Strategy and Steering in Governance: The Changing Fates of the Argentine Planning Council

Based on a detailed study of the return of national-level planning in Argentina as embodied by COFEPLAN, the national planning council, we develop a conceptual framework to analyse the possibilities and limits of steering in governance. We lean on the theoretical apparatus of evolutionary governance theory and use the concepts of goal dependency, interdependency, path dependency and material dependency (effects in governance) to analyse the reality effects of strategy (effects of governance). Methodologically, our study relies on archival work and semi-structured interviews with planning scholars and public officials from different levels of government. We show that, although material and discursive reality effects were abundant in the evolution of Argentine planning policies, dependencies and discontinuities undermined both the central steering ambitions of the government and the innovative potential of the new planning schemes. The dramatic history of the Argentine planning system allows us to grasp the nature of dependencies in a new way. Shocks in general undermine long-term perspectives and higher-level planning, but they can also create windows of opportunity. The internal complexity and the persistence of Peronist ideology in Argentina can account for the revivals of national-level planning, in very different ideological contexts, but the recurring shocks, the stubborn difference between rhetoric and reality, the reliance on informality, created a landscape of fragmented governance and often weak institutional capacity. In that landscape, steering through national-level planning becomes a tall order

Reflexivity in performative science shop projects

Science shop research projects offer possibilities for universities to engage with communities. Many science shop projects directly or indirectly intend to empower certain marginalised groups or interests within a decision-making process. In this article we argue that it is important to reflect on the role and position the researchers have in these projects. We present three science shop projects to illustrate some of the dilemmas that may arise in relation to citizen empowerment, democracy, and ethics in the field of action research and community engagement. We present reflexivity as a strategy for creating greater awareness of the power−knowledge relationship, the nature of the democratic process and the consequences of empowerment for other vulnerable groups. Keywords: Action research, community engagement, reflexivity, science sho

From overtourism to undertourism... and back? The struggle to manage tourism regrowth in post-pandemic Amsterdam

Amsterdam is one of many cities that has struggled with problems of overtourism in recent years. These problems include nuisance, crowdedness, rising housing prices and economic dependence on tourism. City administrators were aware of these issues and took a variety of measures before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as placing restrictions on tourism rental (Airbnb) and setting up campaigns to tackle problem behaviour of tourists. Yet when COVID-19 halted the stream of tourists visiting Amsterdam, this created a unique opportunity to make more drastic changes, which the administration has addressed by proposing a new series of measures to proactively help contain tourism regrowth in the post-pandemic period. In this article we critically analyze these strategies to ascertain the extent to which they appear able to address the various issues of pre-pandemic overtourism to which they are aimed. Our analysis demonstrate that while trajectories already started before the pandemic are now being augmented and given more priority and some new strategies to further curb tourism growth are also being implemented, overall Amsterdam remains dominated by a growth-oriented approach to tourism planning

The important role of sponges in carbon and nitrogen cycling in a deep-sea biological hotspot

Deep-sea sponge grounds are hotspots of biodiversity, harbouring thriving ecosystems in the otherwise barren deep sea. It remains unknown how these sponge grounds survive in this food-limited environment. Here, we unravel how sponges and their associated fauna sustain themselves by identifying their food sources and food-web interactions using bulk and compound-specific stable isotope analysis of amino and fatty acids. We found that sponges with a high microbial abundance had an isotopic composition resembling organisms at the base of the food web, suggesting that they are able to use dissolved resources that are generally inaccessible to animals. In contrast, low microbial abundance sponges had a bulk isotopic composition that resembles a predator at the top of a food web, which appears to be the result of very efficient recycling pathways that are so far unknown. The compound-specific-isotope analysis, however, positioned low-microbial abundance sponges with other filter-feeding fauna. Furthermore, fatty-acid analysis confirmed transfer of sponge-derived organic material to the otherwise food-limited associated fauna. Through this subsidy, sponges are key to the sustenance of thriving deep-sea ecosystems and might have, due to their ubiquitous abundance, a global impact on biogeochemical cycles.publishedVersio

Van oude dingen, de mensen, die voorbij gaan...

Proefschrift Wageningen Universitei

Van oude dingen, de mensen, die voorbij gaan...

Met lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Engel

A harbour on land: De Ceuvel’s topologies of creative reuse

In this paper we explore creative reuse as a critical and imaginative mode of urban practice. By engaging with the case of De Ceuvel, an experimental community located in Amsterdam Noord, we submit three main affordances of creative reuse. Reuse value is accordingly discussed in relation to (a) abandonment, (b) the co-constitutive character of experimentation, and (c) the circulation of heterogeneous ideas and materials. In moving beyond circumstances of disposal and dissolution, the three affordances are evocative of a salvage value regime, which transcends conventional narratives of the city and a siloed treatment of urban sustainability. Based on the findings, we suggest that creative reuse interventions enact infrastructures of curatorship, capable of unsettling particular ways of dwelling, learning and narrating the city.</p

Strategic openings : On the productivity of blended long-term perspectives in spatial strategy. A Dutch case study

In this paper we study the co-evolution of multiple long-term perspectives and their role in the formation of strategy in spatial governance. We conducted a case study of the development of the Brabant Environmental Strategy (BES) in the Netherlands. We observed that in the emergence of the BES four long-term perspectives were articulated and we analysed that the interplay between these long-term perspectives rendered two productive fictions. One is named ‘the unquestionable destination’. It emphasizes the instrumental rationality of good governance in the present and veils debates about the desirability, plausibility and probability of the future that it aims to govern. The second is named ‘buying time’. Here the medium-term future and its inherent contingencies are black-boxed thereby masking the politics that will impact upon the likelihood that the desired future will become reality. We conclude that these fictions are productive as they create what we call strategic openings. Strategic openings are intended or unintended discursive constructs built in strategy which enable a diversity of practices over the course of time to be labelled as consistent with the strategy. These openings are strategic from a governance perspective as they create room for manoeuvre and allow for adaptive planning or emergent strategy. However, they also invoke implicit and tacit selectivity, depoliticization and retrospective and prospective legitimation. Therefore, we argue that the implicit and tacit assumptions behind long-term perspectives and their translation in strategy practice demand critical scrutiny in actual planning practices from which long-term perspectives emerge. The collectively desired future is always subject to politics and societal dispute and hence the negotiated nature of the future and their reality effects in the present cannot be taken-for-granted.</p

Flat Ontology and Evolving Governance: Consequences for Planning Theory and Practice

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

Strategy in Complexity:the Shaping of Communities and Environments

In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of purposeful community development in a non-linear understanding of society. Although the complexity and uncertainty that characterize the world put forward challenges for planning and steering, it doesn’t imply that purposive interventions are unlikely to be successful or that planning has become obsolete. It does, however, require a different understanding of how societies organize themselves and about how collective strategies sort reality-effects. Planning, as spatial planning, is a subset of strategy and provides a set of tools for others. In this chapter we highlight the importance of strategy in a world where many of the traditional planning rules and certainties have been challenged. We deepen the discussion about community development by placing it in the context of governance understood as a set of co-evolving actors, institutions, and power/knowledge configurations. Within these ever changing governance systems, forms of organization are necessarily linked to and co-evolve with narratives on identity, community, and governance itself, as the taking of collectively binding decisions. Taking into account the complexity and non-linearity that characterizes these co-evolutionary processes we discuss the links between community formation and the organization and transformation of space through planning. We explore how strategy should be understood in this context and we identify which forms of strategy can work under the structural conditions revealed through the lens of complexity theory and governance theory