The Netherlands was traditionally lauded for its planning system, including its land policies. In this chapter, we argue that the picture has always been more nuanced and local planning practice has always been more pragmatic; it was an ambiguous utopia at best. Moreover, the Netherlands has experienced a transition over the last thirty years from active land policy with land ownership of municipalities towards facilitative (or passive) land policy in which developers typically own land and are active in initiating zoning changes. The latter can also be couched as ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ of landowners, where distinctions between the private and public become fuzzy, sometimes in problematic ways. We illustrate this conundrum through the case study of Rijnenburg, a polder close to the city of Utrecht, which has been a ‘planning battle scene’ for over thirty years, with different claims—housing, renewable energy, climate adaptation—and its concomitant representatives competing for prevalence. We conclude that the current system of public–private fuzziness is particularly vulnerable in times of a polycrisis. This predicament calls for a thorough consideration of long-term consequences, for instance in relation to climate adaption and urban development.

The societal inability to respond accurately to the ecological crisis also requires a reflection on how universities can improve the impact of their practices. This paper reports on a prize-winning experiment aiming to strengthen the interaction of the university with the world of policymaking: a mixed classroom with students and policymakers. This classroom provides an environment in which policymakers and students co-produce insights, while giving policymakers direct access to academic knowledge and helping students to reflect on the dynamics of real-world contexts. The main goal of this study is to illuminate how learning in and through a mixed classroom experiment take places, for participants, teachers and organisational actors. To do so, we reflect on the continuous dialogue between our efforts as teachers and the experience of participants and others involved. To make sense of our teaching and institutional roles in this experiment, we suggest using the concept of ‘tinkering’. Further, to conceptualise the learning dynamics in a mixed classroom, we deploy the concept of ‘boundary crossing’, which turns out to be helpful in elucidating both individual learning (‘reflection’) and organisational learning (‘transformation’). Our study indicates that the notion of boundary crossing helps to effectively capture the learning situation we created and, as such, helps to redefine more generally how the science-policy interface can be understood and acted upon. For other educators interested in deploying mixed classroom-like approaches, we suggest that a tinkering approach can only work if there is sufficient room for experimentation, including failure and reflection, as well as ample time and funding. We also suggest critically looking at the constraints of the institutional logics and dynamics of higher education (e.g. the structure of semesters) and how their connection to the institutional logics and temporal dynamics of real-world contexts may be improved.

The need for engaging citizens in climate policymaking is increasingly recognised. Despite indications that the form of expert involvement can strongly influence participatory processes, this remains scarcely researched. We analysed two unique and contrasting cases of citizen engagement in national climate mitigation policy: (1) the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (ICA), the first national climate assembly involving live expert presentations and face-to-face deliberations; and (2) the Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) on Dutch climate policymaking, where more than 10,000 citizens compared policy options in an online environment based on expert-based information on policy effects. Taking a dramaturgical approach, we found that the opening up and closing down of policy options and perspectives was influenced by the setting, staging and scripting of expertise. Apart from providing information on policy options, experts had significant roles in design choices and formulating recommendations, which shaped citizens’ deliberations and policy advice. In deliberative processes, citizens’ deliberations can be further influenced by putting experts in a privileged spot and emphasising their authority, whereas in the setting of an online tool, experts’ design choices may be masked by the fact-like presentation of expertise. Future research should further investigate the role of experts and expertise across a wider range of practices. Nevertheless, we conclude that the high degree of required technical knowledge in climate mitigation policy naturally implies strong expert involvement, which concomitantly steers the results. Alternatively, we may search to enhance citizens’ engagement in guiding climate policymakers by focusing on citizens’ normative perspectives.

De ruimtelijke inrichting van ons land wordt met langetermijncrises geconfronteerd: klimaat, biodiversiteit, wonen en sociale ongelijkheid. We reageren daarop met kortetermijnantwoorden, terwijl we juist precies het tegenovergestelde nodig hebben: een planologie van de lange termijn. Dat was in 2021 de boodschap van dit stadsessay. De laatste jaren groeide, gelukkig, de aandacht voor onze ruimtelijke toekomst. Maar daarmee is de vraag hóé we de lange termijn belangrijker maken nog niet beantwoord.

Reden voor een grondig geactualiseerde versie van Verantwoordelijk voor de toekomst moet als uitgangspunten dat we bij het langetermijndenken verder moeten kijken dan alleen het ruimtelijk ontwerp; dat we weliswaar groots en meeslepend mogen spreken over de toekomst, maar daarbij losgezongen lijken te raken van beslissingen in het nu; dat we teveel over eindbeelden praten en te weinig over de weg daar naartoe. Deze zoektocht inspireert en geeft richting aan een planologie voor de lange termijn.

Zoning is one of the key roles of land use regulation by the state. In engaging with this land use regulation, developers do not stay put and passively await rules to be imposed upon them. Instead, they proactively seek to (co)produce new rules or change existing rules to their advantage: they are ‘institutional entrepreneurs.’ We analyze how institutional entrepreneurship strategies play out empirically in Rijnenburg, a large greenfield site located southwest of the city of Utrecht. We find a complex and reciprocal interrelationship between planning decisions on the one hand and strategies of developers on the other.

In the reality of planning practice, where there is usually no a priori ‘right’ substantive conception of justice to guide and evaluate decision making, conceptions are negotiated between stakeholders. Moreover, these conceptions vary in space and time. The existing academic discussion on justice in planning provides limited insight in and guidance for how to navigate the plurality of conceivable and valid substantive conceptions of justice that may be articulated and applied. To address this gap, we introduce a dynamic justice framework, which looks at how the different elements of justice (‘materials of justice’) are being articulated, connected, and changed in discourses and institutions. We believe this dynamic justice framework helps to make explicit the conceptions of justice in planning practice and the processes that shape them.

De kamerbrief Water en Bodem sturend (vanaf nu WBS, zie Harbers, 2022) markeert een trendbreuk. De overkoepelende gedachte is dat ruimtegebruik veel meer passend moet worden bij de water- en bodemcondities, in plaats van het uitgangspunt dat het natuurlijk systeem plooibaar is naar de wensen van de mens. Een ander belangrijk uitgangspunt is dat er niet afgewenteld mag worden; niet op toekomstige generaties en niet van privaat naar publiek. De ‘trendbreuk’ is hierbij overigens niet zozeer dat de principes van water en bodem sturend nieuw zijn, maar dat we er, zo is de belofte, nu echt iets mee gaan doen in de ruimtelijke ordening (zie ook het interview met Liz van Duin).

In the expansion of Lifelong Learning (LLL) at Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), we suggest that our task, as teachers, is to develop democratic, experiential, emancipatory and imaginative initiatives. In line with this aim, this paper suggests an approach to lifelong learning in which students and practitioners learn from and with each other. Key to our argument is that this ‘didactic mixing’ occurs at three levels: 1) the mixing of practitioners and students from different backgrounds, 2) the mixing of different ways of knowing, in particular, combining scientific and professional expertise with experiential knowledge, and 3) the mixing of different settings both on and off campus. Drawing on our experiences, we present teacher reflections on two courses that we organized in parallel in the winter of 2022: i.) Techniques of Futuring, in which master’s students and societal practitioners engaged with the contentious issue of the future of the rural Netherlands, and ii) the Coalition of Hope, in which master’s students and societal practitioners reflected on their personal and emotional experiences in engaging with societal change for sustainable futures. In reflecting on our design choices, we conclude that mixing in participants, ways of knowing, and settings allows teachers to craft their courses to their pedagogical foundations by continuously asking with whom, how, and where and why one learns. Furthermore, we propose that no single ‘mix’ counts as unambiguous best practice, but rather hope that this paper inspires teachers and others in the LLL community to reflect and act upon the setup of the learning experience and explore the agency they could have in didactic mixing.

Representations of the future – plans, visions, scenarios – guide us in taking complex decisions in the present. In our current day and age, we face multiple societal challenges, for example, climate, ecology, and social exclusion. This makes long-term thinking more relevant than ever. However, this core idea of spatial planning as a future-oriented discipline seems to have been eroding over the years. We teach our students to critically assess what is and not so much what could be or should be. The educational format of planning design studios trains long-term thinking and students' imaginative capabilities in an experiential, real-life setting. In this contribution, we evaluate 25 years of planning studios at Utrecht University. This essay reviews the history and discusses adaptations in course design and -objectives, student involvement and -experience, and teachers’ evaluations over the years. We position these empirical impressions against a brief comparison of the ‘Utrecht model’ with studio exercises at planning schools of other Dutch universities. We discuss whether planning studios as a form of real-life, experiential learning still succeed in triggering the long-term thinking abilities of students. We scrutinize to what extent students are still capable of thinking so far ahead and summarize both the bottlenecks and enablers for an educational environment in which long-term thinking can flourish. We suggest that the biggest challenge to fostering long-term thinking is not so much the potential of studios but rather their decreasing importance as an integrative course in the curriculum design, which may limit the efficiency of training the futures literacy of planning students.

Some of the most influential explorations of low-carbon transformations are conducted with Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). The recent attempts by the IPCC to look for pathways compatible with the 1.5 °C and 2 °C temperature goals are a case in point. Earlier scholarship indicates that model-based pathways are persuasive in bringing specific possible future alternatives into view and guiding policymaking. However, the process through which these shared imaginations of possible futures come about is not yet well understood. By closely examining the science-policy dynamics around the IPCC SR1.5, we observe a sequence of mutually legitimising interactions between modelling and policy making through which the 1.5 °C goal gradually gained traction in global climate politics. Our findings reveal a practice of ‘political calibration’, a continuous relational readjustment between modelling and the policy community. This political calibration is indicative of how modellers navigate climate politics to maintain policy relevance. However, this navigation also brings key dilemmas for modellers, between 1) requirements of the policy process and experts’ conviction of realism; 2) perceived political sensitivities and widening the range of mitigation options; and 3) circulating crisp storylines and avoiding policy-prescriptiveness. Overall, these findings call into question the political neutrality of IAMs in its current position in the science-policy interface and suggest a future orientation in which modellers aim to develop additional relations with a broader set of publics resulting in more diverse perspectives on plausible and desirable futures.

While traditional forms of urban planning are oriented towards the future, the recent turn towards experimental and challenge-led urban developments is characterized by an overarching presentism. We explore in this article how an experimental approach to urban planning can consider the long-term through setting-up ‘conversations with a future situation.' In doing so, we draw on a unique experiment: Råängen, a piece of farmland in Lund (Sweden) owned by the Cathedral. The plot is part of Brunnshög, a large urban development program envisioned to accommodate homes, workspaces, and world-class research centers in the coming decades. We trace how Lund Cathedral became an unusual developer involved in ‘planning for thousand years,' deployed a set of art commissions to allow reflections about values, belief, time, faith, and became committed to play a central role in the development process. The art interventions staged conversations with involved actors as well as publics geographically and temporally far away. The Råängen case illustrates how long-term futures can be fruitfully brought to the present through multiple means of imagination. A key insight for urban planning is how techniques of financial discounting and municipal zoning plans could be complemented with trust in reflective conversations in which questions are prioritized over answers.

Background: Merwede is an envisioned neighbourhood in Utrecht (the Netherlands) that provides an instructive case to learn about the governance challenges of digital mobility platforms. Unique about Merwede is how the development of a mobility platform is envisioned to be integrated into the development of a new neighbourhood. Methodology: This article discusses the case of Merwede and provides insights into its proposed mobility platform and how it is made. It illuminates governance challenges relevant to the design and operation of an unconventional mobility concept by disentangling outstanding practical issues concerning three key governance dimensions—organizational structures, decision-making processes, and instruments. Results: The research provides an empirical illustration of governance questions that come up when mobility becomes a service and is integrated into the urban fabric from the very beginning of a development process. Already in the plan development stage, Merwede illustrates that difficult decisions are to be made and competing interests come to the fore.

Urbanites increasingly turn to digital mobility platforms to make use of means of transportation and to plan and book journeys. While these platforms can contribute to making urban travel more sustainable and efficient, they can also lead to governance challenges and have negative external effects, raising questions about how public values can best be safeguarded. In this article, public values are defined as normative concepts that describe both the impact on and democratic control of an affected public. This article aims to initiate a more structured discussion about platform urbanism, specifically how and to what extent public values are incorporated in platform design and operation in the realm of mobility. It introduces an assessment framework for mobility platforms that was developed as part of a transdisciplinary research project in the Netherlands. This framework is grounded in two academic debates regarding 1) the rise of platform urbanism and 2) new forms of mobility that accompany the densification of cities. The paper refers to the mobility pilots Kutsuplus, UbiGo and Whim to illustrate how the safeguarding of public values can be evaluated. In the concluding section, the paper discusses some ways in which the assessment framework can be used for future research, for instance through scenarios.

This paper investigates how the teaching and learning about “wicked” environmental problems may be fostered through an educational approach premised on futuring–the active imagination of the future. The growing academic interest in possible and desirable futures provides a promising starting point for restructuring education as coupling knowledge to imagination and teaching to policy practice can open up new, experiential ways of learning. Empirically, this paper draws upon research on an experimental futuring course employing a “mixed classroom” formula in which students and policy-makers learn together about sustainability challenges. Drawing on the notion of inquiry, this course is set up with the aim to foster a critical engagement with the ways futures are imagined in political debates and decision-making. Through complementary activities, the students were pushed to imagine possible futures around a central theme, the transition to a circular economy, in interaction with the policy-makers and other practitioners. This culminated in a “Museum of the Future”. From our action-research-based investigation of the learning experiences in the course, we conclude that a futuring approach to teaching wicked problems results in a more active attitude of students towards the space in which wicked problems and solutions are collectively imagined and deliberated.

Workshops play a central role in the application of planning support systems (PSS) in collaborative planning practice. We conceive of workshops as socio-technical settings in which the characteristics of the PSS instrument are mediated by different factors, such as group dynamics, facilitation and tool involvement by the participants, to result in outcomes desirable for planning. We argue that it is critical to develop an understanding about the definition, facilitation and evaluation of PSS workshops. This chapter sheds light on these aspects of PSS workshops through a detailed discussion of existing empirical research on the topic, as well as our own empirical experience. This includes two brief vignettes of PSS workshops with the PSS Envision Tomorrow in the United States and Urban Strategy in the Netherlands. The chapter concludes with a critical reflection on the role of academic research in initiating and evaluating PSS workshops.

This article examines the main public interests at stake with the rise of online platforms in the sharing economy and the gig economy. We do so by analyzing platforms in five sectors in the Netherlands: domestic cleaning (Helpling), taxi rides (UberPop), home restaurants (AirDnD), home sharing (Airbnb), and car sharing (SnappCar). The most salient public interests are a level playing field between platforms and industry incumbents, tax compliance, consumer protection, labor protection, and privacy protection. We develop four policy options (enforce, new regulation, deregulation, and toleration), and discuss the rationales for each option in safeguarding each public interest. We further stress that arguments supporting a particular policy option should take into account the sectoral context. We finally highlight the tension between the subsidiarity principle, which would call for local regulations as platforms mostly concern local transactions and innovation policies that aim to support innovation and a single digital market.

The current ecological crisis will transform the face and fate of cities. Neighbourhoods for the Future is based on the conviction that we should rethink cities from the ambit of the neighbourhood. It revisits the neighbourhood as the designated scale and arena to build our urban futures. The neighbourhood is small enough to be tangible, yet big enough to make a difference. In order for neighbourhoods to really work, residents need to be engaged and the tactics should be embedded within a wider social policy, if we want thriving cities.

By introducing the concepts of neighbourhood arrangements and ecologies, based on examples in Europe and North America, this book provides a new perspective on the relation between participants, resources, and rules, to spark change and prepare urbanites and policymakers for realizing their own sustainable neighbourhoods for the future.

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have gained a prominent role in the climate science-policy interface. The article reconstructs the evolution of IAMs and their changing role in this interface, investigating how and why IAMs have become so prominent. Based on literature analysis, quantitative document analysis and semi-structured interviews, we describe the historic evolution of the interactions between IAMs and policy-making between 1970 and 2015. We identify five historic phases in which IAMs played distinct mediating roles between science and policy, succeeding to adjust their scenario efforts to the continuously changing demands for knowledge from the policy community. In explaining the prominent role of IAMs, we differentiate between background conditions (material and sociological) and more contextual factors, most notably the flexible, hybrid and broad nature of IAMs as well as the pro-active character of the IAM community to enhance their policy relevance. We draw on the notion of institutional work to explain this success. In light of the urgency of responding to the climate crisis, we suggest that the IAM community may expand their scope of anticipated futures and consider engaging a wider range of publics and societal stakeholders beyond the science-policy interface.

The rise of what is often referred to as the sharing economy is among the most daring challenges for cities around the world. Sharing platforms create opportunities for efficient market exchange, but also cause negative externalities for city dwellers. A challenge for city authorities is that platforms can be launched without ex ante assessment of externalities and public interests, leaving public debate and political deliberation ex post affairs. We call the platform innovation logic 'reverse technology assessment', which obstructs participatory planning and constructive technology assessment. We discuss the potential of an alternative policy framework known as 'right to challenge'. We end with a broader reflection on public policy regarding sharing platforms at different scalar levels, emphasizing local initiatives to develop alternative sharing platforms.