This ground-breaking Encyclopedia provides a nuanced overview of the key concepts of urban and regional planning and design. Embracing a broad understanding of planning and design within and beyond the professions, it examines what planners and designers can do in and for a community. Covering both classic and novel planning theories, this Encyclopedia adopts an evolutionary perspective, reflecting on the changing meanings of terms over time. Featuring over 140 contributions drawn from diverse fields, it highlights the cross-disciplinary nature of planning and design. Contributors give practical insight into the field, and advance scientific knowledge and public conversation on planning and design. The Elgar Encyclopedia in Urban and Regional Planning and Design will be an essential resource for students and scholars of planning, design, urban studies, and governance. It will also be highly useful for practitioners and civil servants seeking to deepen their understanding of public works, planning, and environmental policy. Key Features: Critical perspectives on core concepts and debates Reflection on how to avoid reproducing current power/knowledge relations Explores connections between fields and disciplines in planning and design Extensive cross-referencing between entries

This volume presents empirical studies and theoretical reflections on Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT), its most important concepts and their interrelations. As a novel theory of governance, EGT understands governance as radically evolutionary, which implies that all elements of governance are subject to evolution, that these elements co-evolve and that many of them are the product of governance itself. Through this book we learn how communities understand themselves and their environment and why they create the complex structures and processes we analyze as governance paths. Authors from different disciplines develop the EGT framework further and apply it to a wide rage networks of power, governance of agricultural resources etc. The contributors also reflect on the possibilities and limitations of steering, intervention, management and development in a world continuously in flux. It bridges the gap between more fundamental and philosophical accounts of the social sciences and applied studies, offering theoretical advancements as well as practical recommendations.

This short booksoffers the reader a remarkable new perspective on the way markets, laws and societies evolve together. It can be of use to anyone interested in development, market and public sector reform, public administration, politics & law. Based on a wide variety of case studies on three continents and a variety of conceptual sources, the authors develop a theory that clarifies the nature and functioning of dependencies that mark governance evolutions. This in turn delineates in an entirely new manner the spaces open for policy experiment. As such, it offers a new mapping of the middle ground between libertarianism and social engineering. Theoretically, the approach draws on a wide array of sources: institutional & development economics, systems theories, post-structuralism, actor- network theories, planning theory and legal studies."

The Danube Delta is one of the largest and most valuable wetlands in Europe. Throughout history it has been a contested area and subject to conflicting claims and policies from the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Ukraine. In this volume Constantin Iordachi and Kirstof Van Assche take an interdisciplinary look at the history, policy, and culture of the development and politics of the Danube Delta.