A theory of institutional change: Illustrated by Dutch city-provinces and Dutch land policy Since the early nineties, planning theory has focused on the issue of institutional change. Not only does institutional change have clear bearings on processes of spatial planning, it is also, increasingly, seen as an object of planning. A core concept in the literature is the juxtaposition of 'institutional design' and 'institutional evolution'. Yet, in understanding processes and the role of institutional change, this dichotomy does not appear to be very helpful. We therefore propose a more encompassing perspective that includes both 'design' and 'evolution' dimensions, invoking various components from theories of policy change, inspired by the work of Kingdon. Our perspective tries to unravel, in particular, why, under seemingly comparable conditions, some cases show substantive institutional transformations while others do not. The paper briefly discusses two cases from the Netherlands to illustrate this point, namely the thwarted process of establishing city regions within the scalar fabric of territorial governance, and some instrumental changes in land policy in the Netherlands.

The production of our built environment involves many transaction costs. We want to avoid unnecessary transaction costs. Nevertheless, we hardly take account of transaction costs when considering different ways of organising the development process. The most important reason is probably the difficulty in identifying them. This paper shows why transaction costs are important and offers a method for identifying them. With this method, it is possible to compare the efficiency of different institutional arrangements.

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