Everyday places of belonging
“Did you see my neighbour? He is always sitting in front of this door. He is so nice, because he always asks me how I feel and if I need something (…) my mother doesn’t speak English or Dutch, but he always greets her or waves at her. I like that, that is...
50 years of Spatial Planning – a summary
50 years ago, on the 2nd of July 1968, prof. G.J. van den Berg was appointed at the RU Groningen to lecture ‘Planning & Demography’. Van den Berg's immediate interest was Spatial Planning. His appointment marks the beginning of fifty years of development,...
‘Planners of the world unite!'
Public spatial planning lecture by Hans Mommaas, general director of the PBL. Exploring possible futures, about the promising role of planning and design in times of transition - 18th of May 2018
Wales, an experiment in governance for sustainability and well-being
Matthew Quinn (Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University, Distinguished Visiting Fellow) URSI lunch seminar, Tuesday May 22, 2018
Young Academics AESOP Conference 2018 at the University of Groningen
The 12th Young Academics Conference of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) was successfully hosted at the University of Groningen from the 26th-29th March 2018. The international conference is one of the largest gathering of young...
Planning as futuring
You can be interested in planning, but if you want to know how it works, you should just be at the tops of politics. This is how prof. Maarten Hajer, a prof by a special appointment at Utrecht University, started his speech. Making planning great again,...
Spatial Planning Lecture by Prof. Kristof van Assche
The reality effects of policy and planning
Despite attempts by policy makers and planners, there is always a discrepancy between what is laid out on paper and what is translated into reality. While the unrealistic expectations of this technical rational...
The FamilyTies project: Family ties, internal migration and immobility
Population geographers have played an important role in gaining understanding of migration patterns, processes and outcomes. However, despite a growing research attention to inter-generational care and geographical distances between family members, the...
Resilience in Spatial Planning: Course delivered at Tallinn University
Dr Elen-Maarja Trell and Steven Forrest travelled to Tallinn University (Estonia) to deliver a two day course on resilience. The course was an ‘Introduction to Resilience in Spatial Planning’ and involved approximately 40 students from Tallinn University’s...
Eliminate the citizen?
A glance at Ferenc van Damme’s punny title for his presentation suggests a resemblance to the Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan’s antimodernist exclamation: ‘Our only hope is apocalypse’. Intellectual preferences aside, one could not help but ask about the...