Building Coalitions: Socio-Spatial Planning as Transition Management, Mediation and Entrepreneurship for Resourceful Communities. Groningen University.
Objectives
There is a sense of urgency for transitioning to more resilient places and adapting to environmental challenges ahead (e.g. climate change, energy, food, etc.). Throughout Europe, community initiatives play a major role in fostering these transitions by building more resourceful communities from the bottom-up. These initiatives include a diversity of spontaneous actions, coalitions and physical configurations. Acknowledging their transformative capacity, spatial planners and policy makers look for ways to stimulate and facilitate these initiatives, moving closer to a role as transition managers, mediators and socio-spatial entrepreneurs. Exploring how planners can do this, this research project goes beyond the level of the individual initiative and especially analyses the emerging socio-physical patterns community initiatives give rise to. The objective of the project is to analyse - from an international comparative perspective - the drivers behind these emerging patterns, their foreseen and unforeseen consequences, and the enabling and constraining effects of associated institutional arrangements. Building on this analysis, the project will also scrutinize the potential of adaptive planning repertoires in supporting the rise of more resourceful communities in dealing with environmental challenges.
Expected Results
Transdisciplinary international analysis of spatial planning; Knowledge on the role of planners in building adaptive community strategies; Planning guidelines on how to support new coalitions, arrangements and adaptive planning repertoires.