This paper examines how land use conflicts in renewable energy expansion can be addressed through regional planning. These conflicts often arise from competing spatial claims and limited local support. Drawing on a case study of the Regional Energy Strategy (RES) in Flevoland, the Netherlands, the study applies conformance-performance planning framework to assess how different regional policy approaches influence spatial outcomes and governance processes. Empirical evidence is derived from document analysis and 18 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders across multiple governance levels. The analysis explores how regionalisation reshapes stakeholder dynamics, procedural legitimacy, and institutional coordination. Theoretically, the paper contributes to debates on multi-level governance by identifying the conditions under which regional strategies can mitigate land use tensions in energy transitions. Findings show that regional planning can contribute to redistributing benefits and risks, potentially lowering conflict intensity, and enable procedural legitimacy. However, the outcomes are shaped by the design of governance structures, institutional flexibility, and coordination across multiple governance levels.

An analysis of differences and similarities of actors involved in land policy throughout Europe is the main topic of this chapter. The analysis shows that despite the differences in context situations that there are many similarities in the behavior of public, as well as private actors. We discovered that during the long running time of land development projects- programs and/or processes all over Europe, the actors involved depend heavily upon each other. This interdependency limits the scope of choices for each actors, which can be considered the main cause for this similarity. On top of that, the sum of all limiting conditions is determining the room to maneuver for actors, which is often sharply decreasing in time. This is what we would like to call the “pipe-line-effect”. The result of which is that there are little possibilities for actors to adapt to changing circumstances: all actors suffer more or less under the same ‘tyranny of the now’. During development processes all actors try to adapt to changing circumstances. At the same time there is a urgent need for (policy) consistency. Surprisingly, the case-studies show that private parties do better in that respect than public parties.

Third party use of charging infrastructure for electric buses on major passenger transport hubs offers potential to make better use of existing electricity grid capacity, especially given the current lack of grid capacity. This requires flexibility in the charging operation, which is hampered due to lacking ownership of this opportunity to share charging infrastructure. This research aims to develop understanding of the perception of drivers and barriers for stakeholder organizations (SOs) to initiate collaboration on flexible use of this infrastructure. A survey under 141 respondents was applied to collect these perceptions on the drivers and barriers, the most logical initiator and motives behind these choices. Results indicate that presence of sufficient benefits, fitting organizational culture and entrepreneurial freedom are main drivers for initiation of collaboration. No specific barriers stood out. Furthermore, public parties – specifically the transport authority – are indicated as most logical initiator. The paper shows that challenge for initiating collaboration lies in the unclarity around the mandate to take initiative. Although the presence of mandate is not seen as main driver for one’s own organization, it is seen as reason why other organizations should be the initiator. The lacking overall mandate for collaboration causes inertia, and thereby is the reason why the fire is not lit yet. Fortunately, this challenge of ownerless opportunities in complex SO-environments can be overcome, but it does require a new way of looking at how infrastructure is applied and managed.

Some urban megaprojects are framed as a strategic move to achieve broader economic benefits. Project proponents often claim that adverse socio-environmental effects are mitigated accordingly and that all aspects of sustainability are integrated successfully. Using a case study of the Bali Mandara highway, this study drew upon the politics of scale to investigate multiple frames of these effects and mitigation efforts on various scales (and levels). Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and secondary data sources were collected to explore and examine the variety and mix of the scale frames representing all sustainability aspects. Words and phrases related to scale-related issues were identified and tracked in the development phases (i.e., pre-construction, construction, and usage). The study shows that different stakeholders used specific preferred scale types to frame the effects and mitigation efforts, and these frames evolved throughout the project phases. Our findings substantiate that limited scale choices can occur from a lack of open process, resulting in a limited representation of all scale-related issues affecting the sustainability of the highway project development. This paper adds insights into the use of scale to explore the broad effects of urban megaprojects and calls for more transparent and accountable impact audits.

Is it possible for flexible applications of infrastructure to help cope with the demand for space? In this paper we tried to answer how different forms of flexibility can impact the societal costs of infrastructure development on passenger transport hubs. For this explorative research option, the value is used to determine these impacts. It is applied to charging infrastructure for electric buses at the Amsterdam Central Station. It shows the challenge in setting up a collective approach towards attaining the optimal societal impact, due to limited knowledge on the potential of flexibility, the complexity in setting up a win-win for each stakeholder based on their different interests and the lacking ownership of the overall collective impact that can be made. The remaining question is, will there be a way out?

Background: How can flexible applications of the space and infrastructure of urban distribution centers (UDCs) be organized to help lower demands on space and infrastructure in cities? The application of flexible use of space and infrastructure can improve the efficiency of a UDC, but the challenge lies in the organization of the application of flexibility. Methods: The goal of this research was to identify how flexibility can be organized to impact overall societal benefits for the stakeholders in UDCs. This explorative and qualitative research was applied to the case of Food Center Amsterdam. Results: The results show that stakeholders have a limited understanding of the potential that flexibility can offer; that there is a need for an independent organizing capability and responsibility for collaboration on flexibility; and that a clear way to divide costs, benefits, risks, and opportunities in relation to stakeholder interests is required. Conclusions: Overall, flexibility shows potential to improve the efficient use of infrastructure and space. Further research avenues include the initiation of an organizing capability and distribution method for costs, benefits, risks, and opportunities between stakeholders. The remaining question is, can we get this organized in order to do more with less?

The practice of land value capture (LVC) from collectively owned rural land is undergoing changes in rural land marketisation as local governments are constrained in their power to expropriate rural land. Previous studies have either overestimated short-term rural LVC losses or exaggerated long-term urban LVC increases, while generally neglecting long-term rural LVC changes. Here, we present an analytical framework via the prism of policy instruments to make sense of the evolving practice of rural LVC. Our empirical evidence from China considers disparities in practice and outcomes across scales of governance and between inland–coastal and urban–rural settings, based on 145 semi-structured interviews from 430 transaction cases. We offer insight into discussions concerning stakeholder relationships in rural LVC. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

The transition to a renewable energy future requires the extensive expansion of current high voltage grids. Due to the amount of land needed for expansion, issues related to land use have led to increased grid development opposition among landowners which in turn leads to significant project planning and budget overruns. Yet knowledge about why landowners support or object to high voltage grid development is limited. In this study, we use a theory on pluralism to uncover and categorize the multiplicity of motivations of 200 individual landowners in the Netherlands. Our results indicate that only a small number of landowners who oppose grid development focus on individual monetary gain through compensation for limits on their land use. Furthermore, most landowners find the fair and equal distribution of both the advantages and disadvantages of such limits more important than individual financial compensation. As such, overcoming contentious land use issues related to high voltage grid development by way of high individual financial compensation isn't the only solution.

Flood risk management nowadays affects landowners behind dikes, broadening the group of stakeholders. Interactive governance provides an approach to negotiate and balance the diverging interests of stakeholders involved. One of the benefits of interactive governance is creating satisfaction through involvement, making stakeholders less prone to taking legal action against implementation. This paper tests this assumption through standardized quantitative longitudinal research, demonstrating a statistically positive correlation between interactive governance and stakeholder satisfaction.

Cities in EU-member states increasingly involve governmental and non-governmental stakeholders in developing strategic urban mobility plans to increase the legitimacy of policies. The question is, to what extent urban transport experts and other stakeholders acknowledge the added value of the involvement of stakeholders in a sectoral policy field as urban mobility planning? This article analyses governmental and non-governmental involvement practices of the cities of Malmo (Sweden) and Utrecht (the Netherlands) using the New Institutional Approach. Both countries strive to a large extent for more stakeholder involvement. However, urban transport professionals in both countries also explicitly emphasize the disadvantages of stakeholder involvement in urban mobility planning. According to them, non-governmental stakeholders are not able to think on the needed strategic level, groups are biased, and many other stakeholders do not feel the need to get involved in the policy process. As a consequence, policy processes often result in delays. This study shows that participation of stakeholders in the strategic urban mobility policy process is, according to professionals working in the field, not always the panacea that many scholars expect.

Governments all over the world experience institutional conflicts in transforming their fossil-based energy system into a more renewable one. Between national, regional, and local tiers of government tensions rise on meeting renewable energy objectives. Under the institutional arrangement of subsidiarity, decisions on renewable energy policy objectives are taken on the international level, while the implementation of policy increasingly becomes a local responsibility. In this paper, we use an institutional framework to analyze the tensions in interactions between tiers of governments on four cases of Dutch wind energy policy implementation. The analysis offers insights into how tensions emerge in top-down wind energy policy implementation in the Netherlands. Within the four cases, tensions between government tiers are found, serving to constrain local tiers of government to implement local policy and object to top-down development. The results indicate that local issues aren’t sufficiently addressed in higher-tier government policies.

Understanding stakeholder power relations—such as between land sellers, land buyers, and local governments—is crucial to understanding Land Value Capture (LVC). While scholars have focused on stakeholder relationships through approaches such as stakeholder salience, stakeholder interaction, stakeholder value network, and stakeholder multiplicity, much research either places insufficient focus on power or only stresses partial attributes of power. As a result, the role of power relations among key stakeholders in LVC remains insufficiently explored. Our contribution is a new analytical framework for stakeholder power dynamics surrounding LVC. This provides an empirical analysis by comparing the public (China) and the private (U.S.) dominant regimes, through the perspectives of power direction, strength, and mechanism. To conceptualize the three perspectives of power in LVC, we constructed an analytical matrix and then categorized data in terms of stakeholder, space, and time perspectives. Based on empirical findings, four emerging dilemmas shed light on consequences for LVC policy making as well as areas in need of further research.

The incorporation of sustainability into road infrastructure development by public agencies in developing countries is limited by what they understand by the notion and how it can be adopted into their tasks. A limited sectoral perspective often dominates this understanding, leading a limited focus on specific sectoral elements included into a policy. This paper offers a framework and a methodology that will equip the agencies to incorporate the concept in an integrative way. A literature review was first conducted to develop the framework, followed by its exploration in the case study of Indonesia's Trans-Java road network corridors. This framework expands the sectoral perspective into a more comprehensive one, conceptualizing sustainability as contributions of various sectoral elements, which are still less integrated. The framework accounts for infrastructure and spatial and temporal dimensions, in which environmental, social, and economic effects of road development are discussed and shown to be interrelated. Institutional and political aspects were also added to the framework that demonstrate capacities for and constraints on integration. This study suggests a mixed scanning methodology to incorporate sustainability into road infrastructure development by paying attention to public agencies' tasks and the application's contexts.

For the last few decades, the development of mega-infrastructure projects has been high on the agendas of policymakers in Southeast Asia. Despite the potential benefits of such projects, there are also inevitable societal impacts that often lead to protests by local people. In general, most literature on megaprojects focuses solely on managing projects, with limited coverage of local people's perceptions. This article, however, offers an analytical approach to perception making, adopted from psychology theories, which is then elaborated upon in a quantitative and qualitative empirical setting using the Suramadu cable-stayed bridge in Indonesia as a case study. Our main argument is that perceptions about megaprojects can change as a result of long-term, high-level exposure to such projects. The results imply the need for megaproject development to take people's perceptions into account to bridge the gap between top-down expected benefits and bottom-up acceptance or rejection by those outside the central power.

The trade-off between flexibility and legal certainty is inherent in every planning system. This trade-off is especially apparent within a land-use plan. Flexibility and legal certainty are often seen as communicating vessels: the demise of one leads to an increase in the other. Within land-use plans, however, the connection between the two is more subtle. For a land-use plan, the choice between being specific or open, and rigid or adaptable, determine the amount of flexibility. With these choices a land-use plan can increase its flexibility without decreasing legal certainty. Within reason the legal certainty can even benefit from more flexibility. However, current academic literature lacks a structured way to analyse flexibility contained within a land-use plan. Such a method is necessary for analysing and comparing different land-use plans. This paper will provide such a method and analyse thirteen different land-use plans in the Netherlands on their flexibility. It will show that a structured method can prove to be useful for analysing and comparing different land-use plans. The research provides insight into the complex balance between flexibility and legal certainty and presents an assessment tool which can be used for further academic research.

In recent decades, many metropolitan cities have invested in large-scale infrastructure projects to position themselves strategically as competitors in the global economy. Most of these projects visibly transform places by introducing iconic images to reflect the city's global status. One crucial question surrounding these physical changes is how citizens, and particularly communities in the vicinity of the projects, might perceive the transformed place based on their daily practices and individual experiences. Therefore, this article aims to explain the possible conflicts between project promoters and people in the adjacent areas in relation to the creation of place within a large-scale project development through the concept of place-making. The case study is an urban redevelopment project under the branding of Tangerang LIVE 2020, in the Jabodetabek Metropolitan Area in Indonesia. The project is a government's response to globalisation challenges through the creation of a sustainable city. Qualitative in-depth interviews and observations show that the use of large-scale projects as tools for the city's branding strategy have largely contended with people's daily spatial practices, especially because of the failure to provide information to the affected group of people.

There has been a growing interest in developing tools to assist decision-making in moving towards sustainable development, such as Sustainability Assessment (SA). It is argued here that more advanced and sophisticated tools are less useful than strengthening institutions when it comes to better engagement of stakeholders and more integrated decision-making. This paper aims at understanding barriers that impede the implementation of an SA tool for road project planning by examining how and when practitioners experience these barriers. From the empirical perspective of Indonesian road planning practitioners, the study reveals the five most influential barriers, including i) insufficient funding support, ii) limited skilled personnel that can use the tool, iii) unavailability of data and information, iv) unavailability of a specific arena for decision-making, and v) unavailability of detailed procedures/manuals. This research discusses strategies for successful implementation, particularly in a context that is less favourable to integrated decision-making, such as Indonesia.