The performance of spatial planning within a complex area development: Learning to anticipate the spatial strategy formation in the face of conflicting interests at ‘Spoorzone Delft’

This thesis is the outcome of an ongoing persuasion to frame the meaning of the spatial planning practice and inquiry to the context through which urban areas evolve today. The research?oriented approach has been the consequent of a perceived lack of consolidated – technocratic – planning concepts to confront today’s challenges for the facilitation of legitimate and effective of urban spatial development. In turn, the scientific output which is presented in this thesis adheres to several topical debates on urban spatial development. Particularly, we have addressed the challenge for planners to confront the complexity of decision?making on urban spatial developments. The latter has been captured in the Netherlands under the politically embraced paradigmatic shift towards ‘area development’. This notion poses area developments as the product of an active collaboration between the State, market and civil society. We illustrated our perspective by a topical project - Spoorzone Delft - which exposes a practical manifestation on how Dutch planning deals with a situation in which regional mobility objectives intersect with local inner-city potentials and demands for transformation. We concluded that the embedded 'techocratic' Dutch planning discourse fails to perform in a context which is marked by complexity and dynamics in decision-making. Hence, we recommended on a process-oriented planning perspective. We particularly argued that planners are challenged to facilitate in learning-oriented contexts, by confronting the diversity of (sectoral-based) values in order to reach towards shared commitments and a collective focus for action.Spatial Planning and StrategyUrbanismArchitectur