Plurality of expert knowledge: public planners’ experience with urban contractualism in Amsterdam

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Dutch planning experience in understanding how planners, as government actors, learn to deal with contracts in complex partnerships with private sector actors. It does so in order to question the technocratic logics of contemporary public–private partnerships (PPPs) focusing on an institutional context where public governments still retain a major leading role in planning for urban development but increasingly operate by devising financial agreements with the private sector. This chapter specifically looks at the use of ‘contracts’ in urban development. Consensus building in the Netherlands is the key approach in any decision-making process, implemented through the ‘polder model’, which is defined as harmonious patterns of interaction between social partners. The Dutch experience demonstrates very clearly that the ways of deal making, and the mechanism of checks and balances in this process, are very dynamic and reflect the changing dynamics of urban governance. This also means that public planners, very consciously, try to reposition themselves to safeguard the public interest.