Types of Roles:
Role of Planning = an ‘institutional technology’
Role of Planners = professionals acting
Engineer
- Mindset: ‘Yes we can’, after the flood in 1953. They are
rational-decision makers, and want to find the right solution. It is
rooted in modernism > understanding through models and producing
certainty (mechanised, ordered). Science and technology guide
efficient planning and implementing. Selecting the best of all
alternatives and optimising towards the given goal (technical
expertness). Engineer is a positivist. ‘Will this solution actually function
as required?”
- Tools & Products: Scenarios, blueprints, solutions, cost-benefit
analysis. Find the right solution based on calculations. If you cannot
predict the outcome, you need more data. Integrate ‘wicked problems’
into decision-making models (f.e. Flood risk management) > by
quantitative methods, system analysis and linear approaches.
- Behavioural Patterns: Reaching a goal by optimising means. Measuring,
calculating, creating, comparing, modelling etc.
- Frameworks & Contexts: Deterministic decision situations in which all
outcomes are known. Reality today is acknowledged as much more
complex and engineers work with other roles. They work with natural/
geological conditions as clay and peat require extensive techniques and
water flows everywhere. Engineering is where power and money come
into play
,Administrator
- Mindset: ‘I ensure good governance.’ They work within an
administrative territory (municipality, province f.e.). Different rights
and different demands meet on limited available land. There is the sight
of a bureaucrat (following public tasks) and that of a lawyer (following
legal foundations). Legal certainty is a major good, ‘I have a duty for all
of the Netherlands.’
- Tools & Products: The level defines the tools and products. There are
local zoning plans or strategic visions. Many laws have influence on
spatial planning, for example the land consolidation act. Another tool is
public-private partnerships, which relies on mutual dependence. Main
concern is to come to a decision, which involves a political process.
- Behavioural Patterns: Arranging, controlling, safeguarding, protecting,
discussing etc. Ensuring sound processes between citizens and binding
decisions (bureaucrat) and controlling them or errors in their
enforcement (lawyer). Principles for institutional processes are
efficacy, accountability, legitimacy, fairness or inclusiveness.
- Frameworks & Contexts: Law defines how we decide on the use of land
or changes of land uses. Planners work in a specific legal framework,
either a common law system or a civil one (more prescriptive and
predictable, less flexible). It moves through all layers of the
constitution. Frameworks also relate to the daily planning actions and
routines. Goals of the Environmental and Planning Act are faster
decision making, better solutions, more transparent, simplification of
the rules and more flexibility.
, Governance triangle : Administrator is on top of the pyramid > governance through
coordination.
Principles of good governance:
- Duty of care
- Obligation of state reasons
- Fair play
- Prohibition of misuse of powers
- Prohibition of arbitrary action
- Equality
- Protection of legitimate expectations
Bureaucrats are connected to the executive, lawyers to the judiciary and they
both are connected to the legislature.
Role of Planning = an ‘institutional technology’
Role of Planners = professionals acting
Engineer
- Mindset: ‘Yes we can’, after the flood in 1953. They are
rational-decision makers, and want to find the right solution. It is
rooted in modernism > understanding through models and producing
certainty (mechanised, ordered). Science and technology guide
efficient planning and implementing. Selecting the best of all
alternatives and optimising towards the given goal (technical
expertness). Engineer is a positivist. ‘Will this solution actually function
as required?”
- Tools & Products: Scenarios, blueprints, solutions, cost-benefit
analysis. Find the right solution based on calculations. If you cannot
predict the outcome, you need more data. Integrate ‘wicked problems’
into decision-making models (f.e. Flood risk management) > by
quantitative methods, system analysis and linear approaches.
- Behavioural Patterns: Reaching a goal by optimising means. Measuring,
calculating, creating, comparing, modelling etc.
- Frameworks & Contexts: Deterministic decision situations in which all
outcomes are known. Reality today is acknowledged as much more
complex and engineers work with other roles. They work with natural/
geological conditions as clay and peat require extensive techniques and
water flows everywhere. Engineering is where power and money come
into play
,Administrator
- Mindset: ‘I ensure good governance.’ They work within an
administrative territory (municipality, province f.e.). Different rights
and different demands meet on limited available land. There is the sight
of a bureaucrat (following public tasks) and that of a lawyer (following
legal foundations). Legal certainty is a major good, ‘I have a duty for all
of the Netherlands.’
- Tools & Products: The level defines the tools and products. There are
local zoning plans or strategic visions. Many laws have influence on
spatial planning, for example the land consolidation act. Another tool is
public-private partnerships, which relies on mutual dependence. Main
concern is to come to a decision, which involves a political process.
- Behavioural Patterns: Arranging, controlling, safeguarding, protecting,
discussing etc. Ensuring sound processes between citizens and binding
decisions (bureaucrat) and controlling them or errors in their
enforcement (lawyer). Principles for institutional processes are
efficacy, accountability, legitimacy, fairness or inclusiveness.
- Frameworks & Contexts: Law defines how we decide on the use of land
or changes of land uses. Planners work in a specific legal framework,
either a common law system or a civil one (more prescriptive and
predictable, less flexible). It moves through all layers of the
constitution. Frameworks also relate to the daily planning actions and
routines. Goals of the Environmental and Planning Act are faster
decision making, better solutions, more transparent, simplification of
the rules and more flexibility.
, Governance triangle : Administrator is on top of the pyramid > governance through
coordination.
Principles of good governance:
- Duty of care
- Obligation of state reasons
- Fair play
- Prohibition of misuse of powers
- Prohibition of arbitrary action
- Equality
- Protection of legitimate expectations
Bureaucrats are connected to the executive, lawyers to the judiciary and they
both are connected to the legislature.
