Regional design: Discretionary approaches to regional planning in the Netherlands

Abstract

Regional design is a practice that has in recent decades frequently been applied in spatial planning processes in The Netherlands. The making and use of spatial representations of plausible futures of regions was employed to refine physical implementation strategies and simultaneously, by reaching out for broad, sometimes public, attention, to acquire institutional capacity for planning. This paper examines whether, and if so how, regional design performs in planning processes. To identify performance, regional design is equated with discretion, a form of decision making that evolves in the context of guidelines for planning and is, when guidelines are indicative, exercised through the allocation of consent. The accountability (and control) of discretionary action is strongly influences by the flexibility of planning frameworks. Based on these main notions, the paper develops a theoretical distinction of regional design practices and underpins this distinction by means of examples. Overall conclusions relate the performance of distinct practices with forms of control (theoretically defined, practically applied).

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