Frame:
Institutional Reform, Regionalisation, Brussels Capital Region
Empirical base: Typology of Urban
interventions, Lever zones, Neighbourhood contracts
Theoretical concepts: Inclusive policies,
Advocacy coalitions, Policy oriented learning
The National Belgian Planning Law of 1962 lost its significance through
the process of Regionalisation in the late 1980s. Brussels Capital Region, like
the other two Regions in Belgium, has developed its own frame for Urban and
Regional Policies with the Planning law of 1991. With the institutional reforms
due to Regionalisation, questions of Urban planning are solved for the newly
delimited area of Brussels Capital Region by the Region itself (creating the
Regional Development Plan and the Regional Land Use Plan) and the 19
Municipalities (creating the Municipal Development Plans and Specific Land Use
Plans). The regional level can look back on about twelve years of development.
How did this new institutional level succeed to position itself in relation to
other public levels as well as private players in urban policies? In which way did
Brussels Capital Region make an attempt to the apparently increased demand for
developing inclusive policies with a variety of actors involved? And how could
the new institutions assure sufficient political space for high quality
performance with this demand of inclusiveness?
The aim of this presentation at the Eight International Research
Symposium on Public Management is to provide insight into possible and existing
coalitions and co-operation in Urban planning processes for two typical
interventions, and to test empirical results for the appliciability of
Sabatiers ‘advocacy coalitions’-model.
The first type of urban interventions to be briefly discussed is the
development of so-called ‘lever zones’ or ‘sites of Regional importance’. The
second type is the local development of sites, exemplified in so-called
‘neighbourhood contracts’. For both cases, the study focuses on the composition
of the urban arena involved - both with private and public players, on a local
and a regional level-, on the degree of involvement and on the performance of
the players in urban questions.
Concepts which stress ‘co-operation’, ‘participation’, ‘co-production’,
‘community involvement’, ‘empowerment’, etc. seem to be developed as
theoretical frames and orienting models for practice with a cyclical attention
of about 15 to 20 years. For the theoretical models and their aplpication, we
can go back as far as the early examples of Laswells social planetariums,
Etzionis Active society, Davidoffs advocacy models and Arnsteins ladder of
participation. The topic is taken up again in Healeys models of Collaborative
planning (1997, 1998) in the frame of the so-called ‘argumentative turn’ up to
latest conceptualisations of Sabatiers Advocacy Coalitions (1988, 1993).
So far, few investigations have been executed in a concise and coherent
way to study the modes of co-production in urban planning in Brussels,
especially with the renewed institutional setting after the Regionalisation.
Empirical results, based on interviews with key actors for both types of urban
interventions, are discussed here for the suitability of Paul Sabatiers concept
of ‘advocacy coalitions’ and the potential of ‘policy oriented learning’. How
do policy networks evolve for urban questions in Brussels? Which policy
subsystems are active in policy making? Do actors gather around deep core
values? Are these shared norms exemplified and perceived as being shared? Is
there a feedback in urban policies through which shared beliefs and experiences
in practice lead to policy oriented learning?
A broader view on other concepts of inclusive policies is developed in
the doctoral study which is at the base of the investigations on modes of
co-production in urban planning processes for Brussels Capital Region.
References
Healey
P. (1997), Collaborative Planning, New York: Palgrave
Healey
P. (1998) Building Institutional Capacity through Collaborative Approaches
to urban planning, Environment and Planning
Sabatier
P.A., Jenkins-Smith H.C. (eds) (1993), Policy Change and Learning: An
Advocacy Coalition Approach, Boulder Col.: Westview Press
Sabatier
P.A. (1988), An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of
policy-oriented learning therein, in: Policy Sciences, 21, pp. 129-168