Planning Cultures and Histories: Influences on the Evolution of Planning Systems and Spatial Development Patterns

Abstract

This special issue addresses the influences of planning cultures and histories on the evolution of planning systems and spatial development. As well as providing an international comparative perspective on these issues, the collection of articles also engages in a search for new conceptual frameworks and alternative points of view to better understand and explain these differences. The articles focus on three main aspects: the change in planning systems and its impact on spatial development patterns; the interrelationship between planning cultures and histories from a path-dependency perspective; and the variations in physical development patterns resulting from different planning cultures and histories. Papers from different parts of the European continent present evidence at different scales to illustrate these aspects. In all cases, the specific combinations of political, ideological, social, economic and technological factors are important in determining urban and regional planning trajectories as well as spatial development patterns.     

Explaining Governance in Five Mega-City Regions: Rethinking the Role of Hierarchy and Government

With the fundamental rescaling of socio-economic relationships, the mega-city region (MCR) has emerged as an important geographical space for governance. At the same time it is highly fragmented institutionally, making it difficult to overcome collective action problems such as providing regional public transport and protecting open spaces. In practice, different arrangements are employed to address these problems, including hierarchical approaches, competitive self-coordination and joint decision-making. Drawing on experiences in five MCRs in Europe and the US, the relative use and success of these approaches was investigated. The analysis suggests that the composition of the actor constellation (e.g. the number and kind of parties involved) and local political support proved to be important factors in explaining the performance of a particular governance approach. In addition, the findings provide a new appreciation for the role of the state, particularly the national government, in governing MCRs.     

Planning and Culture Unfolded: The Cases of Flanders and the Netherlands

Abstract

Planning culture has been frequently invoked in recent years to explain the differences in spatial planning across different countries. In discussing planning culture, most contributions emphasize the characteristics and particularities of spatial planning practice in particular contexts. This paper discusses the roles of culture and institutions in relation to the distinct urbanization patterns that have emerged in Flanders and the Netherlands. It concludes that it is not the differences between planning cultures (interpreted as the culture of planners, their ideals and practices and the features of the planning system) that provide the major explanation for different urbanization processes. It is rather the fit between the planning culture and the broader societal culture that seems to be an important explanation for how spatial development is managed.     

Frisonica libertas: Frisian freedom as an instance of medieval liberty

In the later Middle Ages the predominantly rural Frisian territories covering the coastal area between the Zuider Zee and the River Weser stood out by virtue of their anomalous position. One striking phenomenon in this area was the early breakdown of feudalism; another was the failure of sovereign rule to take root. A crucial development was how the resulting political vacuum was filled by communal institutions. This paper tries to explain this state of affairs, a situation the Frisians themselves referred to as ‘Frisian freedom’, in terms of the communalism thesis propounded by Peter Blickle. In summary, it can be said that the Frisian territories, at least while the communal institutions were in their prime, constitute an even more prototypical model of rural communalism than the founding cantons of the Swiss Confederation.     

A framework for path-dependent industrial land transition analysis using vector data

Industrial land is under transition globally. Insights into this transition are important to plan a sustainable future. Since industrial land follows parcel shapes and the transition process requires multi-year data to observe the impacts of such changes, multi-year vector data should be used to analyse industrial land transition. This paper presents a framework to analyse path-dependent regional industrial land transition processes using vector data. A step by step instruction is presented. In the analysis, the changed percentages of land use in the surroundings of appeared or disappeared industrial land are visualized. The visualized surrounding land use compositions give planners an idea on what causes land use transitions, the most frequent transition forms and their impacts on the surroundings, purely from a land use point of view to reduce data collection efforts. The North Brabant region in the Netherlands is used as a case study. The region is split into urban and non-urban areas to show the generic applicability of this framework.     

The Inconsistent City,Participatory Planning,and the Part of No Part in Recife,Brazil

This article engages with the trajectory of urban participation in Recife, Brazil, from its start as a governance system aimed at ensuring the right of the poor to the city, to the introduction by the Workers’ Party of participatory budgeting. I argue that participation is used by the state in order to include populations within governmental structures while the poor struggle for the right to belong to the city. Drawing on Alain Badiou's ontology of multiplicity I contend that the urban situation is grounded in inconsistency, as manifested in the existence of a category of people who “sit at the edge of the void”, that neither is included nor belongs. I conclude that the popular mobilizations in Recife in the 1980s constituted a true emancipatory event that exposed the divisions of the city, the existence of a fundamental wrong, and that proclaimed the right of the excluded to the city.     

Paracelsus and Roman censorship – Johannes Faber’s 1616 report in context

This article analyses a central episode in the response of the Catholic bodies of doctrinal control to the emergence of Paracelsianism. More specifically, it discusses the censorial report written in 1616 by the physician Johannes Faber for the Congregation for the Index about the works of Paracelsus. This report was written in a time that Paracelsianism had become increasingly popular, but also a source of fierce debates. The complex context surrounding the report is investigated, with particular attention to the broader social, religious, and scientific aspects as well as the precise historical situation in which it was written. Faber’s report and an English translation are provided in separate appendices.     

Cameroonian Schutztruppe Soldiers in Spanish-Ruled Fernando Po during the First World War: A ‘Menace to the Peace’?1

When the German forces were ousted from Cameroon in early 1916, they fled south to neutral Spanish Guinea. Tens of thousands of Cameroonians joined them. Over 20,000 African soldiers and hangers-on were eventually accommodated by the Spanish authorities on the island Fernando Po, off the Cameroonian coast. Despite mounting Allied pressure on Spain to disband and repatriate the troops, they remained on the island until after armistice. They were largely under German control, and received military training during their internment. The delayed repatriation of Cameroonian soldiers, in 1919, had a pronounced effect on their communities at home.     

Handle with Care! A Qualitative Comparison of the Fragile States Index's Bottom Three Countries: Central African Republic,Somalia and South Sudan

For the past four years, the Fund for Peace has ranked the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan as the ‘most fragile states’ in the world, in its annual Fragile States Index (FSI). The three countries’ almost identical scores suggest comparability; however, critics raise concerns about the FSI's data aggregation methods, and its conflation of causes and consequences. This article treads the uncharted path of unpacking the empirical realities that hide behind FSI indicators. Drawing on data collected during field research in the three states, the authors investigate three security indicators (security apparatus, factionalized elites, and external intervention) and propose an alternative, qualitative appreciation. Each country's fragility is based on how security forces, elites and interventions evolved over time and installed themselves differently in each region of the country. The qualitative assessment presented here shows that not every indicator matters in all cases at all times or throughout the country. Most crucially, the authors unveil enormous differences between and within the FSI's three ‘most fragile states’. Such variations call for better‐adapted and more flexible intervention strategies, and for quantitative comparisons to be qualitatively grounded.     

Venturing Into Unknown Territory: The Preparation and Formulation of the Second Benelux Structural Outline

Inherent in transnational planning are obstacles which cause spatial planners to venture into unknown territory. The scale, the issues and the institutional context are significantly different from planning at the national level or below. What does this mean for the role of spatial plan-making, which is the cornerstone of the planning profession? This paper focuses on the role of plans as part of building transnational governance capacity. It does so on the basis of an in-depth case study of the preparation of the Second Benelux Structural Outline (1994–2000). The research material consists of a series of interviews with directly involved planners and administrators, primary sources such as internal reports of the Benelux Economic Union and direct observations by the researcher who attended several meetings of the planning committee. The paper starts with a short discussion of contemporary planning theory through which the formulation of the plan is analysed. Planning as a communicative process and planning as a programming process are central concepts in this analytical framework. The paper proceeds with an analysis of the making of the Second Benelux Structural Outline. A conclusion is that the plan as a communicative tool was not sufficiently developed during the planning process, in spite of the desirability of such a feature in this stage of building transnational governance capacity. The concluding remarks will focus on the ways in which the communicative dimension of future transnational plans can be improved.