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For more than two decades, critical planning scholars have called for strategic spatial planning to cut its rational roots stemming from the 1960s–70s, and counter its tendency towards more incremental approaches of the 1980s–2000s. To truly address the core challenges of cities and regions in our times, spatial planning should plan for discontinuity. This paper explores how planning may embrace futuring practices to do so. Drawing on three materially oriented futuring approaches, 'Critical Future Studies', 'Sociology of Expectations', and 'Sociology of the Future', futuring practices may serve a threefold aim. First, exposing the power of 'normalisation', unlocking silenced futures. Second, providing a stage to exhibit and dramatise 'future expectations' (stories, images, artefacts) and their stakeholder connections. Third, letting urban materiality and corporeality truly speak for themselves to the present and the future, opening experiences of, and confrontations with, the technological, environmental and geographical unconscious. Consequently, we show how such futuring can take shape through the creation of an 'Archive of the Future', which we illustrate through Rotterdam as a case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite abundant research on collaborative governance, relatively little attention has been paid to explaining its performance. When are collaborations performing and what conditions are required to achieve high performance? This study fills this gap by building on the performance matrix for assessing collaborative governance regimes by Emerson and Nabatchi. Drawing on survey data, we use a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the performance of 26 collaborative flood risk governance projects in the Netherlands. We analyze how conditions of engagement, shared motivation, external expertise, connective leadership and resource availability shape the output performance of these collaboratives. The results reveal four "success" configurations. Success stems, in particular, from "connective leadership" and resources for collaboration working in tandem, or with one of these conditions combined with respectively "external expertise" and "shared motivation." Failure, in contrast, stems from the absence of multiple conditions. Consequently, we draw lessons about the spectrum of different concrete recipes of collaboration fostering output performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Since 1916, the Dutch city of Nijmegen annually organizes the Four-Day Marches, the world's largest international walking event, shaping the city along the way. This paper studies the 'coeval becoming' of the March and city through the lens of 'glocal' topological arrangements, drawing on a 'wheeling' racialized assemblage perspective. This wheeling, we argue, scripts Nijmegen and its March through four topological arrangements: Nijmegen as Host, Nijmegen as Global Node, Nijmegen as Haunted Body, and Nijmegen as Empty Green. In conclusion, we find a strong emphasis on able-bodies and branding, yielding a characterization of 'martial entrepreneurialism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One way to support active mobility is by the successful articulation and diffusion of new bike-infrastructure concepts. This paper studies the journey of one such concept in the Netherlands, namely the cycle highway, which nowadays is often referred to as a 'fast cycleway'. These routes provide high-quality and spacious cycling facilities connecting (sub)urban residential sites to nodes of work and study. They are built with the aim to induce a substantive modal shift in regional commuting from car and transit to cycling. Currently, there are nearly 300 fast cycleway initiatives in the Netherlands of which 52 have already been constructed. Based on 27 interviews with planners, engineers and lobbyists, this paper traces the success of the fast cyclepath concept through the perspectives of "articulation" and "liquidity". We find that fast cycleroutes emerge as whole, coherent entities through six separate vocabularies, namely of demonstration, quality framing, policy rule and contract, planning diplomacy, financial wizardry and design negotiation. Each vocabulary gives rise to a "global form" fuelling the "currency" and performativity of the fast cycleroute concept. Different contexts also induce considerable differentiation, raising the question how far the concept may be stretched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A strategic relation approach (SRA) on the study of regions addresses questions about the perception of the region and the emphasis on it in economic development. This approach better identifies the effects of structural changes on actions geared toward regional development.

Critical evaluation of present debates in regional studies is presented. Disadvantage of ignoring old ideas and focusing on new ideas is highlighted.

How should we respond to MARKUSEN'S, 1999, challenge to address the problem of 'fuzzy concepts'? Following a constructionist perspective, this contribution adopts an interpretation of concepts as rhetorical devices that gain prominence through the way they are linked discursively to established concepts and empirical evidence. Conceptual quality, accordingly, depends on the academic practices and conventions that undergird the development of conceptual families and webs in a certain academic field. Applying these ideas to the lineage of regional innovation concepts reveals certain causes of conceptual weakness. For instance, conceptual development in this field strongly draws from ideas articulated in other (sub) disciplines. While such 'borrowing' has certainly shed new light on questions of regional development, the translation of ideas and concepts appears to be often lacking in accuracy, especially within a longer-term perspective. Likewise, the invocation of empirical material ten& to be rather crude. What is lacking, in particular, is an established practice of developing and reviewing more operational concepts (like typologies) that help to bridge the gap between 'grand' concepts and regional development in practice. This leads to the conclusion that conceptual quality requires more emphasis on 'subtle critique', that is, a careful and thoughtful reviewing of the relative value and significance of established and emerging concepts within one conceptual family. Whereas the field of regional studies has a strong tradition in 'grand critiques', i.e. strong discursive competition between conceptual families, it is 'subtle critique' that will improve its level of conceptual quality. Regional studies Scientific concepts Philosophy of science Innovation Social constructivism Spatial reification Comment relever le defi de MARKUSEN, 1999, d'aborder la question des 'concepts confus'? Suite a une perspective constructiviste, cet article cherche a adopter une interpretation des concepts comme dispositifs rhetoriques auxquels on accorde de l'importance par la facon dont ils sont lies de facon discursive aux concepts bien etablis et aux preuves empiriques. En consequence, la qualite conceptuelle depend des pratiques et des conventions academiques qui etayent le developpement de familles et de reseaux concepmels dans un domaine particulier. Appliquer ces idees aux origines des concepts d'innovation regionale laisse voir certaines explications des faiblesses conceptuelles. Dans ce domaine, le developpement conceptuel puise largement dans les idees exprimees dans d'autres (sous) disciplines, par exemple. Alors qu'il n'est pas nier qu'un tel 'emprunt' a repandu de la lumiere sur des questions d'amenagement du territoire, il semble que la traduction des idees et des concepts manque de justesse, surtout dans une perspective a long terme. Egalement, l'invocation de la documentation empirique a tendance a etre plutot rudimentaire. Ce qui manque, en particuher, c'est une facon bien etablie de developper et de reviser des concepts plus operationnels (a savoir, des typologies) qui aident a colmater la breche entre les 'grands' concepts et l'amenagement du territoire en pratique. Cela amene a la conclusion suivante: pour ce qui est de la qualite conceptuelle, on doit mettre l'accent sur 'la critique subtile', c'est a dire, reviser soigneusement et de faqon reflechie la valeur et l'importance relatives des concepts bien etablis et naissants au sein d'une seule famille de concepts. Tandis que le domaine des etudes regionales puise fortement dans les 'grandes critiques' par tradition, autrement dit la forte concurrence discursive entre familles conceptuelles, c'est la 'critique subtile' qui va ameliorer son niveau de qualite conceptuelle. Etudes regionales Concepts scientifiques Philosophie des sciences Innovation Constructivisme social Reification geographique Wie soll man auf Markusens Herausforderung reagieren, das Problem 'unklarer Konzeption' anzugehen? Vom Standpunkt einer konstruktionistischen Auffassung gesehen, ubernimmt dieser Beitrag die Interpretation von Konzepten als rhetorische Kunstgriffe, die durch die Art ihrer Verknupfung mit bestehenden Konzepten und empirischen Beweisen in den Vordergrund rucken. Begriffsqualitat hangt demnach von akademischen Verfahrensweisen und Konventionen ab, welche die Entwicklung von Begriffsfamilien und -geflechten auf einem bestinnten akademischen Gebiet unterbauen. Die Anwendung dieser Ideen auf die Abfolge der regionalen Innovationskonzepte zeigt gewisse Ursachen konzeptualer Schwachen auf Konzeptuale Entwicklung auf diesem Gebiet stutzt sich zum Beispiel stark auf Ideen, die andere (Teil)disziplinen dargelegt haben. Obschon derartige 'Anleihen' sicherlich ein neues Licht auf Fragen der regionalen Entwicklung geworfen haben, scheint es der Ubertragung von Ideen und Konzepten oft an Genauigkeit zu fehlen, besonders in der langfristigen Perspektive. Ebenso ist die Beschworung empirischen Materials meist ziemlich primitiv. Was vorallem fehlt, ist ein anerkanntes Verfahren zur Entwicklung und Besprechung einsatzfahigerer Konzepte (wie Typologie), die dazu beitragen, die Kluft zwischen 'hochfliegenden' Konzepten und der Praxis der regionalen Entwicklung zu uberbrucken. Dies fuhrt zu dem SchluB, daB begriffliche Qualitat starkere Betonung 'subtiler Kritik' verlangt, d.h. eine sorgfaltige und wohl durchdachte Besprechng der relativer Werte und Bedeutung erprobter und neu aufkommender Konzepte einer Kouzeptfamilie. Wahrend 'Gesamtkritiken' auf dem Gebiet der Regionalstudien schon fest verwurzelt sind, d.h. intensive weitschweifende Wettbewerbe zwischen Konzeptfamilien ausgetragen werden, ist es die 'subtile Kritik', die das Niveau ihrer Begriffsqualitat anheben wird. Regionalstudien Wissenschaftliche Konzepte Philosophie der Wissenschaft Innovation Sozialkonstruktivismus Raumliche Reifikation

Slow Food is a global, grassroots movement aimed at enhancing and sustaining local food cultures and traditions worldwide. Since its establishment in the 1980s as a local protest movement in Italy, Slow Food evolved into a global movement composed through countless local 'grassroots' activities intersecting with more 'top-down' umbrella orchestration and framing. This paper explores the many faces of this one-in-many movement by focusing on the circulation and variation of Slow Food ideas and practices across the world. The core argument is that these ideas and practices effectively capture and steer the manifold affective moments emerging from local and network activities. The affective–effective conversions are traced here by applying a semiotic-network approach to a large corpus of Slow Food websites. Thus adopting a novel approach and methodology of tracing the geographical development of a social movement, the paper reveals both grassroots and global patterns of change and diffusion, and zooms in on specific nodes, connections and practices that play a key role in the movement's development. In doing so, we develop a research strategy that is better able to make sense of complex and non-linear processes of geographical diffusion-innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regional scale has come to play an important role in the discussion on learning in capitalist societies. Advocates of concepts such as 'Learning Regions' have even suggested that the [...]