This book advances the understanding and modelling of sensemaking and cultural processes as being crucial to the scientific study of contemporary complex societies. It outlines a dynamic, processual conception of culture and a general view of the role of cultural dynamics in policy-making, drawing three significant methodological implications: pluralism, performativity, and semiotic capital. It focuses on the theoretical and methodological aspects of the analysis of culture and its dynamics that could be applied to the developing of policymaking and, in general, to the understanding of social phenomena. It draws from the experience and data of a large-scale project, RECRIRE, funded by the H2020 program that mapped the symbolic universes across Europe after the economic crisis. It further develops the relationship between culture and policy-making discussed in two previous volumes in this series, and constitutes the ideal third and final element of this trilogy. The book is a useful tool for academics involved in studying cultural dynamics and for policy-oriented researchers and decision-makers attentive to the cultural dimensions of the design, implementation and reception of public policies.

In Regulation and Planning, planning scholars from the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, and the United States explore how planning regulations are negotiated amid layers of normative considerations. It treats regulation not simply as a set of legal guidelines to be compared against proposed actions, but as a social practice in which issues of governmental legitimacy, cultural understandings, materiality, and power are contested. Each chapter addresses an actual instance of planning regulation including, among others, a dispute about a proposed Apple store in a public park in Stockholm, the procedures by which building codes are managed by planners in Napoli, the role that design plays in regulating the use of public space in a new Paris neighbourhood, and the influence of plans on the regulation of development in Malmoe and Cambridge. Collectively, the volume probes the institutions and practices that give meaning and consequence to planning regulations. For planning students learning about what it means to plan, planning researchers striving to understand the influence of planners on urban development, and planning practitioners interested in reflecting on practices that occupy a great deal of their time, this is an indispensable book.

In Regulation and Planning, planning scholars from the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, and the United States explore how planning regulations are negotiated amid layers of normative considerations. It treats regulation not simply as a set of legal guidelines to be compared against proposed actions, but as a social practice in which issues of governmental legitimacy, cultural understandings, materiality, and power are contested. Each chapter addresses an actual instance of planning regulation including, among others, a dispute about a proposed Apple store in a public park in Stockholm, the procedures by which building codes are managed by planners in Napoli, the role that design plays in regulating the use of public space in a new Paris neighbourhood, and the influence of plans on the regulation of development in Malmoe and Cambridge. Collectively, the volume probes the institutions and practices that give meaning and consequence to planning regulations. For planning students learning about what it means to plan, planning researchers striving to understand the influence of planners on urban development, and planning practitioners interested in reflecting on practices that occupy a great deal of their time, this is an indispensable book.

This book advances the understanding and modelling of sensemaking and cultural processes as being crucial to the scientific study of contemporary complex societies. It outlines a dynamic, processual conception of culture and a general view of the role of cultural dynamics in policy-making, drawing three significant methodological implications: pluralism, performativity, and semiotic capital. It focuses on the theoretical and methodological aspects of the analysis of culture and its dynamics that could be applied to the developing of policymaking and, in general, to the understanding of social phenomena. It draws from the experience and data of a large-scale project, RECRIRE, funded by the H2020 program that mapped the symbolic universes across Europe after the economic crisis. It further develops the relationship between culture and policy-making discussed in two previous volumes in this series, and constitutes the ideal third and final element of this trilogy. The book is a useful tool for academics involved in studying cultural dynamics and for policy-oriented researchers and decision-makers attentive to the cultural dimensions of the design, implementation and reception of public policies.