Abstract
“This book makes a case for the power and importance of the narrative, emotional, and symbolic aspects of spatial planning” (p. 246). In Dutch and English, the editors of Strong Stories—How the Dutch Are Reinventing Spatial Planning present a theoretical planning concept: strong stories. The authors reflect on practical planning examples throughout the Netherlands, selecting many water-related planning cases, such as river bypasses, polder developments, etc. After introducing the concept of strong stories in the first section, the book presents sections on knowledge and participation, planning with stories, anchoring stories, and finally on responsibility for quality and democracy, with the concluding section summing up the findings.
In the introductory section, “The Power of Strong Stories,” the editors state that “without a strong story there can be no successful planning” (p. 13). They reflect on the roles of planners and of their expertise in the planning process, presenting a definition of planning that emphasizes the key roles of communication and coordination (p. 14). The editors conclude this section with the explanation that strong stories lead to spatial quality by tying together visions, knowledge, and democratic legitimacy.
After this introduction by the editors, four sections with a similar structure follow. Each section consists of a general introduction and some case studies presented by Hajer, van’t Klooster, and Grijzen. Different authors in independent essays then reflect on the overall topic of the section (without referring to the case studies). This structure shows the inductive way of elaborating on the idea of strong stories. Methodologically, however, this structure is not always pursued consistently—instead of using the same case studies in different sections for discussion from various facets, some case studies just run through all the sections while others are just used selectively in particular sections. The selection of cases is not well reasoned either. The essays do not all reflect on the case studies presented by the editors and sometimes present their own cases (e.g., in Hemel’s essay).
The section titled “The Logic of Knowledge and Participation” shows with four case studies how different forms of stakeholder participation have led to different forms of knowledge embedding in the processes. The section is rounded off by an essay by Laws, Verloo, and Poorter that proposes “joint fact-finding plus”—a method to gather knowledge based on interests rather than positions—as a solution for coping with knowledge uncertainties in policy processes. Another essay, by During, comes to the conclusion that planning needs to incorporate views and knowledge beyond the networks involved, and that can be achieved through strong stories in planning.
The following section, “Planning with Stories,” offers five water-related case studies—presented by the three editors. Hemel then discusses in an essay a sixth case study about the spatial development of the Amsterdam metropolitan area. In the second essay of this section, De Jonge makes a plea for design dialogues as integrative discussions. At the end of this section, Forester adds a third essay and reflects on planners’ ability as well as their inability to cope with complexity.
The next section is titled “Anchoring Stories in the Political Process.” Again, the main theme is illustrated with practical case studies from the Netherlands, supported by an essay from Kuijpers-Linde about anchoring the knowledge of environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures in Dutch strategic plans for better recognition of environmental issues in the planning process. Mommaas emphasizes in his essay the importance to combine knowledge institutions and development agencies.
In the section “Responsibility for Quality and Democracy,” the authors reflect on the role of public authorities and external managers in planning processes with respect to knowledge management. In particular, the threats of engaging external parties for process coordination and policy articulation are discussed—for example, that continuity of the policy process is not guaranteed. Then the editors present a case study of the Arnhem-Nijmegen region wherein they highlight the different roles of private (external) and public parties. Two essays follow. One is by Dammers, in which he calls for providing more capacity to researchers at regional departments so they can better use knowledge from national and scientific institutions at the regional policy-making level. The second essay, written by van Tatenhove, argues for changing the role civil servants play in regional projects. They should, the author argues, connect and interweave narratives of all the parties involved in policy processes; however, van Tatenhove does not provide a strategy how to prepare and empower civil servants for this task.
In the concluding section, the editors formulate ten statements about planning with strong stories. For example, planners should not fear complexity. Instead, many forms of knowledge need to be acknowledged, and that planning is to be perceived as a theater. Finally, they portray the role of the planner as one that brings together coalitions of stakeholders who create strong stories.
The authors strongly focus on planning processes in their contributions, but they do not link these to the planning results. What could be regarded as a weakness of the book actually reveals an important feature of the Dutch planning culture: namely, that the Dutch polder model—a process-oriented culture of deliberation and consultation—is also inherent in spatial planning. The book illustrates this feature by telling a strong story. Nevertheless, readers should not expect a comprehensive story about Dutch planning, which would have required some more elaboration on the polder model, the active land policy, the planning system, and the history of planning in the Netherlands.
Methodologically, the book pursues an inductive approach: the concept of strong stories is developed out of case studies instead of deriving from a broad literature review or from scientific methods. Unfortunately, the illustrations do not always support the argument in the text, and the English version is sometimes translated imprecisely. But although the book has some methodological weaknesses (as for example the inconsistency regarding the case studies pointed out earlier), it can give an international readership some impression of the Dutch planning culture. The concept of strong stories will certainly be of value to those interested in planning theory, as the idea of strong stories can add to the discussion on postpositivistic planning.
A further interesting, but not central, aspect of the book for the international planning community is the summary of particular developments in Dutch planning with respect to the public–private divide (or rather nondivide). In describing the advantages of “good network governance, . . . the rise of network governance” is celebrated, and how it “changed the traditional roles of planners” in the Netherlands (p. 260). Many different issues are discussed in the book with respect to strong stories—but a critical remark on legitimating such stories is missing. Thus, between the lines, it becomes apparent how uncritical the Dutch spatial planning practice as well as the authors are with respect to the issue of the legitimacy of planning decisions.
At first glance, the concept of strong stories recalls the idea of planning with doctrines (Van der Valk and Faludi 1997) or perspectival incrementalism (Kurth 1999). But the authors explain that “strong stories are more than visions of the future” (p. 294); their power rather lies “in how it is taken up by the relevant actors” (p. 293). The section about the role of knowledge and planning reminds the reviewers of the work of Forester on planning theory (2004), planning and information (1982), and planning and emotions (1996). In pursuing an actor-oriented approach to planning, including the function of information and emotions, the authors contribute to the postpositivist discussion in planning theory on the roles of planners and planning professionals (Allmendinger 2002). The stance in the book is a further argument against the 1970s picture of planners as engineers: “an alluring prospect for the future . . . enables good spatial planning to rise above tightly-knit organizational processes and the logic of Excel sheets: vision, imagination, the persuasive power of a good story about spatial trends” (p. 13). However, the editors’ definition of spatial planning appears as a mathematical expression (thus, in an engineering style): “Planning (P) is a constant repetition of articulation (A) and coordination (C), or P = (A+C)n” (p. 14). Although the ideas are quite interesting and relevant, such controversial statements are unfortunately not always well connected with the academic discussions in the field. This issue needs further discussion and more reflection.
The editors promise to provide “a new perspective on the significance of knowledge contribution, citizen participation, and process supervision” (p. 246). This new perspective is the concept of strong stories. The perspective shows that the idea of planning doctrines—as Van der Valk and Faludi (1997) described—is carried on in Dutch planning practice. In that light, reinventing spatial planning is not only a puzzling but an intriguing part of the book’s title: puzzling because planning is presented as a linear process, not a reinvention, from Geddes’ Survey Analyses Plan to the Dutch polder model. And the title becomes intriguing when one realizes that it might refer to the near future. From the reviewers’ perspective, strong stories are an interesting theoretical planning concept. If the story, which the editors evoke, is an expectation of the future, planning will certainly become an exciting business.