Book (Full version)
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In the 1980s, planning approaches in European regions have changed as a result of increasing attention to regional spatial developments and a diminishing reliance on government-led statutory planning schemes. Emerging new approaches, often called spatial planning, shifted the focus from planning predefined territories to the planning of spatial networks, which stretch across multiple administrative boundaries. In this specific context of spatial planning, new decision-making approaches...
Book Chapters
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Since the 1980s, planning approaches in European regions shifted as a result of increasing attention to spatial patterns of interaction and movement on regional levels of scale, and alongside “a relative decline of the role of the state, a growing involvement of nongovernmental actors in a range of state functions, the emergence of new forms of multi-agency partnerships and more flexible forms of networking at various spatial scales” (Davoudi, 2008, p.63). Upcoming approaches, often called...
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Regional design is a collaborative and interactive social practice that includes a broad array of actors with a multiplicity of different interests. It is concerned with the built environment, which is itself a complex system. As noted in the Introduction, regional design triggers multiple expectations but its performances have rarely been evaluated. There are only a few scholarly writings that are dedicated to the topic; these elaborate upon a multitude of theoretically founded...
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As cities tend to spread and coalesce into lower density urban regions, public transport systems are evolving from mono-centric hierarchical structures into multinodal horizontal networks. This evolution of metropolitan regions with a multitude of relations and dependencies require not only new forms of transport but also new methods of spatial planning. The biggest danger to an emerging metropolitan area is that of fragmented development and consequently missed opportunities. The project...
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In the Netherlands, the formation of governance arrangements around planning issues that cross administrative boundaries has been assisted frequently by a design approach that is often referred to as “regional design”. This is a distinctive method of policy argumentation that makes use of spatial representations of the plausible future of regions. Such representations are intended not only to indicate physical changes, but also to stimulate debate on sharing responsibilities and resources...
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Dutch national planning has acquired an international reputation because it provides strong planning guidance while simultaneously being responsive to the particular spatial and political circumstances of different regions and areas. Spatial concepts, like the Randstad, are important vehicles for sustaining this approach. Such concepts incorporate select spatial planning rationales that justify operational decisions. Concepts can, however, also be ambiguous, and this can allow for...
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In recent decades the Netherlands has seen an increase in the use of regional design-led practices in national indicative planning. Despite this, the interrelations between design and planning decision making are not well understood and attempts to involve the expertise and ambition of designers in planning have had unclear outcomes. This paper elaborates on the role and position of regional design in indicative planning. It is argued that design in this realm resembles discretionary...
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This chapter discusses the organisational setting of regional design in the realms of spatial planning and territorial governance. As a starting point, it argues that rules on how imagined design solutions function in an abstract, simplified ‘planning world’ are an important regional design product. When focusing on these rules, regional design practice resembles discretionary action. As such, it aims to improve planning decisions by judging the implications of planning frameworks when...
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To design for the purpose of planning was not new when regional design emerged as a distinguished discipline in the 1980s in the Netherlands. On the contrary, to imagine solutions for particular areas and to discuss these for the purpose of planning has been a long-standing tradition that can be traced back to the emergence of urban planning in the early 20th century. However, when spatial planning emerged as a new, more collaborative and anticipatory planning approach in the last decades,...
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This dissertation investigated regional-design practices that evolved in the context of Dutch national planning frameworks in the period between the 1980s and the 2010s. Questions concerned whether and how practices influenced these planning frameworks, and the extent to which practices were influenced by shifts that frameworks underwent over time. The main aim of the dissertation was to develop an enhanced understanding of interrelations between regional design and spatial planning, so...
