Co-production on the Edge of Project and Process Management - The Sijtwende development project

The goal of this paper is to describe and analyze co-production in public private partnerships in spatial planning. We will describe one specific case study, the location development project Sijtwende on the edge of two municipalities (The Hague and Voorburg), on the edge of public and private investments and on the edge of urban development and extension of the mobility system. We will elaborate the bottlenecks in the cooperation between several actors involved. Furthermore we will look for important breakthroughs in the process of collaborative development of the area. How was it possible that after a public lock in situation that took more than twenty years a private party was able to force a breakthrough? Finally we will deal with the question what this case learns us for the management of these complex processes of co-production. We will combine theoretical thoughts and empirical insights from our in-depth case study in order to find balances in using project management and process management strategies for managing complex spatial planning processes.

Til kamp mod lagerråd i æbler

På Aarhus Universitet, Institut for Fødevarer er der fokus på metoder til at minimere madspild. Der arbejdes blandt andet med varmtvandsbehandling til at reducere lagerråd i æbler

Eating Quality of Carrots (Daucus carota L.) Grown in One Conventional and Three Organic Cropping Systems over Three Years

The eating quality of carrots (Daucus carota L.) was investigated to evaluate the impact of cropping systems (one conventional and three organic systems) and growing years (2007, 2008, and 2009) on root size, chemical composition, and sensory quality. The content of dry matter, sugars, polyacetylenes, and terpenes as well as the sensory quality and root size were related to the climate during the three growing years. A higher global radiation and a higher temperature sum in 2009 as compared to 2007 and 2008 resulted in larger roots, higher contents of dry matter, sucrose, total sugars, and total polyacetylenes, and lower contents of terpenes, fructose, and glucose. No differences were found between conventional and organic carrots with regard to the investigated parameters. This result shows that organically grown carrots have the same eating quality as conventionally grown carrots, while being produced in a more sustainable way

Buurtgericht beleid en de kunst van vertrouwen geven

Burgerparticipatie is het sterkst doorgedrongen in gemeenten, wijken en buurten. Vanuit een oude traditie van schikken en plooien en polderen worden burgers betrokken bij ontwikkeling, uitvoering en beheer. Momenteel wordt dit ook wel ‘buurtgericht beleid’ of ‘bewonerbetrokkenheid’ genoemd1. In politieke kringen is toenemende aandacht voor de verantwoordelijkheden van burgers in onze maatschappij. Politici zien graag dat bewoners, bedrijven en instellingen meer hun medeverantwoordelijkheid nemen voor de leefbaarheid en veiligheid in hun eigen buurt. ‘Meedoen’, staat er in het motto van het huidige regeerakkoord. Ook minister Pechtold noemt dit element in zijn speech bij het ontvangst nemen van het WRR-rapport ‘vertrouwen in de buurt’: “Bewoners en maatschappelijke ondernemers moet zich meer verantwoordelijk voelen voor de publieke zaak”. De bedoeling is om burgers en diverse organisaties in de buurt zelf te laten bepalen op welke wijze de impuls voor hun wijk wordt vormgegeven. Alleen op die manier kunnen burgers weer meer verantwoordelijkheid voor het wel en wee van hun buurt nemen

Institutional Evolution within Local Democracy - Local Self-Governance Meets Local Government

__Abstract__ In the Netherlands, citizens have the formal opportunity to put issues – under certain conditions – on the political agenda. This has been possible since May 2006 at the national level and at the local level since March 2002. In addition, people increasingly engage in an informal way, on their own initiative, to draw from their expertise, experience and knowledge to formulate ideas for policy that they may offer to government. Such ‘citizens’ initiatives’ can be seen, in addition to interactive policy making, as a form of citizens’ participation (Edelenbos et al. 2008). Citizen participation is often initiated by government; it is a bottom-up development started by citizens themselves (Edelenbos et al. 2008). In this chapter, we elaborate on the institutional implications of the ‘citizens’ initiatives’ within local democracy. These initiatives could be described as forms of selfgovernance, leading to the emergence of ‘proto-institutions’ (Lawrence et al. 2002). These proto-institutions interact with established institutions of representative democracy. This interaction is a co-evolving process in which both types of institutions react to each other in certain ways. In this contribution, we describe this institutional evolution and try to find determining factors in this process. We want to provide explanatory factors of processes of institutional co-evolution. We argue that these factors are of major importance with regard to processes of citizen participation and co-operating mechanisms between proto-institutions developed by citizens’ initiatives and established institutions of representative democracy

Innovations in the Dutch polder: Communities of practice and the challenge of coevolution

Recently, a new initiative has entered the Dutch policy-arena of spatial planning, water management and nature preservation: the so-called Community of Practice (COP). Within such a COP actors with very different backgrounds (experts, inhabitants, officials, stakeholders) participate and try to find creative solutions for persistent political and societal problems by combining conflicting spatial functions in specific areas. From a complex adaptive systems point of view, we analyze the logic and functioning of such a COP. From the literature on complexity and innovation we can learn that staying at the edge of chaos for COPs mean that they not only have to maintain an internal process of co-evolution between the very different actors involved, but also have to maintain relations of co-evolution with their wider environment. After an in-depth case study ‘Gouwe Wiericke’ we conclude that COPs can produce innovative policy results, but reaching ‘bounded instability’ through sustainable co-evolution requires careful balancing acts between extremes