Who is We?Who is We?

Martien Kuitenbrouwer and Paul Gerretsen were asked to contribute to _Polyphonic Cities_ as part of the public research project _Values for Survival, _organised by Het Nieuwe Instituut and Caroline Nevejan, Chief Science Officer for the City of Amsterdam. As all meetings are suspended due to the pandemic, the editors have looked for alternative ways to publish their contributions.

As an alternative to the cancelled event, Martien Kuitenbrouwer and Paul Gerretsen discussed the Environment and Planning Act online. In 2021, this new environmental law will come into force in the Netherlands, replacing and streamlining an enormous tangle of earlier laws and requirements regarding the built environment. In principle, it will enable municipalities to make their own comprehensive environmental plans. At the same time, however, Dutch municipalities must deal with increasingly complex issues - not only existing ones such as mobility, accessibility, clean drinking water and safety, but also newer objectives including social inclusivity, the circular economy, energy transitioning and ecological regeneration.

Added to all this is the increasing time pressure of the climate crisis, which calls for different approaches than local governments are accustomed to. What are the pitfalls here? What processes, instruments and other conditions are needed for them to succeed? Extracts from the conversation are published below.

Martien Kuitenbrouwer: Many local governments see themselves as the heart of the spatial development process. This leads to the assumption that vision development can be steered within the municipal domain, but in fact, they are partners in much larger, more complex processes. This is acnowledged in theory but isn't properly incorporated into their instruments and methods. What's important is that municipalities know which process they can influence, and how best to do that.

The instruments of local government are mainly aimed at risk management - at knowing, controlling, and predicting circumstances - but questions regarding environmental vision are characterised by uncertainty and complex interdependence. One example is the Port of Amsterdam, which wants to seriously shape energy transitioning. It has space left over, and as coal is on its way out, the port is keen to accommodate innovative energy suppliers. Permits must be applied for from the department of environmental planning, which can only issue them on the basis of 'proven technology' that doesn't yet exist. At the vision level, everyone agrees on the need for innovation, but the policy framework focuses on risk management, offering no room for experimentation. At the moment, there aren't enough instruments that offer an alternative, and that function in these complex, interdependent circumstances characterised by uncertainty.

PG: I recognise what you're saying, but there's more to it than that. Cities and their governmental services generally have a good grasp of the transition challenges, but these questions, both in terms of scale and complexity, transcend the capacity of smaller municipalities in particular. This is to some extent the fault of the national government which, since 2008 (but also before then), considerably weakened municipalities in terms of their vision-forming capacities. For 20 years, the government had been saying that visions get in the way. At the same time, they also put a lot of effort into decentralising everything that had to do with spatial planning.

Provinces are assigned an important role but have in fact been searching for ways to take it up. In the denser parts of the Netherlands, the province is hardly allowed to take up a role. In my experience, only cities on the scale of Leiden, or bigger, are able to go through this process of vision development, and to properly organise their relationships with their environment.

PG: In this complex tangle where no one - not even an expert - really knows what's happening, I find it interesting and hopeful that very basic questions recur. What kind of area do you actually want to be? What kind of core values are important? I find that very inspiring. Leiden, for example, did that very strongly in its discussions with its neighbouring municipalities, and that formulation of shared values has really led to a restart of their relationships.

MK: That's a very good example of how a different process of vision forming can really work. The question it starts with is not, what does the future look like?' But, what do we all have in the present?' This is becoming increasingly crucial in dealing with complexity and rarely gets the attention it deserves.

PG: I can also see how long those kinds of collaborative processes take, and how dependent they are on the energy of a small group of people who sometimes want to work on these things outside of their own responsibilities. It's very fragile, actually, and the urgency is rapidly increasing. The law could also be improved on in this regard - for example, so that this essential cooperation is rewarded in the form of provincial support.

MK: I'd like to go one step further. Cooperation is necessary, but the crucial insight is that parties depend on each other to get things done, and in some cases this penny still hasn't dropped. In addition to creating a vision, attention must also be paid to relationships - to the question of how the parties are going to do things together. If I had to mention an instrument that's useful for the processes that need to be gone through, I would say it's a well-designed relational process. Commonly formulated values play a basic role in this.

PG: I'd like to mention another pitfall - a problematic development of our political culture. Leaders feel the need to project that they have their processes and instruments all in order, but at the same time they seem less and less able to realise what needs to be done. With the energy transition, the Netherlands is now in the last place in Europe. It's hardly imaginable in this small, rich, well-organised and well-equipped country. There's a perception that the Netherlands is well on its way with regional energy and climate agreements, but the distance between perception and reality is becoming so great that meaningful discussions with participants outside the government are increasingly complicated.

MK: An enormous pitfall indeed. But there are other examples as well; look at the reaction to the coronavirus. It was clear that immediate action had to be taken while a lot of data was still missing. Pretty soon, this was widely recognised and, subsequently, a set of collective rules was introduced and widely supported and followed.

We don't know what we're getting at, but we do know how we're going to do it together. This translates into processes of uncertainty in the transition of energy sources - nobody knows what the technological developments will be, what the value of hydrogen will become, or exactly what China will bet on. However, what we can know - as parties that depend on each other to make things happen - is how we want to do things together. If the situation is uncertain, we have to work on relational certainty, on mutual trust. I see that as a type of instrument for getting through complex, interdependent processes.

PG: In addition to feeling our way through these interdependent processes, a lot of serious factual expertise is needed if such a process is to really lead anywhere. There's agreement on the terms of the energy transitioning, but no shared picture of what the real scope of the task is. The margin within which things can still be steered is getting smaller every year, increasing the importance of the relational side, while factual knowledge is still essential from the very beginning for the process of creating a vision.

MK: In the relational approach, knowledge development is also very important. It boils down to a form of joint, pragmatic, and informed practical research that starts from the present, and that questions our assumptions. Collaborative fact-finding plays a crucial role in this. In my view, municipalities should also take the lead in setting up a process through which participants can discover what external or self-developed knowledge they jointly rely on. This could be knowledge from an external expert, but it could also be knowledge that you build up together.

Vision development is necessary here in order to identify wishes about the future, but it doesn't provide a blueprint. In additional to join fact-finding, an assessment framework of jointly formulated values is also needed to develop a vision into concrete plans. Projections of the future must be constantly adjusted under the influence of new knowledge, technologies, and other developments, but shared values are much more stable, providing an assessment framework with which to make a practical choice between various options. Such an approach can break through the risk-averse reflexes of municipalities precisely because it is extremely practical.

PG: I'm a little reluctant to expect everything from process instruments. It's also important to bring knowledge and skills back to these governmental bodies; we really need to invest in the municipal apparatus that can cope with these challenges.

MK: Agreed! Governments need to have sufficient knowledge and expertise, but I don't think they have to be authorities themselves. However, I do think that they are the primary partner for organising knowledge development and a process that creates confidence in certain expertise. On the basis of these, sustainable choices can be made on complex issues, but there's a need for instruments that do not yet exist - our current framework of standards also need to be revised. How do you re-value space? What is space, actually?

PG: Exactly. If we retain all the certainties of the past, we won't get there. Not even part of the way.

PG: At the same time, I'm also experiencing that in reality there's a lot more of it than anyone thought. For example, Westblaak in Rotterdam is being converted into a park because everyone sees the urgency. It's such a radical decision being taken in a ​'car city' like Rotterdam, responding to all the questions other than those facilitating the cars. It's very interesting to see that this kind of thing can be done in a short period of time.

MK: You see that more often in Rotterdam than in Amsterdam. Amsterdam really needs a crisis - a generally perceived urgency like what's happening now with the collapsing quay walls in the city centre, giving a tremendous boost to the redevelopment of the Red Light District that's been under discussion for years. A good crisis is indispensable for a number of issues.

PG: Whatever else you can say about the corona crisis, the ability to effect change quickly seems to have been tapped into!

Martien Kuitenbrouwer has a background in public administration as a civil servant and local councillor. She has worked at the University of Amsterdam for six years, where she also teaches and researches policymaking for complex issues. Her agency Public Mediation provides guidance for collaborations deadlocked in the public domain, often in the context of area planning.

Paul Gerretsen works for Vereniging Deltametropool, an association committed to the sustainable development of cities in the Netherlands in collaboration with local governments. In thinking about the future, Deltametropool investigates how spatial approaches can be integrated from a design perspective, with issues often transcending municipal and sometimes even national borders.

Moderation and text: Klaas Kuitenbrouwer