ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the trajectory which spatial planning has taken in Flanders in the last decade and some reflections on planning practice. It focuses 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. Flanders is shaped through the deposits of layer after layer of historical and spatial processes, of the merging into one another of different environments and spatial scales seemingly randomly overlain. Flanders is left with two different planning systems. Firstly, the traditional land use planning system for all kinds of permits, and secondly, the strategic spatial planning for the long-term vision. Flanders ends up with a new basic law initiating different types of plans, at different levels, more responsibilities for the local level, and an increasing professionalisation of planning.
