ABSTRACT
While planning systems are said to be converging in Europe, some scholars have observed
a trend in the opposite direction. For example, Bennett and Elman (2006) explain the
phenomenon in terms of complex causal relations; North (1990) points to diverse insti-
tutional and social models; Maloutas (2012) implicates contextual and cultural diversity
and Birch and Mykhnenko (2009) as well as Peck et al. (2009a) tie it to neo-liberalism.
This paper does not set out to redefine divergence or to explain why varieties of
neo-liberalism and diversity exist. Rather, it seeks to provide a framework to explain
differences in urban transformation in terms of planning and territorial governance.
Here, the notion of hybrid neo-liberal formations refers to the complex localized
processes associated with local trajectories of change and intertwined contingent events.
