For some time now, I have been working on teaching materials for planning students. I am really happy about this GAME, which aims to make students aware of different roles they can play as planners in network governance. This is an exercise for planning students. It is based on a 'typology' of planners operating in network governance and project planning proposed by Karina Sehested (2010) of the University of Copenhagen. The objective is to make students aware of different roles they can play as planners in network governance, and which core values are attached to each role. There is also a discussion about tools and ways to manage networks.

1. the
Great
Planning
Game
Elaborated by
Roberto Rocco
Chair Spatial Planning and Strategy, TU Delft
©All Rights Reserved: Roberto Rocco email: r.c.rocco@tudelft.nl
Based on a text by
Karina Sehested
University of Copenhagen
SpatialPlanning
&Strategy

2. The Great Planning
Game
This exercise is based on: SEHESTED, K. 2010. Urban Planners as Network Managers and Metagovernors,
Planning Theory & Practice 10:2, 245-263. The author has asserted her intellectual property.
Objective: To familiarise students with the roles problem presented (only the title should suffice).
of planners in scenarios of network governance
and strategy planning, to encourage students
to discuss there roles and the values attached
Rules:
to them and to think about tools they might use • Every group needs to elect one or two
while performing these roles. speakers
• Every member of the group needs to have
Time: 1h30 hours enough time and opportunity to express their
opinions and explain their positions
• Each group needs to find reasonable con-
sensus for decisions taken
Organisation:
• Students are divided in groups of 4 or • The activity needs to be conducted with
more. respect for different positions and opinions
• Students are given 6 cards with descrip- • Each group will be allocated only 5 min-
tions of TYPICAL PLANNING ROLES (or typical utes to explain their position in the end
planners), derived from SEHESTED 2010.
• Students need to choose which of the typi-
cal roles they want to perform during the exercise
(enough time should be allocated for this, as the
objective is that they discuss the different roles).
• Once students have chosen one role (or a
combination of two), they are presented with a
planning task. For this task they need to:
a. Define their position in the process (where
are they located as professionals?)
b. List main knowledge, skills and values
necessary to fulfil the task
c. Define who are the actors involved and
make a diagram showing their relationships
(think of different groups of users or inhabitants,
the governmental departments involved on deci-
sion in the area, companies, investors, etc)
d. Suggest a hypothetical structure of net-
work of actors possibly involved in the planning
problem (sectorial?)
e. Suggest one tool to deal with communi-
cation and consensus seeking in a hypothetical
actor network involved
f. Suggest at which point and where this tool
would be used
g. Suggest a simple strategy to answer for the

3. Description of planning roles (based on SE- 3. The communicative Planner:
I believe in participation. Democracy is the most
HESTED 2010):
important tool for real progress, because real
progress IS democracy. You might wonder what
1. The Traditional Planner:
I am an old-school planner. I was trained to do that means. Let’s say that by encouraging people
my job and therefore I believe I am fully capaci- to participate in decision-making, I widen the
tated to take the right decisions. I believe in the possibility of those people to share the gains of
power of the government to make people’s lives urban development. But most importantly, along
better. In order to achieve that, comprehensive the way they will acquire the knowledge and the
planning is the best tool we have at our disposal. tools to take a stronger stance in urban develop-
By planning carefully and in a detailed way, we ment and will be able to articulate solutions that
will achieve good results for all. I like the tradi- benefit all. This is an important aspect of my
tional ways of organising the work. I am the chief profession and it is called democracy building.
planner; therefore I expect my subordinates will The process is as important as the final outcomes.
listen to my instructions. We strive for the general Of course, in order to do all this, I must have great
good and sometimes I have the feeling we are communication skills. I need to communicate
more concerned about the public than the elected complex ideas to people who have had no train-
members of our government. Our adversaries are ing. But don’t be fooled: their knowledge is as
greedy investors who would ruin our city with important as the knowledge of professionals and
huge shopping centres and weird ideas about I need to be able to help them articulate it. On the
mixed housing. (137 words) other hand, I also need to facilitate communica-
tion that will allow consensus building among dif-
ferent stakeholders with very disparate interests.
2. The Advocacy Planner: (177 words)
I am an advocacy planner. You might wonder what
that means, but let’s just say that my main objec-
4. The Strategic Planner:
tive is to defend the interest of those who don’t I am a strategic planner. My objective is to develop
have a voice in urban development. We live in strategies that will benefit all, but I am aware that
an unfair world. Many groups don’t have a voice elected politicians are the legitimate representa-
in urban development (women, minorities, mi- tives of the people. This is why I work hard to
grants, even children are poorly represented!). seduce them with engaging visions and appealing
Resources are not fairly distributed. As a planning scenarios, to guide their actions. I think planners
professional, it is my moral duty to fight for those must appeal to other professionals working with
who have the least, and to guaranty that they the city in order to formulate these visions. But
will get a fair share of the fruits of development, sometimes I feel these professionals are not very
either by allocating resources to the areas where practical. We need to engage investors as well,
these people live or by finding ways to redistrib- and the best way to do this is to offer investors
ute the gains. I do that by applying several new opportunities via large urban projects. I find that
tools at my disposal, like progressive taxation or large urban projects are the best tool to mobilise
taxation of unproductive land. I accept the market political and economic action. They are also an
society of course, but there are ways to regulate effective way to intervene in the spatial configu-
the market and to redistribute profit in a fair way. ration of a city. These projects compose spatial
After all, when investors realise gains in a certain strategies, with which we will achieve agreed
location they are generally benefitting from infra- goals. (127 words)
structures built with tax money, and all the posi-
tive externalities created by society and especially
by all those around them. (182 words)
5. The Manager Planner:
I am a manager planner. I feel very close to my
colleagues who call themselves “strategists”. I be-
lieve it is all about having an effective strategy for
urban development. But we will not have effective

4. strategies if we cannot manage our relationship am something between a pedagogue and a pro-
with investors and the private sector in general. cess consultant. As a good teacher, I rely on narra-
We cannot deny that money is an essential factor: tives to engage all kinds of actors, not only pro-
nothing can be achieved without investment. Who fessional ones, and certainly not only investors. I
will pay for this, is generally my first question. But want to involve the common citizen in decision-
let’s not forget that we are acting in benefit of the making. My advocacy planner friends and I work
public. In order to do so, we need to listen to sev- quite well together. (154 words)
eral actors, in an organised way, making use of the
democratic instruments we have at our disposal.
It is important that we keep public participation,
but we need to manage it in a way that allows us
to continue to be efficient. Too much participation
can be disruptive and we don’t have that much
time. (153 words)
6. The Market Planner:
I like to call myself a market planner. It is not so
much that I am working FOR the market. Rather, I
am trying to realise projects within the sphere of
economic opportunity, and in order to do that, I
need to engage with private actors. I am familiar
with the logic of business. I feel the public needs
to accept co-responsibility for the city’s develop-
ment and it is my responsibility to create close
relationships between the parties with the neces-
sary resources in order to promote development.
But this is done in the realm of democracy, with
the legal tools at our disposal. In order to make
the most of these tools, I need to articulate the
contacts between decision makers and investors.
I also need to propose news tools with which in-
vestors can participate in urban development in a
fair way. Of course citizen participation is impor-
tant, but it is crucial to manage this participation
in order to avoid standstills. (161 words)
7. The Process Planner:
I like to call myself a process planner. This means
that my main task is to create democratic pro-
cesses that can integrate all relevant actors in
order to make common decisions regarding the
right kind of urban development. I feel that all af-
fected parties should be heard or integrated in the
process before decisions are made. Is this time
consuming? Of course it is, but this is the price of
true democracy. Besides, by doing that I create
ownership of decisions and decrease the prospect
of our actions being contested. My main skills are
communication and networking. Of course I need
to be a good communicator if I want to integrate
non-professional actors in the planning process. I

5. Source: Funda.nl and CBS
Planning Task: Pendrecht basic data:
Status: Neighbourhood, part of a larger district
(staadsdeel) Charlois, in Rotterdam
Pendrecht Rotterdam
Inhabitants 11.625 544.54
Man / 49,1% / 49,3% /
women 50,9% 50,7%
Average € 10.600 € 12.523
Figure 1 General administrative map of the municipality
income
of Rotterdam, with Pendrecht highlighted. Map: Centraal
Total hous- 6.03 265.63
Bureau voor de Statistiek. Copyright owner.
ing units
Average € 109.000 € 155.000
housing
Renewing Pendrecht
unit price
The neighbourhood of Pendrecht lies in the South
(WOZ)
of the Dutch city of Rotterdam. It belongs to the
district of Charlois, one of the poorest parts of
the city. Pendrecht was built in the 1950s as part
of the effort to provide housing for a growing
population in the Post-War period. However, the
units were small and unattractive and when the
children of Pendrecht grew up, they had much
more prosperous prospects than their parents
and many of them went away to other neighbour-
hoods and municipalities where they could have
bigger houses with gardens.
Today, more than 40% of inhabitants of Pendrecht
are elderly and most of the units in the area be-
long to housing corporations, who
rent these units to lower income sectors of soci-
ety, among whom we can find many immigrants
with varied cultures. Along the years, the image
of Pendrecht has deteriorated and many people
would avoid the neighbourhood today. The plan-
ning question is: What are the actions, policies
or projects that could bring new economic and
social impetus to Pendrecht? How to ‘regenerate’
the neighbourhood while keeping housing afford-
able for the inhabitants of the area? Or should we
promote gentrification to avoid ghettoization?
1 Although Pendrecht is a real neighbourhood in Rotterdam, some of the data
was adapted to this exercise. Notably, the neighbourhood has already undergone
a large regeneration strategy devised by the city of Rotterdam, which produced
good results.

6. Figure 2 Original 1950s plan for Pen-
drecht. Source: Gemeente Rotterdam.
Figure 3. Typical housing
ensemble in Pendrecht.
Photo by Topaas in Flickr.
Figure 4: General view of Pendrecht. Source: www.kei-cen-
trum.nl

7. the traditional planner
I am an old-school planner. I was trained to do my job and there-
fore I believe I am fully capacitated to take the right decisions.
I believe in the power of the government to make people’s lives
better. In order to achieve that, comprehensive planning is the
best tool we have at our disposal.
By planning carefully and in a detailed way, we will achieve good
results for all. I like the traditional ways of organising the work.
I am the chief planner; therefore I expect my subordinates will
listen to my instructions. We strive for the general good and some-
times I have the feeling we are more concerned about the public
than the elected members of our government. Our adversaries are
greedy investors who would ruin our city with huge shopping
centres and weird ideas about mixed housing.
the communicative planner
I believe in participation. Democracy is the most important tool for real
progress, because real progress IS democracy. You might wonder what that
means. Let’s say that by encouraging people to participate in decision-
making, I widen the possibility of those people to share the gains of urban de-
velopment. But most importantly, along the way they will acquire the knowl-
edge and the tools to take a stronger stance in urban development and will be
able to articulate solutions that benefit all. This is an important aspect of my
profession and it is called democracy building. The process is as important as
the final outcomes. Of course, in order to do all this, I must have great commu-
nication skills. I need to communicate complex ideas to people who have had
no training. But don’t be fooled: their knowledge is as important as the knowl-
edge of professionals and I need to be able to help them articulate it. On the
other hand, I also need to facilitate communication that will allow consensus
building among different stakeholders with very disparate interests.

8. the strategic planner
I am a strategic planner. My objective is to develop strategies that will benefit
all, but I am aware that elected politicians are the legitimate representatives of
the people. This is why I work hard to seduce them with engaging visions and
appealing scenarios, to guide their actions. I think planners must appeal to
other professionals working with the city in order to formulate these visions.
But sometimes I feel these professionals are not very practical. We need to
engage investors as well, and the best way to do this is to offer investors op-
portunities via large urban projects. I find that large urban projects are the
best tool to mobilise political and economic action. They are also an effective
way to intervene in the spatial configuration of a city. These projects compose
spatial strategies, with which we will achieve agreed goals.
the manager planner
I am a manager planner. I feel very close to my colleagues who call themselves
“strategists”. I believe it is all about having an effective strategy for urban de-
velopment. But we will not have effective strategies if we cannot manage our
relationship with investors and the private sector in general. We cannot deny
that money is an essential factor: nothing can be achieved without invest-
ment. Who will pay for this, is generally my first question. But let’s not forget
that we are acting in benefit of the public. In order to do so, we need to listen
to several actors, in an organised way, making use of the democratic instru-
ments we have at our disposal. It is important that we keep public participa-
tion, but we need to manage it in a way that allows us to continue to be effi-
cient. Too much participation can be disruptive and we don’t have that much
time.

9. the market planner
I like to call myself a market planner. It is not so much that I am working FOR
the market. Rather, I am trying to realise projects within the sphere of eco-
nomic opportunity, and in order to do that, I need to engage with private
actors. I am familiar with the logic of business. I feel the public needs to accept
co-responsibility for the city’s development and it is my responsibility to
create close relationships between the parties with the necessary resources in
order to promote development. But this is done in the realm of democracy,
with the legal tools at our disposal. In order to make the most of these tools, I
need to articulate the contacts between decision makers and investors. I also
need to propose news tools with which investors can participate in urban de-
velopment in a fair way. Of course citizen participation is important, but it is
crucial to manage this participation in order to avoid standstills.
the process planner
I like to call myself a process planner. This means that my main task is to create
democratic processes that can integrate all relevant actors in order to make
common decisions regarding the right kind of urban development. I feel that
all affected parties should be heard or integrated in the process before deci-
sions are made. Is this time consuming? Of course it is, but this is the price of
true democracy. Besides, by doing that I create ownership of decisions and de-
crease the prospect of our actions being contested. My main skills are commu-
nication and networking. Of course I need to be a good communicator if I
want to integrate non-professional actors in the planning process. I am some-
thing between a pedagogue and a process consultant. As a good teacher, I
rely on narratives to engage all kinds of actors, not only professional ones, and
certainly not only investors. I want to involve the common citizen in decision-
making. My advocacy planner friends and I work quite well together.

10. the advocacy planner
I am an advocacy planner. You might wonder what that means, but let’s just
say that my main objective is to defend the interest of those who don’t have
a voice in urban development. We live in an unfair world. Many groups don’t
have a voice in urban development (women, minorities, migrants, even chil-
dren are poorly represented!). Resources are not fairly distributed. As a plan-
ning professional, it is my moral duty to fight for those who have the least,
and to guaranty that they will get a fair share of the fruits of development,
either by allocating resources to the areas where these people live or by find-
ing ways to redistribute the gains. I do that by applying several new tools at
my disposal, like progressive taxation or taxation of unproductive land. I
accept the market society of course, but there are ways to regulate the
market and to redistribute profit in a fair way. After all, when investors realise
gains in a certain location they are generally benefitting from infrastructures
built with tax money, and all the positive externalities created by society and
especially by all those around them
If you have any doubts or questions, please write to Roberto Rocco at r.c.rocco@tudelft.nl
Department of Urbanism
Chair Spatial Planning and Strategy
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology
Julianalaan 134
2628BL Delft
The Netherlands