No abstract

No abstract

In this paper we look at relationships between design, science and deliberation in urban and regional planning. Each of these activities can be used to inform policy, either in isolation or in different forms of combinations. The combinations usually involve hierarchies, which use the framework of one activity to integrate the others. Such hierarchies create an unbalance among the three activities, resulting in a competition for the integration monopoly, and therefore ineffective cooperation. There is a lack of theory that would allow us to combine these three activities in an equivalent way. Based on experiences in the Delft Interfaculty Research Program ‘The Ecological City’, we propose a transdisciplinary model, which conceives design, science and deliberation as learning processes that follow the same sequence of creative, descriptive and normative steps. From a learning perspective, design, science and deliberation are complementary and can therefore be integrated in a group learning process. The learning model assigns roles to the different activities and supports the planning team in establishing a common orientation and adapting the methods to a common goal. Applications have shown that the transdisciplinary learning model only works if the participants work with articulated methods, if the limitations of these methods are made explicit, and if the participants accept the superiority of common learning over disciplinary rigour, which involves all participants engaging in both an integrating and a serving role. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The distribution of cryptogams and phanerogams and the microclimate of different habitats have been studied. It is shown that a forest community of phanerogams includes an assemblage of different microhabitats inhabited by different lichens and mosses. The distribution of lichens and mosses is governed by factors that are often of little importance to higher plants.

First-generation compensation plans (CPs) for Dutch highway projects have been evaluated with respect to implementation of the compensation principle (1993), which aims to counterbalance the adverse ecological impacts of large-scale development projects. Decision-making on the seven projects took place between 1993 and 1995. Specifically, we considered: (a) the processes employed to prepare and implement the compensation plans; (b) the methods used to identify, plan, and execute the compensation measures; and (c) the results yielded by these methods. We conclude that the CPs were prepared fairly uniformly, particularly in terms of the processes and methodologies used to derive compensation measures. Five of the seven CPs had become operational by 2001 and initial experience is now being gained on land acquisition and transfer of compensation sites to nature conservation trusts. Further progress of CPs is likely to be seriously hampered by growing demand for land for development in general and associated increases in real estate prices. Several problems are addressed and recommendations made with respect to: (a) developing a legal basis for the compensation principle; (b) the relationship with re-allotment projects; (c) estimation of compensation costs; (d) an annual bias of CP budgets to account for rising costs; (e) contingency measures; and (f) criteria for CP (ex-post) evaluation.