ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a metaphor used in a decision-making process in a Dutch municipality.1 Actors in the municipality are deciding where in the municipality a new centre should be built, a centre that should be the heart of the town. The importance of the metaphor ‘the centre is a heart’ only came to my attention after being in the field for several months. It posed the question of how the metaphor was used in decision making and in what way this usage confirmed or contradicted what was written about metaphor in the field of policy making, especially the influential work of Donald Schön.
