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Since 2001, the Indonesian government has formulated and implemented several restoration programs to improve the Citarum’s water quality. However, these programs were often contested, particularly concerning the meanings of ‘water quality’ and how those informed approaches to responsibility and involvement. This paper problematises river restoration in view of these controversies towards improving people’s lives and their environment. Our investigation found (1) a selective use of scientific knowledge of water quality and related responsibilities; (2) a tension between broader inclusion and military involvement in river restoration; and (3) a diverse host of informal restoration practices that largely remain unnoticed in view of the government programs. The findings indicate that river governance can benefit from recognising and tuning into below-the-radar restoration practices to tackle river pollution.

Recovering nutrients from organic materials to reduce artificial fertilizer inputs requires the implementation of processing technologies and can involve considerable logistics and transportation costs. Reducing such costs by directly applying organic materials to agricultural land can contribute to pollution due to potential contaminants and unbalanced nutrient ratios. Assessing the cost of increased recycling requires a spatially explicit approach because availability of organic materials, nutrient demand and agro-ecosystem properties vary spatially. A multi-objective model was developed to estimate the trade-offs between costs of nutrient recovery and improvements in nutrient distribution for a case study area in The Netherlands. The evaluated recovery processes included solid-liquid separation followed by reverse osmosis to recover nutrients from pig manure which was compared to a conventional process via hygienisation and export. Results indicate that, even in a nutrient saturated area, replacement potential of artificial nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertilizers through locally reclaimed nutrients is limited to about 17% N and 55% P. A cost optimum was found when about 48% of the initial pig manure quantities were processed via nutrient recovery and directed to land. Increasing manure processing for nutrient recovery led to a redistribution of nutrients and trace metals (zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu)), resulting in more localized concentration. Zn and Cu were enriched by about 8% and 2%, respectively, when maximizing nutrient recovery. Our generic model offers a methodology to assess the trade-offs between increased recycling and associated spatial effects to facilitate sustainable recycling infrastructures for achieving more circular agriculture.

De visie van kringlooplandbouw kan doorgaans op veel bijval rekenen. Vrijwel iedereen vindt het een goed idee om minder grondstoffen te consumeren, minder afval te produceren en reststromen effectiever te gebruiken. Zo putten we de aarde minder snel uit, ontzien het milieu, stoten minder broeikasgas uit en verminderen het internationale transport van met name veevoeder. Deze positieve associatie staat in schril contrast met de negatieve associa-ties die we hebben bij bepaalde toepassingen van afvalresten, bijvoorbeeld wanneer veront-reinigd rioolslib uitgereden wordt over akkers of wanneer slachtafval gebruikt wordt als veevoer. De vraag of hierdoor omstandigheden ontstaan die onveilig zijn voor mens, dier of milieu is niet eenvoudig te beantwoorden.

Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy. Funding schemes, research, and planning across all Member States are expected to be innovative. This article provides a critical analysis of the drivers and effects of this evolution. While positive results have been achieved due to innovation policies, this article proposes that taking a wider critical perspective reveals important caveats. The article zooms in on the EU&rsquo, s innovation policies by analysing policy documents, projects funded, and on-the-ground impact on three citizen initiatives. The analysis asks whether and how the EU&rsquo, s self-set goals of sustainability, social inclusion, and economic growth are approached and met in them. The findings suggest a problematic funnelling process. First, an emphasis on innovation is created with the objective of systematically unblocking resistance to the development and implementation of novelties in the name of competitiveness, job creation, and economic growth. Second, the idea of innovation is very loosely defined, while, when translated into urban planning, it is interpreted narrowly in terms of efficiency and behavioural change, digitalization, and smart technologies. As a result, (narrowly defined) innovation-led economic growth begins to supersede alternative values and visions for the future of European cities and regions. This can represent a problem for EU Member States as it creates a very limited, risk-based, and divisive direction of development. To contribute to the (re-)establishment of alternatives, this article finally offers policy recommendations primarily concerned with the reinstatement of the public interest beyond innovation-centred planning perspectives.

Self-organisation in environmental service delivery is increasingly being promoted as an alternative to centralised service delivery. This article argues that self-organised environmental service delivery must be understood in the context of legal rules, especially environmental legislation. The article’s aim is twofold: first, to understand the changing relationship between the government and citizens in self-organised service delivery, and second, to explore how self-organised environmental service delivery complies with environmental quality requirements stipulated in legislation. The empirical study focuses on wastewater management in Oosterwold, the largest Dutch urban development that experimented with self-organisation. The results show that while individual wastewater management was prioritised and implemented at scale, the applicable legal rules were not adequately considered and integrated. Consequently, the experiment led to a deterioration of water quality. The article concludes that the success or failure of self-organisation in delivering environmental services such as wastewater management critically hinges on ensuring compliance with environmental legislation.

Considering the importance of visual representations for communication between stakeholders in landscape planning and design processes, the authors identify a lack of critical visual research methods supportive of the disciplines involved. As part of such a method, they have developed an analytical framework based on semiotic and iconographic theory that enables a visual content analysis and iconographic interpretation of landscape design representations. Two projects from Rebuild by Design, a participatory transdisciplinary design competition organized in the New York City area after hurricane Sandy, were analysed to demonstrate this framework. The article presents a semiotic vocabulary based on four categories: medium, mode, formulation and knowledge with which to ‘read’, discuss and potentially create design representations. This enables a syntactic analysis for assessing the semiotic complexity of design representations in terms of validity, readability and interactivity. This assessment enables further qualitative study of the production and interpretation of landscape design representations in practice.

Rapid urban expansion often has negative social, environmental, and ecological consequences. In China, urbanization rates have increased rapidly over the past decades, commensurate with economic growth. This article evaluates how Chinese urban planning was effective in containing urban expansion. To this end, we examined discrepancies between the Land Use Master Plan (LUMP) and the actual land use developments between the years 1996 and 2014, and analyzed them in relation to demographic and land-use change. Our findings reveal that the initial aim outlined in the LUMP proved, from the start, difficult to implement and that certain targets were either not met or surpassed. Remarkable is that the rates of land used for urbanization strongly exceed those of urban population growth. Explanations are sought in a combination of decentralization, marketization and globalization. We argue that urban growth management is challenged by the shift from the centrally planned system to a more market-oriented governance system, with the slowly increasing autonomy of local governments, which creates incentives for the latter to stimulate urbanization rather than to control it.

Social learning is the process of exchanging and developing knowledge (including skills and experiences) through human interaction. This key planning process needs to be better under-stood, given the increase and variety of non-planners influencing planning processes. This article explores who learns what from whom through social learning in planning. We unpack social learning theoretically to be able to map it, and employ empirically-based storytelling to discuss its relevance to planning practice. We conclude that social learning can lead to positive and negative outcomes and provides a useful analytical lens to understand planning practices at the level of individuals.

Although cultural ecosystem services (CES) are greatly valued by diverse stakeholders, the full range of CES provided by a landscape is notoriously difficult to estimate. The resulting lack of objective norms for CES may lead to the loss of the multiple non-material factors that contribute to how a landscape is valued and experienced. This is especially true under ecological restoration, which could sharply change how people experience landscapes. Therefore, our aim in this study was to identify and analyze the CES that arise from people's interaction with their landscape, focusing specifically on the influences of different ecological restoration strategies. We carried out semi-structured interviews with the residents of villages in the Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, China. Regarding the implementation of ecological restoration measures, the people living in typical pastoral zones would be most affected by these measures because their main livelihood (animal husbandry) depends strongly on grasslands. Our results demonstrated that human perception of the CES provided by landscapes is affected not only by the factors related to an individual's cultural worldview (e.g., ethnicity, age, education) but also by the utility of landscape features, which are reflected in the individual's landscape dependence (occupation). Our research provides a cultural perspective for aspects of local well-being in addition to ecological and economic targets. Understanding these other aspects is critical for implementing sustainable ecological restoration.

Widespread adoption of improved cropland management measures is advocated to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) levels, thereby improving soil fertility and mitigating climate change. However, spatially explicit insight on management impacts is limited, which is crucial for region-specific and climate-smart practices. To overcome these limitations, we combined global meta-analytical results on improved management practices on SOC sequestration with spatially explicit data on current management practices and potential areas for the adoption of these measures. We included (a) fertilization practices, i.e., use of organic fertilizer compared to inorganic fertilizer or no fertilizer, (b) soil tillage practices, i.e., no-tillage relative to high or intermediate intensity tillage, and (c) crop management practices, i.e., use of cover crops and enhanced crop residue incorporation. We show that the estimated global C sequestration potential varies between 0.44 and 0.68 Gt C yr-1 , assuming maximum complementarity among all measures taken. A more realistic estimate, not assuming maximum complementarity, is from 0.28 to 0.43 Gt C yr-1 , being on the lower end of the current range of 0.1-2 Gt C yr-1 found in the literature. One reason for the lower estimate is the limited availability of manure that has not yet been recycled. Another reason is the limited area for the adoption of improved measures, considering their current application and application limitations. We found large regional differences in carbon sequestration potential due to differences in yield gaps, SOC levels, and current practices applied. The highest potential is found in regions with low crop production, low initial SOC levels, and in regions where livestock manure and crop residues are only partially recycled. Supporting previous findings, we highlight that to encourage both soil fertility and SOC sequestration, it is best to focus on agricultural soils with large yield gaps and/or where SOC values are below levels that may limit crop production.

Co-creation has emerged as a hot topic in contemporary planning pedagogies. Co-creation is seen as advancing the mutual exchange of knowledge between various actors in an educational setting. Despite the growing interest in co-creation in planning pedagogies, the potential types and flows of knowledge between learning communities are weakly conceptualised. This article proposes the community knowledge triangle as a fitting conceptual tool for understanding mutual knowledge exchange relations in co-creative settings. The triangle was utilised in a planning course to unpack the co-creative logic. The results showed that academics, practitioners and students exchanged knowledge in multiple directions, yet not in a reciprocal relationship.

To combat land degradation and deterioration issues, the Grain to Green project (GGP) was implemented on the Chinese Loess Plateau in 1999 and substantially altered the land cover by converting slope farmland into forest and grassland. To effectively achieve sustainable land restoration management and avoid stakeholder conflicts, this study aimed to understand how local stakeholders perceived the current land restoration process and expectations for future land restoration policy, as well as how stakeholders assessed the GGP impacts on local ecosystem service changes. We investigated the perspectives of 150 stakeholders representing five stakeholder groups including farmers, governmental officers, citizens, tourism operators and forestry practitioners using questionnaires administered in 2021 in the Yan’an area of the Chinese Loess Plateau. The survey results indicated a 72% support rate of stakeholders for the current GGP, with government officers reporting the highest value and tourism practitioners reporting the lowest. The support rate for future land restoration decreased to 51%. While majority of the stakeholders considered that the GGP had stimulated regulation and cultural ecosystem services, they also perceived negative impacts on grain production, livestock production, water yield and water quantity. Factors influencing farmers’ decision-making on recultivating the restored forest in the future were found to be economically driven. We recommend policy makers to improve the compensation standards and duration for farmers and increase the diversity of restoration tree species, and the involvement of participatory processes is suggested for future land restoration policy-making.

The past two decades have witnessed increasing global concern about the need for sustainable water and land management in an era of rapid change, and persistent water insecurity. Good water governance is a prerequisite to improve water management all over the world. The OECD Water Governance Initiative developed Water Governance Principles to enhance the process from water policy design to implementation. This contribution aims to examine how the OECD Water Governance Principles fit actual water governance on the local scale. Therefore a Dutch case is employed here to almost serve as a benchmark test for the framework of the OECD water governance principles.

This article highlights the psychological dimension of social learning. Insights from psychology address the interrelated role of personal and group dynamics in social learning. This can provide a useful starting point for a rewarding use of social learning as an analytical tool in co-creative planning. Such an approach to social learning proves beneficial to (i) identify both positive and negative potential effects of social learning, (ii) untangle hidden power relationships at play at individual and small group levels in relation to social psychological factors, and (iii) discern the role of individuals and small groups within their larger contexts. The findings are empirically illustrated with a case of incremental urban development in Groningen, the Netherlands.

Managing public space is a big and important blind spot of urban and regional planning and design. Important, because major transition challenges, such as climate adaptation, energy transition, circular economy, mobility, and governance require substantial changes in public space – both physical and social changes. Big, because managing public space entails enormous budgets and potentials over a long period of time in which management and maintenance takes place, which are largely spent operational and sectoral. A more integral and strategic management of public space entails huge potentials, which are hitherto neglected in the academic debate on public space in general and that of cities in particular. This contribution builds on explorative work on management of public space in academia and on a survey of Dutch managing public space practice and pleads for a more systematic academic debate and research on management of public space.

CONTEXT Most Western-European countries exceed the critical loads for nitrogen (N) losses. High nitrogen (N) inputs make agriculture one of the largest contributors to N pollution. There might be a potential to reduce this losses with an output tax on animal products, as they have low N use efficiency and a tax has the potential to reduce the consumption of this products. OBJECTIVE We want to assess the potential of a food tax on animal products to reduce the N surplus of Swiss agriculture. METHODS We implemented a tax on meat and a tax on milk and meat in the agent-based model SWISSland. The model combines an agent-based model with a microeconomic model at the farm scale. To better understand the low response of the food tax, we applied in a second step a robust two-step global sensitivity analysis of abatement costs of individual model agents. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Imposing a tax led to an N surplus reduction of 2.1% where only meat was taxed and 2.3% where both milk and meat were taxed. The sensitivity analysis showed that distinct agents reacted non-uniformly to changing prices, so that the effect of the tax was sometimes even cancelled out. This calls for more differentiated policies to reduce the negative impact of N losses. SIGNIFICANCE The overall impact of the food tax was minor as the distinct agents react not uniformly to lower producer prices., Agricultural Systems, 194, ISSN:0308-521X

Until recently, mainstream approaches to low carbon mobility transitions had largely avoided considering mobility reductions as a serious option, focusing instead on making mobility “cleaner” or more “efficient”. In 2020, however, not going to work or not going anywhere became a reality for hundreds of millions of people as a result of restrictions related to COVID-19. The paper proposes that experiences of a less mobile life under COVID-19 may offer us insight into both the taken-for-granted meanings of mobility in daily life before COVID-19, now made visible, and into the potential hurdles faced by low-carbon mobility transitions ahead. Drawing on the analysis of written interviews with 50 people from various countries, the paper explores what living without commuting means for different people, what experiences they miss, and what they find enjoyable.The results indicate that the majority of respondents miss quite a few aspects of daily mobility, but have also discovered new experiences, routines and meanings that hold their daily life together and make it pleasant. Not commuting, thus, just like commuting itself, simultaneously entails positive and negative experiences for most people. Building on these findings, the paper suggests that mobility transition policies need to accommodate this complexity by looking at which needs particular mobilities fulfil. In a context of reduced mobility (e.g. due to teleworking), this means thinking about how needs related to mobility can be accommodated and orchestrated through employer policies, transportation planning and urban design in a way which strengthens sustainable, inclusive mobilities.

A growing group of cities feels responsible to feed urban populations sustainably. This has stimulated cities to embrace urban agriculture as an alternative in their food system orientation. However, while urban agriculture in all its diversity has arrived in the urban fabric and at planners’ desks, it largely remains an outsider to urban planning practices of peri-urban zones. How could city’s planning practices transform into practices that include urban agriculture in peri-urban zones? This paper reflects at this question with the analyses of the becoming of planning practices of the Dutch city of Almere that fully integrate urban agriculture in a new urban area: Oosterwold. Using a social practice perspective, our study unpacks the shifting position of agriculture in the planning practices of Almere over a 55-year period. The paper describes the historical reconstruction by examining the meanings, materials and competences in four periods of the urban planning practices. Our analysis reveals that the integration of agriculture into the city’s planning is not just a sign of the times. Agriculture has always been an element of planning from the city’s inception. Nevertheless, it took 55 years to emerge as hybrid urban-rural planning practices that fully integrate agriculture in urbanisation. Furthermore, the case demonstrates how this integration of agriculture stretches the professional domain of urban planning as it required interdisciplinary and unconventional operation as well as leadership to organise.

Until recently, mainstream approaches to low carbon mobility transitions had largely avoided considering mobility reductions as a serious option, focusing instead on making mobility “cleaner” or more “efficient”. In 2020, however, not going to work or not going anywhere became a reality for hundreds of millions of people as a result of restrictions related to COVID-19. The paper proposes that experiences of a less mobile life under COVID-19 may offer us insight into both the taken-for-granted meanings of mobility in daily life before COVID-19, now made visible, and into the potential hurdles faced by low-carbon mobility transitions ahead. Drawing on the analysis of written interviews with 50 people from various countries, the paper explores what living without commuting means for different people, what experiences they miss, and what they find enjoyable.The results indicate that the majority of respondents miss quite a few aspects of daily mobility, but have also discovered new experiences, routines and meanings that hold their daily life together and make it pleasant. Not commuting, thus, just like commuting itself, simultaneously entails positive and negative experiences for most people. Building on these findings, the paper suggests that mobility transition policies need to accommodate this complexity by looking at which needs particular mobilities fulfil. In a context of reduced mobility (e.g. due to teleworking), this means thinking about how needs related to mobility can be accommodated and orchestrated through employer policies, transportation planning and urban design in a way which strengthens sustainable, inclusive mobilities.

Governments are increasingly facing conflicting land uses in cities. Many governments strongly aspire to provide green spaces for the public, yet simultaneously stimulate private preferences for real-estate development. This paper argues that examining the interrelationship between land ownership and control over land clarifies the provision of green spaces in the context of private preferences for development. It presents a case study of the Carré de Soie urban development in which the government aspires to an abundance of green but concurrently encourages the market to take the initiative. The findings show that the lack of public land ownership combined with private actors having a say in control over land fell short in satisfying public aspirations for green spaces. This paper concludes that if cities need to become greener, recognising the role of the government to act in the public interest is of utmost importance.

At the turn of the 21st century, a wave of interest in incrementalism swept over the field of planning practice, which further gained momentum and shaped the emergence of a ‘new’ strategy for urban development projects. Broadly defined, the logic of incrementalism refers to a process in which multiple actors take small steps that can be adapted or changed according to previous steps without reaching ‘right’ solutions. Despite the growing enthusiasm in the planning sector for this incremental logic, I did not want to uncritically accept its potential as a strategy. Therefore, I explore in this dissertation whether incremental logic makes sense in strategy-making by presenting a critical reflexive perspective. I adopt this critical reflexive perspective by asking whether incremental development strategies are ‘effective’. By effective, I mean whether the strategy has the capacity to build structures in which collective action can emerge. The assumption in this dissertation is that it is only possible to assess whether incremental development strategies can lead to collective action when we understand how its purposive action relates to institutional arrangements. Therefore, I use institutional theory as a theoretical lens. Empirically, this dissertation shows how purposive actions relate to institutions in urban development projects that adopt an incremental strategy in Amsterdam, Almere and Lyon.

Planning consultants are increasingly hired to organize citizen participation processes for urban development projects. However, the ways in which planning consultants engage in and perceive the involvement of citizens in urban development projects remain relatively understudied. This article opens the black box of consultancy employees’ perceptions toward citizens in urban development processes. Employees from two consultancy firms in the Netherlands were interviewed, and several focus groups were organized. This research shows that consultants have wide-ranging views concerning the ways of incorporating citizens’ interests in urban development projects. With the use of Q-methodology, a typology of how consultants engage with citizens is proposed. Furthermore, we show that the different perceptions of consultants lead to a different approach in identifying the needs and problems of citizens. This finding gives insight into the context in which decisions about urban development are made.

A major challenge today and in the future is to maintain or enhance the beneficial contributions of landscapes to the quality of life of people. Neglecting cultural ecosystem services (CES) in landscape planning can lead to loss of unique cultural landscapes and undermine the well-being of local communities. Despite a rapidly increasing body of literature on CES, little is known about the relationship between socio-cultural values and the non-material benefits of landscapes. To help fill this gap, we assessed the perceptions of people from different ethnic groups about the cultural ecosystem services of local landscapes. We took the Genheyuan National Wetland Park and the adjacent forest areas, a typical mountain forest-wetland ecosystem, as our case area. By combining surveys (250 semi-structured interviews and 26 local stakeholders in Focus Group Discussion) with structural equation modelling (SEM), we gained insights into the importance of landscapes to CES provision from the perspective of stakeholder diversity. Surprisingly, wetlands are perceived as playing more important roles than other landscape types in providing diverse CES, with a 1.25 times higher CES Diversity Index (CDI) than that of forests. Among all demographic factors, ethnicity is most significant in determining people’s perceptions, reflecting the spiritual cognition, manners, and customs of the ethnic groups. The perceptions of CES provided by landscapes are likely to increase if landscape characteristics are attached more to functions in order to meet fundamental human needs.

Adverse environmental effects of intensive agriculture, together with scarcity in phosphates and water, urge farmers to find more sustainable practices. An example of such a sustainable practice is on-farm processing of organic waste. This paper explores three mechanisms that can lead to a widespread uptake of this technique: (1) economies of scale, (2) information sharing, and (3) adjustment of social norms. Although each of these mechanisms has been studied before, this paper provides new insights by considering the interactions that might exist between the different mechanisms when they are applied to real-life situations. Based on a pilot study, we developed a multi-criteria mathematical programming model at individual farm level. We used this model to simulate the uptake of on-farm processing of organic waste, as a result of the three mechanisms and their interactions. Our results show that each mechanism results in an increased uptake, but is not likely to cause a widespread uptake. Interaction between the mechanisms, will lead to a much higher uptake. This result suggests that simultaneous consideration of multiple mechanisms is essential to understand the behaviour of social–ecological systems.

Urbanization represents a challenge for plans aimed at controlling urban expansion and protecting farmland, such as the land use master plan (LUMP) instituted by the Chinese national government. This paper studies the effectiveness of such top–down plans under the authoritarian regime through the case study of Nanjing. In contrast to previous studies that compare actual and planned land-use maps, we compare actual and planned land-use patterns. We use land-use change data to examine spatio-temporal land-use change between the years 1997 and 2014. The results indicate that the actual amount of urban-rural built-up land exceeded planned regulatory amount by 50,185 ha and the total farmland was 70,541 ha less than the target outlined in the LUMP (1997–2010). Based on these results, and the fact that the allowed total urban-rural built-up land had already been surpassed in 2014, it is to be expected that the target of farmland protection outlined in the LUMP (2006–2020) will be broken, signaling the ineffectiveness of the plan to control urban expansion and protect farmland. Plan-led developments (e.g., new towns, development zones) and market forces (e.g., housing market, foreign direct investment) explain these developments. This study indicates that when cities embrace “growth-led” development and entrepreneurial governance, the ability of plans to control urban expansion and protect farmland is severely limited.

This article studies how social learning can contribute to change, by applying the concepts of Turning Points and Critical Junctures to the pre-implementation lifecycles of small-scale bottom-up initiatives. It proposes that Turning Points, which have a relatively small immediate impact, and Critical Junctures, which have larger, more visible and more immediate effects, should both be considered crucial to the pre-implementation lifecycle of such initiatives and their capacity to endure and act towards implementation. It shows how social learning contributes to Turning Points, Near Misses and Critical Junctures by, for example, turning frustrations into spite, which fuels endurance and eventually implementation; or by allowing long-term endurance to make at first rejected possibilities become acceptable. The emerging Turning Points, Near Misses and Critical Junctures each play relevant roles for endurance and implementation dynamics. These findings highlight the importance of a more differentiated approach to bottom-up initiatives (including those not yet implemented) in urban planning and urban studies, recognizing their struggles for implementation, and the potentials and hurdles that social learning processes can provide therein. To support this differentiated approach, a micro-level application of Turning Points and Critical Junctures is shown to provide a useful lens, especially when considered in conjunction.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the role of “restructuring” in confronting the challenges facing contemporary high streets in the devolved UK. It complements three articles concerned with repositioning, reinventing and rebranding and illustrates the multi-faceted approaches involved in addressing retail change and town centre transformations. This paper emphasises the role of planning and governance in effecting change. Design/methodology/approach Informed by a literature review, action research involved inter-related interventions in selected locations, and associated workshops with engaged practitioners and community actors. Findings The findings highlight that the “resilience” of contemporary town centres demands resisting efforts to return to the status quo and necessitate forms of adaptive management. Understanding high street degeneration and the limitations of a retail-only led policy focus as a “wicked issue” further demands socially constructing town centres as an ecosystem requiring a holistic response. New forms of joint-working involve selecting appropriate models, attending to relational aspects and defined roles and responsibilities. Land use planning, including masterplanning and creating evidenced policy options, provides an important democratic space for legitimising action, offering leadership and extending participation to new change agents. Practical implications Restructuring of governance is an essential prerequisite in effecting change. Originality/value The originality of this study lies in the application of the restructuring element of the 4 Rs Framework which enables a focus on the governance dimensions of town centre and high street regeneration. The findings are enhanced through the experiential evidence which stresses both the importance of place-based diversification and value of prioritising holistic and joint actions developed through participatory visioning exercises.

Traditional vineyards in Spain are being upgraded to trellis vineyards. A key question is to what extent the transition to trellis vineyards is compatible with the environmental preservation goals in Special Protection Areas. This paper presents a GIS-based model to assess the suitability of Special Protection Areas for the development of trellis systems. The model was applied in a Special Protection Area for steppe birds in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, a region with the largest concentration of vineyards in the world. The model includes three components: (1) a vineyard structure analysis, (2) an analysis of habitat fragmentation, and (3) a suitability analysis. The results showed that 50.9% of the study area, including 82.1% of the existing vineyards, was classified as suitable for transition to trellis systems. In the remaining unsuitable areas an increase in trellis systems should be avoided. The model is a stepping stone for improving the sustainable land use development of Mediterranean agricultural landscapes. Further research is needed to include wider socio-economic and environmental consequences of modernizing viticulture practices.

Today's urban streets are usually planned for purposes of mobility: pedestrians, as well as a variety of vehicles such as cars, trucks, and sometimes bicycles, are usually factored into an urban street plan. However, urban streets are also increasingly recognized as public spaces, accommodating street vending, food trucks, markets, artistic interventions, political expressions, comfortable benches, green spaces. Although these are mostly not new activities to appear on streets, they are now given particular attention in public discourses, urban planning, media and academia, as public space in cities has become a more contested resource among different uses and ownership-constellations. Growing and diversifying urban populations are generating a particular strain on urban streets worldwide. In short, urban streets epitomize the challenges and opportunities that accompany the negotiations of space and uses attributed to mobility and public space in cities. They necessarily unite stationary and mobile functions – though this is not usually given room for in planning. Moreover, these functions are rarely studied from more than one perspective at once, which limits the analytical and creative thinking that inspiration is drawn from. In order to address these limitations, in this article we rely on insights from three theoretical fields - namely planning regulation, transitions and governance - and illustrations from concrete examples, to explore what urban planning might have to focus on to address the tensions in linking stationary and mobile functions in urban streets.

In this article, I juxtapose David Harvey’s idea of the ‘right to the city’ and Martha Nussbaum’s central human capability of ‘control over one’s environment’, and I approach them from the perspective of their mutual convergence on Marx’s conception of human significance. In particular, I compare how Marx’s conception reverberates in Harvey’s right to the city as human right and in Nussbaum’s control over the environment as central human capability. I discuss how the language of capabilities through which the latter scholar articulates her political liberalism offers ‘important supplementations’ to the language of human rights through which the former scholar articulates his critical discourse. I conclude that the evaluative character of Nussbaum’s capability approach could advance a novel stream in planning theory centred on human development. To elaborate on such potential, I propose the notion of people’s ‘urban functionings’, and I discuss how this notion could provide new interpretative lenses through which to renew the idea of ‘right to the city’.

The world is rapidly urbanising, with both positive and negative consequences. One major challenge is how to secure the long-term quality of life for urban residents. Many studies on quality of life are based on ‘material’ ecosystem services (i.e., provisioning and regulating services), with less attention paid to the non-material benefits gained from nature (e.g., green and blue spaces), which have been called cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, these non-material services are often most important to urban residents. Understanding perceptions and awareness of CES provided by urban blue space (i.e., water and wetlands) and green space (i.e., urban forest and grassland) are therefore important to support planning, creation, and protection of these spaces. To tackle these problems, we assessed and quantified the CES provided by urban green and blue space in six metropolitan areas of Beijing. By combining ecosystem services valuation with surveys (466 questionnaires and 16 expert interviews), we gained insights into residents’ perceptions of CES. Surprisingly, blue areas in metropolitan Beijing were valued at least 4.3 times higher than the value of green areas. More than 80% of the residents were willing to pay for maintenance of urban blue and green areas (an average of almost 64 RMB/year). The contributions of cultural services are likely to increase if stakeholders value natural ecosystems more in urban areas than in rural or mountainous areas because of the additional value of these rare resources in densely populated areas.

The landscape services concept provides a lens to study relations within the social-ecological networks that landscapes are, and to identify stakeholders as either providers or beneficiaries. However, landscape services can also be used as a boundary concept in collaborative landscape governance. We demonstrate this by analysing the case of Gouwe Wiericke in the rural west of the Netherlands. Here, a collaborative landscape governance process started off with low levels of trust between farmers and regional governments, as a result of previous processes. The introduction of the landscape services concept helped to bridge social boundaries, which eventually resulted in collective action: farmers and governments reached an agreement on adapted management of ditches and shores to improve water quality and biodiversity. However, we propose that bridging the social boundaries was achieved not merely due to the landscape services concept, but also due to the fact that multiple boundaries were managed simultaneously, and additional arrangements were used in boundary management.

Jane Jacobs has been a highly influential thinker in urban design and town planning debates for the past half-century. She authored publications that became classics in urban studies literature, such as The Life and Death of Great American Cities (1961) and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984), and left behind a number of pioneering studies on urban economics and the primacy of cities in states.In May 2016, Jane Jacobs would have had her 100th birthday. To celebrate this occasion, TU Delft and Erasmus University College Rotterdam in the Netherlands took on the challenge of organising a conference wholly dedicated to critically discussing Jane Jacobs's legacy and relevance for the twenty-first century. The organisers emphasised that this was the only academic conference in the world dedicated to Jane Jacobs. The conference attracted about 150 participants and was held in the marvellous buildings of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. Nearly 40 presentations were divided among six parallel tracks:* Ethics and the just city;* Street spaces: history, heritage and memory;* The dynamics of neighbourhoods;* The reshaping of old urban fabrics in Chinese cities;* Organised complexity; and* Safety in the public space.Aside from this broad range of topics around the ideas of Jacobs, keynote speeches, workshops and special events, such as a 'Jane's walk' through Rotterdam, completed the programme.Keynotes: 'becoming' and reinventing Jane JacobsThe conference opened with three consecutive keynote lectures - the most notable of which, for depth and accuracy, was Peter Laurence's opening speech. Laurence's opening presentation of his book Becoming Jane Jacobs constituted the perfect introduction to a programme whose value, in a genuine Jacobsian spirit, consisted of the quality and depth of exchanges among participants who - regardless of their world views and affiliation - recognise in the American thinker an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Laurence's opening speech was rich with anecdotes, analyses and interpretations of Jacobs's life and thoughts, from her early writings as 'city journalist' up to her most comprehensive contributions as a scholar. Through his contribution, Laurence set the perfect ground for a conference that remained faithful to what Jacobs embodied in both her intellectual production and her urban activism: that it is not the sum, but rather the integration, of people's ideas, along their lifelong development, that constitutes the basis for cohesive and creative transformations of both the city and how we think about it.Professor Dirk Schubert (HafenCity University Hamburg) made a plea for contextualising Jacobs's ideas in contemporary urban planning, and critically re-evaluating such ideas. This provided a framework for critically discussing the conference theme - the legacy and relevance of Jane Jacobs in the twenty-first century - instead of being just a celebration. It was the explicit aim of the conference not only to 'celebrate' the figure of Jane Jacobs as urban activist, but to explore and critically question the value of her intellectual contributions for both contemporary and future urban planning.Arnold Reijndorp, professor of urban sociology at the University of Amsterdam, was the third keynote speaker. He explored how critical reflections on the ideas of Jacobs should take place, by referring to examples from the Netherlands. These three keynote speakers complemented each other and set the scene for the other discussions throughout the conference.Academic, activist or a symbol of women's emancipation?On a not-too-marginal note, the three opening keynote lectures dedicated to Jacobs's legacy also caused a reaction by Delft University's students. In the main conference room, two rows of chairs sat empty and displayed the names of female scholars who had not been considered as possible keynote speakers. …

This thesis investigates the communicative qualities of visual landscape design representations. The main subjects of inquiry were (1) visual design representations in their many forms and appearances; (2) the meanings that are attributed to, or derived from, those representations by designers, planners, and project stakeholders; (3) the participatory planning and design processes of the multifunctional flood defence landscape projects wherein those representations are used. The meaning-making processes of visual design representations are conceptualized as a relation between the semiotic complexity of images, interpretive habits of stakeholders, and visual discourse of design producers. The shaping of participatory planning and design processes by design representations is categorized into a typology of nine semiotic qualities. This thesis suggests a way of looking at visual representations and organizing planning and design processes that enables planners and designers, as process facilitators, to determine the most appropriate communicative strategy at a specific moment, for specific participants.

In the context of 'more-with-more', citizens are often asked to do more: they have to participate more, do more themselves and take on more responsibility. At the same time, this also requires more administration and flexible working from the government.This can result in a more involved attitude from both sides, and in building better-tuned results and knowledge. But this does not happen automatically, and we still too often start from the ideal of participation and co-creation, as a result of which we do not look sufficiently at which forms of this lead to which outcomes and consequences. Social learning is an analytical concept that can help with this: by looking better at how we gain knowledge and skills through interaction with others, we can get a better grip on which factors respond to each other in which way. This article introduces two cases from Groningen, the Netherlands, and discusses three main lessons that flow from this, regarding "desired" results; speed and efficiency; and personal backgrounds and timing of collaboration. The conclusion reflects on five concrete consequences that this has for planning practice.

In the context of 'more-with-more', citizens are often asked to do more: they have to participate more, do more themselves and take on more responsibility. At the same time, this also requires more administration and flexible working from the government.This can result in a more involved attitude from both sides, and in building better-tuned results and knowledge. But this does not happen automatically, and we still too often start from the ideal of participation and co-creation, as a result of which we do not look sufficiently at which forms of this lead to which outcomes and consequences. Social learning is an analytical concept that can help with this: by looking better at how we gain knowledge and skills through interaction with others, we can get a better grip on which factors respond to each other in which way. This article introduces two cases from Groningen, the Netherlands, and discusses three main lessons that flow from this, regarding "desired" results; speed and efficiency; and personal backgrounds and timing of collaboration. The conclusion reflects on five concrete consequences that this has for planning practice.

Natural areas are essential for species conservation and outdoor recreation. Where conservation and recreational values are under threat, site managers need to take measures to protect them. Scientific knowledge and tools might help them to predict the outcomes of planned measures and create support amongst stakeholders. To be accepted by all stakeholders the knowledge and tools must possess three attributes credibility, salience and legitimacy. In this PhD thesis existing scientific knowledge and tools were made context-specific and local measures were related to regional conservation targets for different study areas in the UK, Netherlands and France. The process of integrating site-specific data and local knowledge in the tools helps stakeholders explain their view of the local context and increases the salience and legitimacy of the knowledge and tools while their credibility is maintained. This leads to a co-learning process between recreation stakeholders, conservation stakeholders, managers and scientists where measures are supported by all parties involved.

The Dutch planning system has been widely feted as a coordinated, ‘plan-led’ and evidence-informed system that has been successfully implemented, resulting in sensitive land management, an absence of urban sprawl and the protection of ‘green areas’. However, at least since the 1970s, the reality has been somewhat different. This paper reviews Dutch planning history over the past fifty years to highlight in particular the challenge of implementation. The paper also reviews the current challenges facing Dutch planners and provides some international reflection from Dutch experiences for Irish planners.

In landscape architecture, visual representations are the primary means of communication between stakeholders in design processes. Despite the reliance on visual representations, little critical research has been undertaken by landscape architects on how visual communication forms work or their socio-political implications. In this theoretical paper, we argue that such research is of great importance. We explain how concepts of visual and critical social theory such as visual semiotics, simulacra and simulation, and power/knowledge can be used to critically reflect on landscape architectural representations. We further propose to study these representations at different stages of meaning-making by using visual methodologies such as visual discourse analysis, iconographical content analysis and social semiotic analysis. We conclude that these research approaches have the potential to explain issues such as dominant power structures, miscommunication between participants, and visual path-dependencies during landscape design processes.

As urban areas continue to expand, the need to consider nature conservation objectives in planning is growing. Policy makers across Europe recognize that effective nature conservation requires an integrated approach to land use planning that includes relevant ecological and spatial knowledge. Although a number of such integrated approaches have been developed, many local authorities in Europe encounter important institutional barriers to this integration. This is particularly true for countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) like Bulgaria. The post-socialist transformation in Bulgaria led to intensified urban growth and local authorities struggle to find a balance between environmental and socio-economic interests. Meanwhile, the Environmental Policy Integration 'principle' (EPI) has been gaining prominence in Europe, aiming to address the trade-offs between environmental and economic incentives. Research highlights that successful EPI depends on institutional processes within different economic sectors and across governmental scales. These processes have not yet been comprehensively studied in the CEE and in Bulgaria. This article assesses the EPI process in urban planning in Bulgaria and identifies the institutional approaches that may contribute best to EPI in urban planning. Using the example of the "Corner Land" project in the city of Burgas, we discuss the key challenges that the local authorities face in addressing nature conservation in land use plans. The findings indicate that EPI is to a high degree constrained by the lack of an efficient communicative process across fragmented organizational structures throughout the entire planning process. While a procedural approach to EPI appears to be prevalent it is concluded that a communicative approach is urgently needed if the sustainability of urban plans is to be safeguarded and negative impacts on nature prevented.

This article identifies two alternative collaborative spatial planning discourses: a leading government with societal participation and self-governance by societal actors with government participation. It shows how the boundary between the roles of governments and societal actors in collaboration discourses is shifting, but also how both collaborative planning discourses exist alongside each other in two Dutch urban regions: Eindhoven Region and Parkstad Limburg. In both regions, these alternative discourses on role division in collaborative planning are similar, even though Eindhoven is a growing region in which the local and regional governments collaborate intensively with companies, and Parkstad Limburg is a shrinking region that more actively involves citizens. The article concludes with reflections on the need to manage boundaries in collaborative planning.

The rapid developments in all kinds of new information technologies, information networks and social media are increasingly affecting societies around the world. The so termed Information Age not only influences social relationships, economy and science, but also governance. Against this background and in the specific field of sustainability, informational governance is an emerging concept. It addresses two interrelated processes: (1) new forms of governing through information, and (2) transformative changes in governance institutions due to the new information flows. The aim of this article is to gain more insights into ways in which the Information Age impacts sustainability, and to suggest a research agenda with relevance to the field of informational governance. A systematic literature review resulted in a selection of 39 articles, of which 23 and 16 articles were identified in two-parallel searches. The increased human interconnectedness through e-governance, self-organization, private governing and empowerments are identified as core informational governance trends dealing with sustainability in the Information Age, and essential to future research.