THE UNEXPECTED COURSE OF INSTITUTIONAL INNOVATION PROCESSES: INQUIRY INTO INNOVATION PROCESSES IN LAND DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES ACROSS EUROPE

Changes in planning practices can be explained from the prevailing theoretical juxtaposition of ‘institutional design ’ and ‘institutional evolution’; two schools of thought that are at the extremes of assumptions on modi-fi ability. The two extremes are considered to be inextricably linked to each other and cannot be separated; institutional design at a higher level highly infl uences institutional evolution at a lower level. In this paper we add the opposite direction of their interdependence. We found that small and sometimes even unexpected efforts of institutional design at a low level of scale can, when aggregated, result into an evolution of collective institutions at a higher level. We participated in a cooperative project between research and practice, which was established as an exchange project on innovation in land development. We investigated the genesis of institutional change in land development, which is a specifi c regional planning instrument. We analyzed 40 planning practices that were presented by land agencies from seven EU regions (Flanders, the Netherlands