To understand and deal with real urban development problems, urban planners, designers, and managers need to combine and synthesize a variety of academic and professional knowledge. As our urban challenges grow more complex, learning how to do this effectively becomes ever more important. For educators, this means teaching students how to work in interdisciplinary settings, i.e. how to jointly discover the different disciplinary dimensions of an urban problem, and how to reflectively design courses of action. In this paper, we explore and evaluate the components of such interdisciplinary experiential learning, develop a framework to design and analyse this type of courses, and use it to position and evaluate a specific urban development management course. Results show that, by performing and reflecting upon specific professional roles, the course stimulates students to both integrate different disciplines and reflect on an array of academic and practical insights. Based on our evaluation, we discuss several didactical aspects that may help lecturers to improve their interdisciplinary teaching in urban planning, design, and management courses-particularly when creating learning experiences in an increasingly diverse professional, societal and educational setting.
The questions executive mayors face regarding the fulfillment of their leadership role often reveal dilemmas and paradoxes. The subject of this article is how executive mayors cope with these dilemmas and paradoxes and whether or not the selection procedure matters. It presents results of a comparison of English elected mayors' interpretations of three dilemmas and Dutch appointed mayors' expectations of those same dilemmas. The first dilemma involves the creation of a sense of community versus multiplicity of inclusions and identities. The second dilemma concerns the need for strong leadership versus the networked character of society. The third dilemma involves that strong leadership is expected, potentially leading to leaders having a false image of strength. The results show that mayors must balance the dilemmas within the boundaries set by the leadership context. Second, the directly elected mayors in England differ little from centrally appointed mayors in The Netherlands regarding their handling of the dilemmas. INTRODUCTION: DIVERSE QUESTIONS FOR MAYORAL LEADERSHIPLike other public leaders, executive mayors face many diverse questions regarding the fulfilment of their leadership role. These questions often reveal dilemmas in fulfilling that role. The necessity of coping with these dilemmas poses serious challenges to executive mayors and other public leaders. By 'executive mayors' we mean mayors with executive responsibilities, either exclusive or shared ones, and not ceremonial mayors or mayors that merely preside over council or board meetings. Despite variation in procedures for selecting mayors across Europe (Schaap et al. 2009a), the dilemmas and challenges that confront mayors are arguably quite similar. This raises the central topic of this article: how do executive mayors cope with leadership dilemmas, and does the selection procedure affect their ability to cope with them? In other words, we first studied a diversity of demands that local society poses on the mayor; secondly, we questioned how mayors as local political leaders deal with those demands and dilemmas. We finally raise the question whether directly elected mayors in England behave differently in this matter to their Dutch appointed colleagues. Put more abstractly, the issue here is how specific institutional arrangements (that is, procedures for the selection of mayors) affect relationships of mayors with their local community.From the literature, in our search for dilemmas, we selected three major dilemmas and challenges concerning mayoral leadership. We decided to focus on external dilemmas, despite the undoubted relevance of internal dilemmas (for example, the choice between creating visions for the city and being an organizational leader, as addressed by Berg 2006, p. 328). The first dilemma, then, involves the necessity of creating a sense of community (a local identity) even though multiple inclusions and multiple identities characterize local communities. The second dilemma concerns the tension between the need for strong leade...
Terwijl het geloof in de maakbaarheid van InleidingHet overheidsdiscours over de 'participatiesamenleving' veronderstelt een opmerkelijk geloof in de realiseerbaarheid van beleidsambities. Een nieuwe retoriek heeft zijn intrede gedaan die als een terminologisch wapen wordt ingezet om de vermaledijde (on)maakbaarheid van de samenleving te rationaliseren. Opvallend is dat een overheid die niet meer in maakbaarheid gelooft, veronderstelt dat de maakbaarheid, mits in handen gelegd van de maatschappij, wel perspectief biedt. Al jaren, zo niet decennia, wordt beweerd dat de maakbare samenleving niet meer bestaat. In academische kringen zijn uiteenlopende kritieken op het geloof in maakbaarheid verschenen. Zoals de beroemde analyse van Pressman & Wildavsky (1973) over wat er mis gaat in de uitvoering van goed bedachte plannen. Of de kritische beschouwing van Scott (1998) op een centrale sturing die de persoonlijke voorkeuren en waarden van autonome subjecten miskent. De theoretische consensus mag dan groot zijn, in de praktijk is de worsteling van actoren met de beperkte stuurbaarheid van de samenleving er niet minder om (Van Twist, 2010). Dat maakt de vraag 'wat kunnen we nog wel maken?' immer relevant, zowel voor de wetenschap als de praktijk. Want als we 'maakbaarheid' hebben afgezworen, betekent dit dan dat stedelijke projectresultaten geen gevolg zijn van weloverwogen beleidsplannen, maar slechts berusten op toeval? Of is nog steeds een zekere vorm van sturing mogelijk? 68 Bestuurswetenschappen 2014 (68) 3Dit artikel uit Bestuurswetenschappen is gepubliceerd door Boom Lemma uitgevers en is bestemd voor Boom uitgevers Den Haag
Social sustainability’s implementation in urban development is a complex endeavour that demands alternative forms of governance. This article draws on the capabilities approach as an evaluative framework to better understand this implementation process. Through an in-depth case comparison of two Dutch urban development projects, the study analyses how collaborative governance situations (i.e. actors, activities and phases) relate to the expansions of resident capabilities in the urban areas. The findings present three principles for a ‘capability-centred governance’ of social sustainability in urban development: (1) integrate human logic into urban governance situations (2) balance strong goal commitment with experimentalist approaches and (3) institutionalise social sustainability implementation. The article concludes that social sustainability’s implementation requires a conceptualisation in which improvements in people’s lives are not seen as the self-evident consequences of a set of place-based policy interventions, but instead as a guiding principle that should continuously be reflected upon and learned from during the different phases of urban development processes.
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