Planning and Complexity

Judith Innes
Professor Emerita of City & Regional Planning
Complexity, Networks and Regional Sustainability
Case Studies from California

Judith Innes holds a Ph.D. from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and an undergraduate degree in English from Harvard University. Her dissertation and first book looked at theory and practice of social indicators use in public policy. She has done research on the processes of planning and decision making across a wide range of substantive topics, including land use and environmental policy, water management, growth management, transportation, human rights, environmental justice and social policy. Her recent interests have focused on collaborative policy making and action at the state and regional levels. She maintains a continuing interest in how to improve the use of information in planning and public policy. She taught planning theory for many years, developing ideas through her research on communicative planning. She believes that the next agenda for planning thought and planning practice must be about how to address contemporary challenges to the traditional institutions and practices of decision making and how to develop new concepts of governance to deal with collaboration and with the many voices and competing versions of reality that confront planners today. Her most recent book, Planning with Complexity: An Introduction to Collaborative Rationality for Public Policy (Routledge/Taylor and Francis, Oxford), with David E. Booher, outlines a new theory and approach to planning.
Professor Innes’ teaching spanned courses in land use and environmental policy, urban social structure and processes in the multiethnic city, research methods for master's students and for doctoral students, introduction to planning practice, organizational behavior in government agencies, land use studios, indicators for policy and planning, contemporary theory of planning, and methods of negotiation and collaboration. Her most recent course was on metropolitan governance and planning.
From 1993 through 2003, Dr. Innes was the director of the Institute of Urban & Regional Development, a campus-wide organized research unit addressing a wide range of topics through externally funded faculty and student research. In her capacity as director she also directed the Community Partnerships office (former the University Oakland Metropolitan Forum) and was involved in managing a variety of community development efforts, action research, and community-based learning projects in partnership with localities, foundations and NGO’s.
She is author, editor or coauthor of more than 50 articles and book chapters, four books and two major monographs. Her articles have been translated into Chinese, French, Italian, and Korean. She has given presentations on her research in countries around the world.

Opening Speech

Gert de Roo
Professor in Spatial Planning
Head of Department of Spatial Planning and Environment, RU Groningen
President of AESOP, the Association of European Schools of Planning

Non-linearity and Complexity: fundamental insights in support to Spatial Planning?

Gert de Roo (1963) has been interested in non-linearity for more than 15 years. He began his academic career as environmental planner (urban health  & hygiene). Through the years his attention shifted to decision making processes, interventions and choice. The last ten to 15 years his work is conceptually and theoretically driven. His interest is on non-linearity in material, organizational and institutional environments. His research focus is on the development of decision-making models supporting choices concerning interventions within the physical environment, relating complexity thinking and planning theory, and on managing transitions of space. His book on complexity and planning, titled “A Planner’s Encounter with Complexity” (2010), is well received. Interest also goes to spatial consequences of the energy transition. His book with Klaas Jan Noorman on “Energielandschappen, de 3de generatie” [Energy landscapes, the third generation], (2011) results from this. De Roo participates in various national and international associations and organisations, all of them having in common the physical environment, quality of life, sustainability and urban development. Among others, he is the coordinator of the Aesop working group on Complexity & Planning. His also was co-chair of the International Urban Planning and Environment Association (UPE). De Roo is editor of the Ashgate Publishing Series on Urban Planning and Environment, the Ashgate Publishing Series on Planning Theory, and is the founder of the SDU series on spatial planning. See some of his latest work:

• Roo, G. de, J. Hillier & J. Van Wezemael (eds.) (2012) Complexity & Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations, Ashgate, Farnham (UK).
• Hartman, S., G. de Roo, W.S. Rauws and more (2012) Regions in Transition – Designing for adaptivity, Design and Politics # 5, 010 publishers, Rotterdam (NL).
• Roo, G. de & E.A. Silva (eds.) (2010) A Planners’ Encounter with Complexity, Ashgate, Farnham (UK).
• Roo, G. de (2010) Environmental Planning in the Netherlands – Too Good to be True; From Command-and-Control Planning towards Shared Governance, Ashgate, Farnham (UK), second edition.
• Roo, G. de, G. Porter (2007) Fuzzy Planning – The Role of Actors in an Fuzzy Governance Environment, Ashgate Publishers Ltd, Aldershot, UK.

Chair of the 10th meeting of AESOP thematic group on Complexity & Planning

Ward Rauws

Welcome address and lessons from the past

Ward Rauws is a scholar in spatial planning. He has a fascination for interactions between space and society. Based on the integration of concepts derived from complexity science, his research contributes to a more dynamic understanding of spatial development processes. The research focuses on the development of peri-urban areas, transitional zones between the urban and the rural. Central concepts in this research are transition, self-organization, evolution and path-dependency. With the aim to enhance planning strategies to deal with spatial dynamics an adaptive planning approach is explored.
Rauws is appointed at the Department of Planning and Environment, Faculty of Spatial Planning, University of Groningen. Beside his research activities he also lectures courses on spatial visioning and planning theory. More information, contact details and publications can be found at www.rug.nl/staff/w.s.rauws
He will chair the AESOP thematic group meeting in Groningen.
Latest publications:

• Roo, G. de en W.S. Rauws (2012), Positioning planning in the World of order and chaos… On perspectives, behavior and interventions in a non-linear environment. In: J.Portugali, H. Meyer, E. Stolk, E. Tan (Eds) Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age. An Overview with Implications to Urban Planning and Design, pp.207-220. Springer-Verlag, Berlijn Heidelberg
• Hartman, S., G. de Roo, W.S. Rauws and more (2012) Regions in Transition – Designing for adaptivity, Design and Politics # 5, 010 publishers, Rotterdam (NL).
• Rauws, W.S., G. de Roo Exploring transitions in the peri-urban area. Planning Theory & Practice, Vol.12:269-284