Governance of planning processes in peri-urban landscapes : a comparison of three 'good examples'

Abstract

In metropolitan areas are experiencing an increasing competition for land. Besides urbanisation, this competition is due to new societal expectations of the countryside such as space for housing, commercial activities, nature and recreational areas. As a consequence, rural spatial planning processes must attempt to balance the expectations and goals of a variety of stakeholders. Developing a well-balanced, fair and participatory rural planning process appears to be difficult. Previous research has shown that spatial planning processes often lead to resentment among the involved actors and the implementation of the planning goals often lags behind. The objective of our research is to get a better grasp of these decentralised, participatory planning processes. By getting insight into the success and failure-factors of past planning processes we hope to formulate policy guidelines for the governance of rural planning processes. Within this research, we focus on cases in which the stakeholders were satisfied with the course of the planning process. Furthermore we focus on cases in which agricultural land is lost at the expense of other functions. In the highly urbanized region of Flanders, agricultural land is vulnerable and under a continuous pressure. Within our cases we therefore focus on planning processes in which agricultural land is taken over by other functions (e.g. nature or industrial developments). Insight in the governance of such planning processes should provide guidance to policymakers and practitioners in Flanders and other countries with similar planning challenges. With this contribution we want to present the results of a first case in which agricultural land is lost in order to build a new motor-way. The majority of the involved actors indicated that they had a positive perception on the process and its outcomes. By making a qualitative analysis of a series of in-depth interviews we were able to define success factors for rural planning that exceed the particularities of the case-study