ABSTRACT
This paper is about the trajectory which spatial planning has taken in Flanders in the last decade and some reflections on planning practice. This trajectory brings us from a fairly traditional land use planning system based on regulation to the provision of a more strategic framework; from the concept of managing growth to the concept of sustainable development; from rather closed processes to more open processes involving larger numbers of decision units (e.g. households, departments of government, firms, pressure groups, agencies etc.) in the production of space. The chapter reflects on changing conditions in the interdependence of formal institutional structures of decision making, traditional power structures and newly emerging informal alliances and networks through which social, economic, spatial, ecological challenges and changing social, political relationships are tackled.
