Strategic capacities in Dutch water management and spatial planning

Dutch water management currently is in a position of fundamental change and renewal. As a consequence of factors such as climate change, continuous land subsidence, urbanisation pressures, and a lacking natural resilience of the water system to absorb water surpluses and shortages, the emphases has shifted from technical measures such as heightening dikes and enlarging drainage capacities towards allowing water to take more space. Since the late 1990s, water management has been modified from an approach of ‘keeping it out’ towards ‘fitting it in’. As a consequence, ‘water management’ and ‘spatial planning’ are associated more closely, especially at the regional level of scale. Recent efforts by spatial planners and water managers to establish new connections have been mainly oriented towards a regulatory planning style: mutual reviewing of policy documents, the interchange of technical knowledge, the establishment of new legal instruments, and the imposition of norms and standards. The paper provides an overview of these efforts, and then introduces the observation that a supplementary strategic planning style would be helpful. Further attunement between ‘space’ and ‘water’ requires strategic capacities to ‘frame mindsets’, ‘to organise attention’, and to transform restrictions into opportunities. Based on a literature review and case studies, therefore, we raise some critical questions as to how efforts to synchronise regional water management and spatial planning match international insights in strategy making and capacity building. Following Healey et al., we understand regional strategy making to include a notion of providing regions with ‘institutional capacity’ and social, intellectual, and political capital. We also build on Mintzberg et al. to emphasise the importance of ‘real vision’ and the need for more ‘imagination applied to building a strategy’. To what extent can current attempts to link Dutch water management and spatial planning be regarded as a reflection of a more strategic planning style? How do prevailing institutional conditions offer constraints or opportunities for further strategic action? We employ the Dutch case to explore some of these exemplary questions.

Een verklaring voor de trage uitvoering van convenanten: de uitvoering van het convenant Glastuinbouw en Milieu

Dit artikel verklaart de trage uitvoering van het convenant Glastuinbouw en Milieu. Dit is een convenant tussen de glastuinbouwsector en een aantal departementen, provincies en gemeenten over het verbeteren van de energie-efficiency van de sector en de terugdringing van het gebruik van meststoffen en gewasbeschermingsmiddelen. Onderzocht is in welke mate complexiteit, ambitieniveau, instrumentarium, belangentegenstellingen en integratie van beleidsarena’s een verklaring vormen voor uitgestelde uitvoering van de afspraken in het convenant. Geconcludeerd wordt, onder andere, dat de casus een vorm van naïef beleid laat zien. De veronderstellingen die aan deze vorm van voortgezette beleidsontwikkeling ten grondslag liggen blijken gewoon niet te werken. Het valt niet te verwachten dat doelgroepen creatief meedenken bij de besluitvorming over maatregelen die hun bedrijfsvoering ernstig belemmeren, zeker niet wanneer die doelgroepen daarover een vetorecht hebben gekregen

Shared water resources in decentralized city regions:mixed governance arrangements in Indonesia

This paper investigates emerging models of governance for shared water resources in decentralized urban regions in Indonesia and draws on a case of inter-local government collaboration for shared water resources in Cirebon region, Indonesia. The paper points to cooperation practice involving a mixed-model of governance for sharing water. by identifying a series of requirements for mixed governance. This model suits well not only because of the regional nature of water resource management in general, but also because such a model is likely to strengthen trust, increase transparency, and provide more equal positions among regions or stakeholders involved. Crucially, this model tends to decrease problematic levels of local autonomy and inter-local rivalry, which currently appears as a major challenge for shared water resource cooperation attempts in the decentralizing contexts of Indonesia and beyond

Gentrifying the Peri-Urban:Land use confl icts and institutional dynamics at the frontier of an indonesian metropolis

This chapter aims to specify the meaning of gentrification in rapidly peri-urbanising metropolitan regions in the context of Indonesia’s rapid transition to decentralisation and democracy. It discusses a case study of conflict over an environmental revitalisation project in a peri-urban area of Bandung City. The analysis focuses on the political processes, tactics and strategies supporting and opposing peri-urban gentrification and their consequences. The analysis illustrates how these political dynamics mediate the interaction between the movement of capital and the spatial reorganisation of social classes. It is argued that in the context of a peri-urbanising metropolis, gentrification needs to be narrated less in terms of class-based neighbourhood succession and more in terms of competing cross-class coalitions emerging at local and regional levels

In Memoriam Henk Voogd

Henk Voogd was hoogleraar in de Planologie en Stadsgeografie aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG) van 1985 tot 2007. Hij overleed op 8 maart 2007 op 56-jarige leeftijd. Hij was al die jaren werkzaam bij de Faculteit Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen van de RUG

In Memoriam Henk Voogd

Henk Voogd was hoogleraar in de Planologie en Stadsgeografie aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG) van 1985 tot 2007. Hij overleed op 8 maart 2007 op 56-jarige leeftijd. Hij was al die jaren werkzaam bij de Faculteit Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen van de RUG