Books
This short book can be of use to anyone interested in development, market and public sector reform, public administration, politics and law. We develop a theory that clarifies the nature and functioning of governance evolutions. As a novel theory of governance, EGT understands governance as radically evolutionary, which implies that all elements of governance are subject to evolution, that these elements co-evolve and that many of them are the product of governance itself. Theoretically, the approach draws on a wide array of sources: institutional & development economics, systems theories, post-structuralism, actor- network theories, planning theory and legal studies.
Evolutionary Governance Theory
Theory and Applications
This edited volume presents empirical studies and theoretical reflections on Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT), its most important concepts and their interrelations. Through this book we learn how communities understand themselves and their environment and why they create the complex structures and processes we analyze as governance paths. The contributors also reflect on the possibilities and limitations of steering, intervention, management and development in a world continuously in flux. It bridges the gap between more fundamental and philosophical accounts of the social sciences and applied studies, offering theoretical advancements as well as practical recommendations.
Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design
The Encyclopedia provides a nuanced overview of the key concepts of urban and regional planning and design. Embracing a broad understanding of planning and design within and beyond the professions, it examines what planners and designers can do in and for a community.
Covering both classic and novel planning theories, it adopts an evolutionary perspective, reflecting on the changing meanings of terms over time. Featuring over 140 contributions drawn from diverse fields, it highlights the cross-disciplinary nature of planning and design. Contributors give practical insight into the field, and advance scientific knowledge and public conversation on planning and design.
Resource Communities; past legacies and future pathways
Resource communities have complicated relationships with the past, and this makes their relationship with the future, and the future itself, also complicated. The book explores the legacies of boom and bust economies, social memory, trauma and identity, the interactions between power and knowledge and the implications for adaptive governance. Linking the past, present and futures of resource communities in a new way, the book concludes by providing practical recommendations for breaking open dependencies on the past, including deepening awareness of the social, economic and environmental contexts, establishing strong governance and developing community strategies, plans and policies for the future.
Crafting strategies for sustainable local development -a community guide
We wrote this book with small communities in mind. Many small places share similar challenges in re-imagining their future and we believe community strategy can help. Crafting a strategy, envisioning a long-term future can take many forms. The message in this guide is simple: strategy is not a form but rather a function. Community strategy needs to coordinate action towards an envisioned future. That future needs to connect to the stories, the values, the ways of working together in a community, without simply perpetuating them.
Lakeshore Living
We present an approach to lakeshore living that addresses the need to create rich, sustainable places and communities on the water, where both the loon and the family find a place and where the cabin can be handed down with integrity to the grandchildren. Fragile shorelands require care, and that caring comes from knowledge, experience, and an environmental ethic. While many factors affect the quality of lakes and lakeshore living, property owners and local communities do not have to wait until policies are perfect: the design approach advocated here can be applied in any place people living lakeside can get together and collaborate. .
. The approach presented here is proactive and context sensitive: new designs have to fit the existing ecological, cultural, and policy landscapes. Development is always re-development in this sense. The authors introduce the reader step-by-step to this approach and carefully discuss leverage points that can be helpful in implementation and system change.
Local Cosmopolitanism
This book offers a unique perspective on cosmopolitanism, examining the ways it is constructed and reconstructed on the small scale in an ongoing process of matching the local with the global, a process entailing mutual transformation. Based on a wide range of literatures and a series of case studies, it analyzes the different versions and functions of cosmopolitanism and points to the need to critically re-examine current conceptions of globalization. Of interest to political scientists, anthropologists, economists, geographers and philosophers, this book offers an insightful contribution to theories of globalization and global/ local interaction, bringing the local discursive mechanics into sharper focus and also emphasizing the semi- autonomous character of narrative constructions of self and community in a larger world.
Boom and Bust
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 their own community, understand how it got where it is today, and ultimately, identify possible ways forward. We encourage analysis of historical paths and policy contexts to better understand what strategies might work (or not) in a community.
Rural Development
This book offers a unique perspective on rural development, by discussing the most influential perspectives and rendering their risks and benefits visible. We present students, researchers, community leaders, politicians, concerned citizens and development organizations the conceptual tools to understand how things are organized now, which development path has already been taken, and how things could possibly move in a different direction. We pay special attention to the different roles of expert and local knowledge in rural development. Crafting development strategies requires understanding how new knowledge can fit-in and work out in governance. We elucidates how modes of governance and rural development are inextricably tied and believe a community is much better placed to choose direction when it understands these ties.
Amerika
Via een caleidoscopische verzameling verhalen doet planoloog en filosoof Kristof Van Assche verslag van zijn verblijf in de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Wat is er aan de hand met dit continent dat we door de verkiezing van Donald Trump in één keer niet meer goed begrijpen? Met bijzondere aandacht voor landschap en gemeenschap schetst de auteur een verrassend veelkeurig beeld van de politieke en culturele geschiedenis van Noord-Amerika. En van de verhalen en dromen van de Amerikanen. Het vooroordeel dat daarbinnen door diep wantrouwen tegen de overheid nauwelijks ruimte is voor een langetermijnbeleid voor de ruimtelijk inrichting, blijkt waar – al lukt het Van Assche telkens weer om uitzonderingen op te sporen.
The Bio-politics of
the Danube Delta
This book is a contribution to academic and practical efforts to develop a richer understanding of human-nature interactions in places that are equally shaped by ecological, historical, and political forces. The Danube Delta—crossing political boundaries, an ethnic and cultural melting pot, a center, and a margin—serves as a paradigmatic case to develop more adequate understandings of the complex and contested landscapes that form much of our contemporary world. Bridging disciplines and issues, this book demonstrates how more complex images of nature, people, culture, and history are a prerequisite in the quest for sustainable development, the restoration of damaged eco-systems, and the inclusion of marginalized communities.
City Culture and City Planning
in Tbilisi; where Europe and Asia Meet
