Strategies, Processes and Plans

Abstract

The institutional design of governance forms, and of policy-driven and planning routines and styles, is a dynamic endeavour which evolves in interaction with local contingencies and external forces, in order to address the agendas of those with the power to shape the design. The resultant structures and processes generate an institutional capacity which may enhance or inhibit the ability stakeholders with concerns about local environmental change of the kind outlined in Part II. In Part II, it was argued that, to pursue their social, economic and environmental agendas in the social contexts of contemporary urban regions, there are shared interests in finding forms of governance which enable discussion among these disparate stakeholders and their networks. This leads to an interest among many stakeholders in the design of institutional processes which will facilitate collaboration, mutual learning and consensus-building. Consensus-building thrives on openness and trust. Expanding networks of collaboration and trust provide a resource of social and intellectual capital (Innes et al., 1994; Ostrom, 1990), through which economic knowledge can flow around localities. Such social capital also encourages more people and more firms to get involved in governance activity, enriching the knowledgeability and value sensitivity of the public realm. This chapter explores the challenge of the design of processes of collaborative planning, the soft infrastructure of inclusionary argumentation, and the way this can contribute to building social and intellectual capital.