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...

Spatial Planning Policy Tools: A conceptual model

This chapter outlines a conceptual model for understanding the range of policy tools which can be used in spatial planning. The classification of tools builds on the NATO model (nodality, authority, treasue, and organisation) proposed by Christopher Hood (1986) and differentiates between two separate functions of policy tools: substantive and...

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...

Randstad: From a spatial planning concept to a place name

This chapter seeks to unravel the history of the Randstad planning concept and focuses on the national level as a lot of the thinking about the Randstad has been carried out within national planning organisations and trickled down to provincial and municipal planning. It begins with a short section about the very first visualisation of the...

Conclusion and outlook

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows how specific advantages given to cities, for instance trading and taxation rights in medieval times, had a clear influence on the economy of cities and through that, on population growth. It also shows how so-called...

Recovery Capacity: To Build Back Better

The ambition to Build Back Better after a serious flood disaster is a complex challenge. A comprehensive, multi-disciplinary redevelopment planning process is required to reduce the flood risk and meanwhile create sustainable solutions that bring added value to society every day. General planning principles can be formulated on how to develop...

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...