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Using a complexity lens has not gained widespread attention for explaining why certain planning processes succeed and others fail. This chapter responds by proposing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as a method for analyzing the performance of spatial planning processes, taking into account the perceived complexity of the contextual environments encountered. This proposal is rooted in a contingency perspective. Contingency perspectives assume that, for spatial planning approaches and organizational formats to perform well, they should be adapted to the environment in which they intend to operate; i.e., a degree of ‘fit’ is required. The perceived complexity of the contextual environments is among the key arguments contingency studies propose as informing fit. QCA follows this argument, but also responds to some of its main critiques. First, QCA can help avoid a deterministic perspective on complexity informing fit, as it assumes complexity as being conceptualized by stakeholders involved in the planning process. Second, QCA can help overcome a reductionist perspective and its simplistic reliance on a pairwise analysis of relations between isolated environmental variables and isolated organizational or decision-making variables. QCA approaches ‘fit’ from a more holistic perspective, by analyzing the performance of spatial planning processes as configurations of alternative spatial planning approaches, organizational forms, and contextual environments. The result is an understanding of ‘fit’ following what QCA considers ‘complex causality’, which is manifested in configurations of various interacting and interdependent conditions. Next to being able to analyze relationships between the performance of spatial planning processes and the perceived complexity of the contextual environment, by using the notion of ‘complex causality’ QCA also allows for analyzing spatial planning processes as complex adaptive systems.

Originally published in 1997, Urban Environmental Planning provides a groundbreaking overview of innovative methods and techniques for measuring and managing the environmental effects of urban land uses on other urban activities. Fully revised and updated, this second edition brings together a team of leading environmental planners and policy makers from the US, UK, Europe and SE Asia to address the central questions confronting sustainable urban development. Typical questions include: How can you measure and manage the negative environmental effects of intrusive urban activities such as manufacturing and transport on sensitive land uses including residential and recreational areas? Can a balance be found between reducing these effects through means such as separating conflicting land uses? While other sources identify the need for effective programmes to improve urban environmental quality, this volume describes and assesses analytical methods and implementing programmes practised by leading communities around the world.

Making a suitable career choice is a difficult task. Every year, many adolescents prematurely end their studies, commonly citing “having made the wrong choice” as the main reason. This is a problem, both for the adolescents making these choices, and for society, which bears at least part of the cost of higher education. A thorough understanding of how adolescents make these career choices is essential to identifying the factors responsible for why the wrong choices are often made. Identity development theory emphasizes the role of exploration in career choice, but neglects many of the micro-level processes likely to play an important role. Similarly, traditional decision theory often focuses on optimization of choice, thereby neglecting the cognitive mechanisms that may explain deviations from optimal choice. Here, we present a novel computational approach to modeling long-term decision making. We combine elements of the macro-level theory on identity development with a firm rooting in micro-level cognitive processes. Specifically, we model decision making as an iterative process in which individuals can explore new options or more deeply investigate options that are already under consideration. The output of our model allows us to analyze how the quality of decisions depends on various factors, such as aspiration levels, the tendency to explore new options, and the ability to judge the fit of an option with one’s interests and capabilities. We present some preliminary results that already show our approach can lead to surprising conclusions, encouraging further development of this model in the future.

Adaptive planning has potential as an answer to coping with autonomous and spontaneous change. Such changes occur at all time and recently have been accompanied by an unprecedented dynamism and complexity. The interconnectedness of such processes is only increasing, and their dynamics have an unstoppable effect on almost everything. What seems to us as stable is often not much more than a temporal period of persistence, a frozen momentum within a dynamic world, the lee side of a world in flow. We consider this world to be out of equilibrium. And this is fundamental: while we like to see ourselves – the planner in particular – as the ‘creator’ of space and place, we seriously have to consider a world, as well, which is creating itself without purposeful interventions, develops often beyond our control, and despite our intentions progresses autonomously. These unexpected and unpredictable changes demand a different perspective in which planning will be ‘following’ and ‘responding to’ instead of ‘leading’ and ‘controlling’. Adaptive planning stands out in the search for alternatives to cope with these changes. Various kinds of adaptive planning will be identified in this chapter. We will explore their relationship with the current planning debate and its paradigmatic rationalities, i.e. the technical and the communicative rationality. We will extend the contemporary rationality framework for planning behaviour with several rationalities that each could be a ‘frame of reference’ for adaptive behaviour dealing with wide-ranging situations in a dynamically changing and transformative environment. This results in an extensive rationality framework for planning behaviour, which presents various new forms of adaptive planning and offers a vastly expanded world of planning possibilities!

Change occurs at all times. However, current changes are accompanied by an unprecedented dynamism and complexity. It is a consequence of an enormous and increasing rate at which new developments emerge, developments with a global nature that are also completely interwoven with the local environment, such as the internet, social media, economic uncertainty and the energy transition. The interconnectedness of these processes is only increasing, and their dynamics have an unstoppable effect on almost everything. Societal processes are part of a dynamism in which connections that are deemed relevant, the intended approaches and the targeted processes that were embraced yesterday and still feel familiar today, could very well be entirely outdated by tomorrow. These are the circumstances that spatial planning is confronted with. Planning can no longer afford to ignore fundamental uncertainties. Key is how planning can relate to change in a way that is different from before. Adaptivity is often mentioned as the answer to increasing uncertainty, societal dynamism and spatial transformation. It is then about the way in which planning is able to respond to unforeseen, autonomous or spontaneously occurring changes (acting in response to change), the way in which planning is able to influence such changes (addressing the possibility to change) and how planning may increase the options for dealing with change (capacity to perform in moments of change). Based on this distinction, various forms of adaptive planning will be presented that together offer a world of planning opportunities.