From Social Innovation to Spatial Development Analysis and Planning

The politics of co-implementation and their potential in shaping egalitarian cities

“…According to Wildavsky (1973), during implementation, plans are adapted to socio-political changes that often follow the development and legitimization process, creating space for various co-producers to invigorate their political agency and materialize their claims. Van den Broeck (2010, 2011; Van den Broeck and Servillo, 2012, De Blust and Van den Broeck, 2019) furthers this by arguing that planning actors enter various episodes of dialectical actor-institutional dynamics beyond (stages of) plan-making and implementation. Hence, implementation manifests itself as a politically loaded process that is driven by various actors—including co-producers—with (a)symmetric power relations that are determined by a dynamically changing and multi-tier political climate and by the subsequent distribution of governance roles within urban systems.…”

“…To answer these questions, we mainly rely on theories of co-production, planning politics, democracy and governance. Insights from co-production (Albrechts, 2013; Bovaird, 2007; Joshi and Moore, 2004; Mitlin, 2008; Ostrom, 1996; Watson, 2014) and planning politics (Albrechts, 2020; De Blust and Van Den Broeck, 2019; Gualini, 2001; Healey, 1999; Moulaert, 2005; Servillo and Van Den Broeck, 2012; Van Den Broeck, 2008, 2010, 2011; Van Den Broeck and Verachtert, 2016; Wildavsky, 1973) cast light on the agential features of planners and the power dynamics of the wider political context in planning processes. Democracy theoreticians (Galli, 2011; Swyngedouw, 2009; Swyngedouw and Wilson, 2014) elaborate on the political conditions that hinder or foster democratic urban processes, while theories of socially innovative governance (Moulaert, 2020; Moulaert et al, 2019) analyze how new initiatives create the basis for socio-political transformation by activating and further democratizing bottom-linked governance arrangements.…”

Towards a Sustainable Metamorphosis of a Small Island Tourism: Dynamizing Capacity Building, Alternating Governance Arrangements, and Emerging Political Bargaining Power

“…The research mobilises social innovation because it focuses on collective problematisation and outlines a multi-actor approach. This will eventually build a framework for innovative socio-spatial planning approaches that are linked to the governance approach [42]. As a theory, social innovation elaborates on opposition or resistance to the existence of community exclusion that leads to conflict due to injustice regarding economic, social, and political aspects.…”

“…It contributes to a deeper understanding of spatial planning's institutional embeddedness, focuses on collaborative problematisation and expands on the multi-actor method. It establishes the framework for a socially innovative planning strategy that can result in a bottom-linked approach to governance [42]-a critical idea of social innovation [21]. Bottom-linked governance is defined as a heterarchical governance model that brings together social-innovation actors and institutional enablers of social innovation, prioritising network self-organisation and solidarity-based collective action [34,[47][48][49].…”

“…We study how agents in/outside the island were active in community capacity building and other activities, and how these affect existing institutional frames (norms, values, and rules) in the island's community and alter current governance. Therefore, qualitative data analysis is appropriate here, since it can characterise the acquired data from the case study, permits us to investigate it in detail, and enables us to draw a reliable conclusion from the data collection [42,55].…”