Innovative Practices in Large Urban Development Projects: Conflicting Frames in the Quest for “New Urbanity”

Abstract

Large urban development projects are at the forefront of scholarly attention. This article aims at complementing critical analyses of urban projects from a political-economic perspective with an analysis centred on planning agency and practice. The focus is on the role of innovative planning concepts in the governance process. The question raised is: how can discourse on the urban quality of places affect collective choices in a reflective way, possibly leading to integrating private interests within ambitious public strategies? The question is addressed by analysing planning of large urban projects as a “framing” practice, intended in a dual sense: as a practice defining arenas and forms of interaction, and as a practice conveying ideas, visions, concepts of “urbanity”. The case study presented—the Zuidas in Amsterdam—is interpreted as the scene of conflicting frames about the “public” meaning of places and as the contradictory struggle for framing collective action by means of innovative planning concepts. The analysis highlights the limits of framing approaches that do not adequately address the multiplicity of arenas and interactions involved in the governance of urban transformations.