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This article identifies two alternative collaborative spatial planning discourses: a leading government with societal participation and self-governance by societal actors with government participation. It shows how the boundary between the roles of governments and societal actors in collaboration discourses is shifting, but also how both collaborative planning discourses exist alongside each other in two Dutch urban regions: Eindhoven Region and Parkstad Limburg. In both regions, these alternative discourses on role division in collaborative planning are similar, even though Eindhoven is a growing region in which the local and regional governments collaborate intensively with companies, and Parkstad Limburg is a shrinking region that more actively involves citizens. The article concludes with reflections on the need to manage boundaries in collaborative planning.

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In Dutch planning, there has always been an important role for spatial concepts. Their role has arguably changed with the recent decentralisation of planning to the regional and local level. At the national level, guiding concepts of a more procedural nature have replaced the more substantive and place-based spatial concepts, leaving more room for regional and local interpretation. At the regional and local level, spatial concepts are still in use, but this seems to be in a more communicative, negotiating and developing role than before. In this paper, we analyse how place concepts are used to exercise power, mobilize resources and frame meaning over the use of the peri-urban areas, in the changing Dutch planning context. This paper focuses on two competing place concepts for overlapping green urban fringe areas in The Hague Region, which have been promoted by different actor constellations and which represent different visions about the meaning of these peri-urban areas. The case study allows conclusions about the changing role of spatial concepts in Dutch spatial planning.

Regional designing is employed to envision regional futures that aim to guide decisions on the environment in the region over a longer period of time. However, longitudinal studies on the long-term use and effect of regional designing are lacking. This paper investigates the impacts of regional designing in the complex and fragmented setting of a cross-border region. Since the late 1980s, the region was subject to four regional design episodes that each had different impacts: from a new perception of the region to initiating regional collaboration and effects on the Dutch professional debate. The study showed that regional designing is a powerful means to overcome difficulties that arise from the fragmented setting of a cross-border region. Moreover, it revealed that the context in which regional designing is embedded determines in what areas regional designing will have its impact. Both plans and people are important in the transference of regional design outcomes to other planning arenas and conditions, such as status and available funding, improve the chances of transference.