Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning in Europe: The Relevance for Flood Risk Management in the Chinese Pearl River Delta

China and Europe have the common problem of mitigating flood risk, a problem partly created from poor management of the urban transition now compounded by the effects of climate change on sea level and extreme weather events. Adaptation to these effects requires extensive cooperation between administrative jurisdictions and policy sectors to...

Boundary spanning and adaptive capacity in Pearl River Delta megacities

The cities of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) have been experiencing an unprecedented urban expansion for the past four decades, leading to emergence of one of the most populous and dynamic urban regions. However, these rapidly expanding cities located in a low-lying delta area also face increasing flood risk due to a combination of anthropogenic...

Introducing the Randstad: A polycentric metropolis

The Randstad and polycentric regions generally are not only vehicles to create critical economic mass. The geography of the Randstad is unmistakably deltaic, with expanses of flat open land crisscrossed by watercourses and historic windmills that remain from a former network of more than 10,000. The development of extensive physical and soft...

Energy Strategies, the Urban Dimension, and Spatial Planning

The UN Paris Agreement of November 2016 recognises the need for a ‘cleaner and more efficient energy system’ as a core policy goal to address climate change. The spatial and urban form of cities is a key factor in achieving more efficient energy production and consumption and becomes more important with rapid urbanisation across much of the...

The Institutionalisation of a Creative Practice: Changing Roles of Regional Design in Dutch National Planning

This chapter discusses the organisational setting of regional design in the realms of spatial planning and territorial governance. As a starting point, it argues that rules on how imagined design solutions function in an abstract, simplified ‘planning world’ are an important regional design product. When focusing on these rules, regional design...

Regional Design: Discretionary Approaches to Planning in the Netherlands

This thesis elaborates on the role and position of regional design in spatial planning. Building upon the argument that design in this realm aims to improve planning guidance by judging its implications for particular situations, the thesis develops an analytical framework for an enhanced understanding of how design both influences, and is...

COMPASS – Comparative Analysis of Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning Systems in Europe. Applied Research 2016-2018: Final Report

The objective of the COMPASS project was to provide an authoritative comparative report on changes in territorial governance and spatial planning systems in Europe from 2000 to 2016. This Final Report presents the main findings, conclusions and policy recommendations. The COMPASS project compares territorial governance and spatial planning in 32...