Interactive Planning of Infrastructure: The Changing Role of Dutch Project Management

Abstract

The mode of planing for infrastructure has changed in the Netherlands. As elsewhere, a hierarchic mode of planning has been replaced by regulatory relationships among stakeholders. The authors present a lens through which some of these changes are brought into focus: the new form of cooperation, called ‘interactive planning’, is characterized in terms of ‘political space’, ‘architecture’, and ‘action mechanisms’. The discussion is focused on four projects in which the transition to a new planning mode occurred while the project was being developed. The authors also revisit the implementation of interactive planning.