Kristof van Assche

University of Alberta | UAlberta · Faculty of Science

We analyse the construction of new Nordicities, as in new and guiding discourses for urban development which engage with a Northern location. Spatial planning and place branding are proposed as mutually reinforcing instruments to support the strategic positioning of cities located in northern climes. Planning in such an environment must take on boa...

In this paper, we explore the complex entanglements between ongoing land conflicts and climate shocks, and their implications for risk governance paths and evolution. We focus on ways in which concepts of shock and conflict can be incorporated into social–ecological systems thinking and applied to risk governance practice in a southern cities conte...

We consider the case of the Flemish city of Ypres and its reconstruction after World War I to analyze the legacies of war, as a violent shock to social- ecological systems for the meaning and organization of land. We argue that these legacies can only be understood when considering the multiple meanings of land, including its association with ident...

We present a perspective on combining research methods in policy and governance which starts from an understanding of governance as the result of a double bricolage: an organizational or institutional bricolage, and a bricolage of knowledges and associated methods. We develop a typology of common ways to combine methods in governance, distinguishin...

We argue a re-appraisal of asset mapping is needed based on revisiting the concept of assets. Asset mapping is useful for inter/trans-disciplinary work involving complex systems: organizations, administrations, governance systems, social-ecological systems, etc. Asset mapping can be an integrative method, allowing a combination of different discipl...

We turn to the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and its continuous reorganization of governance, its series of shocks, ambitions of reinvention and development to analyze the risks associated with Great Reset-style ambitions. We coin the concept of the local paradox: grand schemes need input from and implementation at a local level an...

The attention to sustainability transformations and related processes of learning, innovation, and adaptation has inspired a growing interest in theories that help to grasp the processes of change in governance. This perspective paper and the Special Issue of which it is part explore how evolutionary perspectives on environmental governance can enr...

This paper introduces the concepts and ideas that frame this special issue on co-evolution in governance, and their implications for policy learning and adaptation. It offers a brief overview of co-evolutionary approaches to governance and their elementary connections with systems theories, post-structuralism, institutionalism, and actor-network th...

This essay introduces and frames the contributions to the special issue on learning and co-evolution in governance. It develops the argument that learning, dark learning and non-learning are necessarily entwined in governance, moreover, entwined in a pattern unique to each governance configuration and path. What can be learned collectively for the...

This Special Issue explores evolutionary perspectives on environmental policy and governance [...]

We argue for embedding land use policy in broader strategies of community development as a way of contributing with long-term success of communities. In analyzing eight case communities in Alberta, Canada, we identified reasons for fragmentation: non-coordination between institutions organizing land use (‘land use tools’), non-coordination between...

Northern regions are still less visible than others. This means that dealing with problems of the North often takes place in the mode of damage control. Drawing on Canadian and Alaskan experiences, we argue that northern communities need integrated resilience strategies for their development and that such strategies need to have the character of lo...

Tbilisi has undergone spectacular changes which can be grasped by the concept of ‘Multiple Transformations’, characteristic of postsocialist cities. Along with the reform of legislative, institutional and social frameworks, an urban or spatial transformation took place. We distinguish different phases of Tbilisi’s urban transformation, discuss the...

Sustainability transitions bring together many different disciplines focussing on the interrelations between the social and the material. The burgeoning field of transition studies is becoming more inter-disciplinary, less normative, less modernist in nature, and more open to both discursive and material dynamics. Social-ecological systems thinking...

p>This paper presents a framework for analysing the different ways in which materiality impacts environmental policy and governance. It draws on notions from the wider literature on materiality and integrates relevant insights into a theory on policy and governance. Building on a key distinction between the material and the discursive dimensions of...

Embracing methodological individualism, the mainstream economic theory of the firm has little to say about the precarious nature of the firm's embeddedness in encompassing socioecological systems. The digital transformation of the theory of the firm can address this gap by deconstructing the standpoint of methodological individualism. In transactio...

We analyse the migration of academic and policy discourses that contributed to (de)legitimise the formation of planning policies in Argentina since the 1950s. We focus on the communicative/collaborative rationality discourses emanating from Anglo-American academic circles that played a role in the revival of the Argentine planning system between 20...

In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis of shock and conflict in social-ecological systems and investigate the implications of this perspective for the understanding of environmental governance, particularly its evolutionary patterns and drivers. We dwell on the distinction between shock and conflict. In mapping the relation between...

This paper explores the concept of adaptive research design, in which topic, theoretical framing, method, and data are in principle open to adaptation during the research process. The main premise is that adaptations in one element of the research process can trigger changes in other elements. Both positive and negative reasons for adaptivity are d...

We develop a novel perspective on the interplay between causes and effects of resource policy (and more generally development strategy) at local level. We do this by deploying a theoretical framework built around both psychoanalytic notions and concepts from governance theory to analyze the evolution and the construction of futures in the Canadian...

We develop a perspective on steering in governance which understands steering as intended path creation. Inspired by evolutionary governance theory, critical management studies and social systems theory, we argue that steering is shaped and limited by co-evolutions, disallowing for any formulaic approach. In order to illuminate the space for steeri...

Based on a detailed study of the return of national-level planning in Argentina as embodied by COFEPLAN, the national planning council, we develop a conceptual framework to analyse the possibilities and limits of steering in governance. We lean on the theoretical apparatus of evolutionary governance theory and use the concepts of goal dependency, i...

Steering has negative connotations nowadays in many discussions on governance, policy, politics and planning. The associations with the modernist state project linger on. At the same time, a rethinking of what is possible by means of policy and planning, what is possible through governance, which forms of change and which pursuits of common goods s...

In this paper we link contemporary thinking on craft and craftsmanship to concepts in community development. Craft is contrasted with popular development dogmas such as innovation, planning and the knowledge economy. Our aim is to reimagine craft as a form of production linked to traditions of trade-craft and blue-collar work, yet open to blending...

We address the question why social identities associated with resource extraction can survive the extraction itself, a question which is highly relevant for devising strategies for economic diversification and community reinvention in many communities. The case of As Pontes, in Galicia, Spain, where a rural community transformed into a powerhouse o...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of adaptive governance, which is advocated for as a manner to deal with dramatic changes in society and/or environment. To re-think the possible contributions of organizations and organization theory, to adaptive governance. Design/methodology/approach Based on social systems theory...

This special issue analyses and reflects on relations between long term perspectives and strategies in governance. While dismissing high modernist planning and acknowledging constraints to long-term policies, the different contributions in this volume, each in their own way, contend that strategy is necessary to face the challenges of our times. Th...

Governments increasingly use place branding strategies to position their cities and urban regions on the inter-territorial competitive stage. Next to spatial planning, it also offers them a new means for setting frameworks and principles to guide the location of development and physical infrastructure and for promoting social, economic and ecologic...

In this paper, we explore the consequences of a flat ontology for planning theory and practice through the lens of Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT). We present a perspective in which the ontological hierarchies assumed in planning and beyond are left behind, but also one that allows for understanding how hierarchies and binaries can emerge from...

We investigate the nature and potential of strategy in governance and emphasize the importance of understanding strategy in its (potential) relations to long-term perspectives or narratives about the long term. Strategy is understood as both a narrative and an institution itself. Narratives about the long term, both inside and outside the sphere of...

We draw on research in Western Newfoundland (Canada) to investigate the possibilities and limits of community reinvention, defined as radical change in the nature of the community, as perceived by local residents. Community reinvention is understood as an extreme form of strategic change in communities, one typically embraced under extreme circumst...

This article synthesizes and compares environmental governance theories. For each theory we outline its main tenets, claims, origin, and supporting literature. We then group the theories into focused versus combinatory frameworks for comparison. The analysis resonates with many types of ecosystems; however, to make it more tangible, we focus on coa...

In this paper, we reflect on the evolution of place-based governance from a long-term (15 year) study of rural development initiatives undertaken in a region of Poland as part of its accession to the European Union. We decompose the recursive process of institutional learning arising from initiatives for heritage preservation and rural economic dev...

Quarantine measures and the crises triggering them are never neutral in the sense that a return to the past is impossible. These measures are also a signal of other things like systemic risks and weaknesses. A period of quarantine is also a thing in and by itself. What happens after quarantine is thus shaped both by the state of the social-ecologic...

Focusing on the case of As Pontes, Spain, where coal mine production intensified rapidly in the 1970s through to the 1990s, we contribute to the literature on resource towns, and on boom and bust communities more generally. Here, mining was contested throughout the boom period, eroding the local economy and reducing social cohesion among residents....

This paper presents a novel framework for analyzing the formation and effects of strategies in environmental governance. To that purpose, it combines elements of management studies, strategy as practice thinking, social systems theory and evolutionary governance theory. It starts from the notion that govern-ance and its constitutive elements are co...

In this framing paper for the special issue on land use tools for mitigating boom and bust dynamics we present a framework to analyze the effects of dramatic ups and downs on communities. The explicit aim of this framework is to identify the potential of land use tools, broadly understood, to mitigate the effects of these cycles. Application of our...

p class="Boxbodytext">The authors reflect on recent experiences at UN-Habitat and other international organizations to rethink the roles of planning towards larger development goals and to reform planning systems in places most in need of them. They consider the difficulties but ultimate necessity to learn from a variety of contexts and experiences...

In this article, the authors develop a perspective on the value of, and methodologies for, comparative planning research. Through comparative research, similarities and differences between planning cases and experiences can be disentangled. This opens up possibilities for learning across planning systems, and possibly even the transfer of best plan...

In this thematic issue we pursue the idea that comparative studies of planning systems are utterly useful for gaining a deeper understanding of learning processes and learning capacity in spatial planning systems. In contemporary planning systems the pressures towards learning and continuous self-transformation are high. On the one hand more and mo...

Coasts are changing at an impressive speed. Therewith come changes in and challenges to governance that require an empirically-based understanding in order to foster sustainability transitions. New challenges are often not adequately met, so a host of problems arise. The papers in this special issue speak to these problems and consider which govern...

In our chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of purposeful community development in a non-linear understanding of society. We highlight the importance of strategy in a world where few planning rules and certainties seem to survive. This first of all requires a rethinking of what strategy is. In order to delineate possible strategies for communit...

Spatial planning and place branding are allies in the discovery and creation of place narratives and assets as well as in contributing to spatial transformation or the improvement of the socio-spatial and spatial-economic conditions of a place. However, the existing and Spatial planning and place branding are allies in the discovery and creation of...

In this special issue, we present a number of distinct contributions to recent debates on the interlinkage between place branding with spatial planning theory and the embedded of both in governance. The idea to organise this special issue emerged from our common research interests. For us it was rather puzzling that planning and branding had not be...

This research note is a rejoinder to Steve Wallis' commentary on our paper "The limits of transparency: a systems theory view" (Valentinov, Verschraegen, van Assche, 2019)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential, both analytically and practically, of understanding research methods as bridging devices. Methods can bridge theory and empirics, but it is argued that they can perform several bridging functions: between theory and praxis, between analysis and strategy and between past and future....

The purpose of the article is to define the material, institutional, and intellectual infrastructure of a region and identify the innovative processes that determine its creation. Our main research hypothesis is that the processes that influence the creation of a region’s infrastructure determine a region’s competitiveness as well. To verify these...

The paper explores the implications of Ludwig von Bertalanffy's general systems theory for the current debates on the nature of organizational transparency as an element of good governance. If transparency implies the exchange of information, then it may be taken, at a metaphorical level, to constitute a dimension of metabolism theorized by Bertala...

We present a context-sensitive perspective on participation in rural development, revolving around the reconstruction of unique sets of differences between rhetorics and realities. Using a theoretical frame inspired by the Evolutionary Governance Theory, we identify mechanisms of reinterpretation and delimitation of participation in the context of...

Based on biological insights, Ludwig von Bertalanffy coined general systems theory (GST) and later expanded his perspective, exploring what GST could mean for other disciplines and other types of systems. We make a case for the relevance, or rather, the importance, of GST for coming to a new understanding of the resilience of social‐ecological syst...

The conceptual framework of evolutionary governance theory (EGT) is deployed and extended to rethink the idea of coastal governance and the possibilities of a coastal governance better adapted to challenges of climate change and intensified use of both land and sea. ‘The coastal condition’ is analyzed as a situation where particular modes of observ...

《进化治理理论：导论》为读者提供了一种通向市场、制度和社会共同进化之路的引人注目的新观点，对市场和公共部门改革、发展、公共管理、政治和法律感兴趣的人都能从中受益。基于对三大洲范围广泛的案例研究和各种各样的概念来源，著者们发展出一种澄清标记治理进化依赖关系的本质和功能的理论。这反过来以一种全新方式描绘了对政策实验开放的空间。因此，它提供了一种关于自由主义和社会工程之间的中间地带的新的绘图。在理论上，这种方法利用了广泛的资源配置：制度和发展经济学、系统理论、后结构主义、行动者网络理论、话语理论、计划理论和法律研究。

Purpose: Ethiopia operates a large agricultural extension service system. However, access to extension-related knowledge, technologies and agricultural inputs is unequally distributed among smallholder farmers. Social learning is widely practiced by most farmers to cope with this unequal distribution though its practices have hardly been documented...

We use the concepts of riskscapes and risk governance to analyze the tensions between land use for food (farms) and energy (dams) in South West Ethiopia. We analyze the linkages between risk perception, risk assessment and risk management for local and non-local actors. We distinguish, after empirical analysis, as main riskscapes the riskscapes of...

We investigate the potential of mapping institutional work in communities as a method for both analyzing and formulating local development strategy. Twelve Canadian case communities experiencing dramatic ups and downs (‘boom and bust towns’) serve as the empirical base. Analytically, we find that institutional work for strategy takes on very divers...

Cotton export substantially contributes to Uzbekistan's economy. To produce cotton, the state imposes output targets on farmers which results in intensified cotton production practices, and consequently in land degradation. Improving degraded croplands via afforestation is an option explored through research experiments in the region, yet is curren...

Resilience has become a key concept in the sciences and practices of environmental governance. Yet governing for resilience is a major challenge because it requires governance systems to be both stable and flexible at the same time. Achieving a productive balance between stability and flexibility is a key challenge. The concept of "institutional wo...

Bent Flyvbjerg came in with a bang with the English language publication of his book Rationality and Power. He shook up several disciplines interested in cities, urban governance and planning. Many of these disciplines were still rooted in the modernist ideology of steering and control; ideas Flyvbjerg argued against. Flyvbjerg is a critical schola...

In a changing and often unpredictable globalized world, planning theory is core to understanding how planning and its practices both function and evolve. As illustrated in The Routledge Hand-book of Planning Theory, planning and its many roles have changed profoundly over the recent decades; so have the theories, both critical and explanatory, abou...

In this paper, we present a conceptual framework extending Foucaultian insights on the relations between power and knowledge to link up with current insights into studies of natural resource management (NRM) and more broadly environmental studies. We classify discourses in NRM according to understandings of social–ecological systems and argue that...

This is the introduction to a special issue on power/knowledge in natural resource management. It draws the attention to ongoing concerns about the management of natural resources (NRM): their exploration, extraction, processing, and commodification is still happening in ways that are perceived to be socially unjust and ecologically unsustainable....

This paper reflect on planning theory and practice in response to a claim by Alexander that both planning and planning theory seem to lose their unity and validity. This claim is uncovered as a modernist response to an ever changing world in which different understanding of planning come and go.

Many of contemporary issues, like urban development, climate change, biodiversity conservation, or food security, demand for interdisciplinary approaches that bring together scientist with different ideas about reality and the nature of knowledge. Whereas some focus on the material reality of our world, other focus on the social structures through...

This paper analyses the evolution of landscape governance in three Flemish regions to discern the virtues of different forms of environmental policy, spatial planning, and place branding. In all three regions state led policies and comprehensive planning efforts were gradually complemented and replaced by more participatory planning approaches and...

Contemporary society is discussing many different forms of governance, global governance, self-governance, corporate governance. Many of these debates stem from disappointments with exist-ing ways to govern society or particular domain within that society. A key issue that always pops up in these debates is the topic of good governance. It revolves...

Smart growth is a comprehensive version of spatial planning that can guide sustainable development and tackle negative social and environmental consequences of urbanization. In this paper we explore how an integration of spatial planning and place branding strategies can further the concept of smart growth and improve its chance at implementation....

In this contribution we explore the pathways of the Dutch planning system and its potential to adapt to a continuously changing society. It presents a possible answer to the question that frames this book: ‘How can researchers and practitioners incorporate new insights about complexity and non-linearity into their work and develop new strategies an...

This chapter investigates the potential contribution of design perspectives to the functioning of a planning system, as the network of organizations that embodies the coordinated organization of space in a given community. It presents an evolutionary approach and draws upon a review of planning and design literature to reconstruct the historical de...

In this article we investigate the value of and use Machialli's work for Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). We made a selection of five topics derived from literature on NRM and CBNRM: 1. Law and Policy, 2. Justice, 3. Participation, 4. Transparency and Management and 5. Leadership and Management. We use Machiavelli's work to anal...

We develop a social systems theory perspective on Central Asian post-Socialist transition, placing particular emphasis on the coordination problems in transboundary water governance. The extensive Soviet water-energy infrastructure around the Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers required coordination, but this could no longer be politically secured after t...

Boom and Bust: A Guide is the result of a collective effort at the University of Alberta to better understand the dramatic ups and downs which too often characterize western Canadian communities. It offers community leaders, politicians, administrators, academics, students, and all active citizens helpful techniques to analyze the current state of...

In this chapter we develop a theoretical framework, deriving from the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and Evolutionary Governance Theory, to grasp the paradoxes of current notions of innovation in governance, and to outline an alternative approach. A renewed reflection on innovation we deem essential for an understanding of the potential fo...

Evolutionary Governance Theory is a novel perspective on the way societies, markets and governance evolve. It integrates concepts and insights from various theoretical sources into a new coherent framework. This book aims to explore how this framework can be further developed and how it can be applied to a range of governance issues. This chapter p...

This chapter briefly outlines the theoretical framework of Evolutionary Governance Theory. It presents its architecture as well as the most important concepts and their relations. We emphasize the concepts of contingency and co-evolution, which serve as the base of an analysis of co-evolving configurations: actor/institutions, formal/informal, and...

This contribution studies the layered coexistence and mutual shaping of three forms of differentiation (functional, segmentary, hierarchical) in rural Uzbekistan, a region of world society that, since 1991, is undergoing tremendous processes of socio-economic transformation and change. More precisely, we analyse the evolving governance of land, wat...

In this chapter we argue that the conceptualization of power in a theoretical framework that is based on the idea of contingency, can help to refine the analysis of power in governance. Power can be conceptualized as the potentiality emerging in relations between individuals and structure and it can be understood as a driver for social evolution. T...

Een deel van de Nederlandse landschappen is ontworpen door landschapsarchitecten. Landschapsvorming is echter niet de enige functie van het ontwerp, betogen we in dit artikel. In een participatief ontwerppro-ces voor het Europaplein in Renkum bestudeerden we de verschillende functies van ontwerpen. Ondanks het feit dat die kunnen conflicteren, blij...

In this paper, we investigate the utility of Knorr-Cetina’s theory of epistemic cultures and knowledge cultures for the analysis of rural transition in post-socialist countries. We look at the evolution of agricultural expertise in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Georgia, with a special interest in the reconstruction of ‘extension’, a concept we also c...