ABSTRACT
The chapters in this section explore the extent to which a focus on networks helps in understanding the ongoing re-configuring of governance forms and capacities that is so strongly evident in the contemporary period. Whatever the definition of “governance” used, and this, as Gualini argues, is a much contested term, planning researchers and practitioners are increasingly aware of the emergence of new relations of policy-making and new practices developed to address collective action problems. These connect the spheres of state, market, and civil society in new ways, which supplement and sometimes challenge or replace the institutions of the traditional democratic state. For the urban and regional planning field, a key dimension of this re-configuration is the disruption of established connections between governance institutions and formal territorial jurisdictions.
