can be regarded as a system in other systems, with roles, values, procedures, and materialities in constant transformation, with the results of each operation serving as input for the next one. The different power relations constitute the possibilities, the forms, and the potential impact of planning. Keywords: power, contingency, acting space, governance, evolution

We combine institutional economic perspectives and actor-network theory to elucidate the role of contracts in the evolution of transitional agricultural systems. Such combination of theories can shed a light on the mutual constitution of actors and institutions, and the formation of economic strategies. We argue that forms and functions of contracts can only be understood in an evolutionary context. In a case study of the Khorezm region, Uzbekistan, where several waves of reform created two principal actors - commercial farms (called fermers locally) responsible for state-ordered production and semi-subsistence smallholders (called dekhqans locally) - it is demonstrated how in the self-transformation of the actor-network, and thus the shifts in forms and roles of contracts, several network features play a role: interdependencies between the actors, the essential actant of the irrigation and drainage system, formal/informal dialectics. Time horizons, risk/benefit calculations, trust and cooperation forms emerge in the self-reproducing network and leave space for certain contractual forms and functions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social learning took place largely outside the sphere of government and spurred substantial technological and institutional innovation. Unique patterns of networks, informal institutions and social learning environments delineate options for social learning that are more likely to succeed, to lead to implementation. The history of social learning on lake Mille Lacs showed that new formal institutions are not necessarily the best sites for social learning, and that forms of innovation and modes of learning cannot be separated. Interdependence and shared goals, and flexibility in role distribution appear as success factors. The diversity of learning sites in a community should not be understood as a problem, as an obstacle to central steering and education by government: it enables the community to adapt and survive.

We investigate the impact of performances of failure in nature conservation by means of a detailed reconstruction of the implementation of European Union conservation directives in the Netherlands. We distinguish performance and performativity, whereby the latter is the reality-effect of discourses affecting policy, and partly the result of deliberate performance. It is argued that the implementation history in the Netherlands reveals that even long-standing traditions of deliberation and spatial planning can be disrupted as an unintended consequence of international policy implementation. What was intended as a tool to promote long-term planning for nature conservation can in effect undermine both nature conservation and long-term planning. Only a high degree of reflexivity in the planning system can diminish the chances of misconceiving the spaces for negotiation and deliberation that are left open by the EU directives. Otherwise, a combination of unexpected events and unreflected routine responses will in all likelihood produce results highly diverging from the initial ambitions.

We investigate the potential of mapping institutional work in communities as a method for both analyzing and formulating local development strategy. Twelve Canadian case communities experiencing dr...

Green infrastructure for sustainable urban development in Africa, by John Abbott, Abingdon, Earthscan/Routledge, 2012, 500 pp., £80 (hardcover) Reading John Abbot's book I was reminded more than on...