Hidding, M.C., D.B. Needham and J. Wisserhof,
Town and country in interaction; a programme for basic strategic research.
The Hague (The Netherlands), National Council for Agricultural
Research (NRLO), 1998.
NRLO Report 98/17.
[Original title: Stad en land; programma voor fundamenteel-strategisch
onderzoek]
Executive Summary
There has arisen a great variety in the way we think
about the relationship between townand country and in how those
ideas are translated into practical policy. The old certaintiesof
the isolated town in a country setting have disappeared and new
ideas are competingfor attention and application. However, there
has as yet been only limited research into theacademic foundations
and practical potential of those new ideas.
In various circles the need was felt for a fundamental
reconsideration of the relationshipbetween town and country and
of the possible implications for policy. This report is theresult
of such a reconsideration, in the form of a proposal for the structure
of a large-scaleresearch programme into the interaction and differentiation
of town and country. Thereport was commissioned by the National
Council for Agricultural Research (NRLO) and by the R&D Network
for Spatial Planning Policy (Netwerk RO).
The variety of ideas about town and country can be
analysed in terms of discourses:distinct ways of speaking and
writing and of carrying out a discussion. Within the currentdebate
about town and country five separate discourses can be identified:
- town and country as separate entities;
- town and country as networks;
- town and country as ecosystems;
- town and country as locales;
- town and country as real estate.
Each of these discourses has three dimensions:
- concerning the theoretical
perspective (the analytical dimension);
- concerning the related plan concepts (the dimension
of spatial organisation);
- concerning the management strategy (the dimension
of how to influence spatial processes).
The research programme is based on the reasoning
that research within any one of thediscourses is unlikely to be
innovative; that a comparison of discourses would beacademically
interesting but would not necessarily lead to innovative ideas
for practice;that new insights are more likely to arise when two
or more discourses are applied toexplaining the same phenomenon
or tackling the same problem.
The proposed structure is that research projects
be chosen around four themes, where each theme arises out of the
conjuncture of two or more discourses. The themes are:
- discourses about town and country
Here it is the discourses themselves which are the
object of the research. Do they overlap each other, do they offer
competitive explanations or narratives, does one discourse subsume
another logically, and so on.
The discourse of town and country as networks and
the discourse of town and country as ecosystems, when confronted
with each other, lead to research questions about sustainable
development, with economy and ecology complementing each other.
- a future for concentration
The classical discourse is of town and country as
separate entities, with building development concentrated in towns
and cities. This theme compares this one discourse with all the
others, which can be seen as recent alternatives
- the identity of town and country
Here, the two discourses of town and country as
locales, and town and country as real estate, are brought together,
in order to investigate how places and spaces acquire specific
identities.
The report recommends that both the Netherlands Organization
for Scientific Research (NWO) and the ministries of central government
concerned with town and country jointly fund a large scale research
programme based on the above ideas and structure.
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