This study deals with the transformative potential of planning conflicts. It explores the tools different critical planning theories present for analysing and understanding everyday land use conflicts and their transformative potential. Next to the two approaches that dominate current planning theoretical debates regarding this topic, the collaborative planning approach and agonistic pluralistic planning approach, a third approach, the agonistic disruptive approach, is juxtaposed.
Drawing on the theoretical tools provided by these three approaches, this research turns to a series of land use conflicts and analyses the dynamics that play out when people challenge the common sense on how urban land should be used and who decides how to use this land.
On societal level, it makes visible the different ways transformation can occur and highlights the relevance of conflict in this process. On a theoretical level, it brings an alternative to the dichotomizing debates between collaborative and agonistic pluralistic planning scholars.
Researcher(s): Elisabet Van Wymeersch
Commissioned by: UAntwerp, Prof. Stijn Oosterlynck, Dr. Thomas Vanoutrive
Period: Okt. 2013 – Nov. 2017