*3.4. Data*

The following empirical analysis is based on a study of the officially published plans and policy documents. From 2015 to 2018, in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 planning experts and officials at the regional level (designated E#), 3 local planners (A–S#), 5 politicians (A–P#), and 4 citizen-activists (A–A#).<sup>10</sup> These interviews were all transcribed and coded. The private planning firm granted access to its archives, while several key respondents provided documents from their personal archives. An analysis of 84 articles in the local newspaper mentioning the demarcation between 1997 and 2017 provided additional context. In the public inquiry on the Antwerp demarcation, the Flemish Committee of Spatial Planning (Vlacoro)—consisting of planning experts, government representatives, and civil society actors—summarized and advised on more than 6000 objections to the preliminary GRUP bundled in petitions, 2100 individual objections, and 12 recommendations by local and provincial governments. The responses in the resulting report [51] were coded by the researchers to show the argumentations for accepting or rejecting the objections. Finally, policy evaluations of various other demarcation and city–regional cooperation processes were drawn upon [42,44,45,47,52,53].

#### **4. Analysis: Safeguarding the Future**

Table 2 provides a schematic summary of the analysis of four phases of policy formulation and implementation in the demarcation process. By distinguishing the four dimensions of the PAA in each phase, we show how the land use logic gradually overtook the vision of combating urban sprawl. Each phase is explained in the subsections below.

<sup>9</sup> Politicians in Flanders are allowed to have concurrent seats in both local and regional bodies, creating close ties between local and regional politics. Therefore, the process was halted between 2005 and 2007 pending the outcome of local elections taking place 8 October 2006.

<sup>10</sup> There were more interviews conducted with local planners, politicians and citizens since the demarcation of the urban area surrounding the city of Mechelen was also researched. As this paper only reports on the Antwerp case, these are not included here.


**Table 2.** Policy arrangemen<sup>t</sup> analysis of the demarcation of the Antwerp Metropolitan Area.

> Between the original vision of the demarcation instrument and the way it is presented in the preliminary version of the spatial plan for the Antwerp Metropolitan Area, a major discursive shift occurred. On 5 September 2008, a press release titled "Antwerp's future safeguarded by the demarcation process of the metropolitan area" marked the Flemish

Government's preliminary approval of the demarcation plan. The plan is promoted as creating new development opportunities, states that it "provides new space" and includes a list of amounts of land area (re)zoned for housing, nature and industry, which is translated in Antwerp's local newspaper as: "the GRUP enables the construction of 8249 houses" [54]. Additionally, the press release mentions decisions on a number of "metropolitan functions" such as regularising a golf course, finding a location for a soccer stadium and the expansion of the local airport. The minister of spatial planning is quoted,

"Today we have arrived at a balanced proposal in which we safeguard the future of the Antwerp region and make the Antwerp metropolitan area even more attractive for working, residing and living 11".

The discourse of a press release may be expected to present the ultimate legitimation for a spatial plan to the broader public. Here, it shows a dominant logic of land use planning with land and building opportunities represented as resources made available through zoning. This discourse is almost the opposite of the vision of the Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders under which the demarcation instrument was introduced. Its focus has changed from safeguarding rural areas from development, to safeguarding the future by making development possible. Why did the authors of the press release and their political superiors opt to present the plan in terms of the land use logic dominant in Flanders throughout the second half of the twentieth century, instead of in the terms introduced in the Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders ten years earlier?

#### *4.1. Phase 1: Counteracting Fragmentation (1996–1997)*

Despite a discourse that underlines the necessity to counteract urban sprawl, the tension between land use logic and strategic planning is already present in the two documents that lie at the root of the demarcation processes. These are a preparatory study to determine a methodology for demarcating urban areas, commissioned with a private urban planning firm [55]12, and the Spatial Structure Plan for Flanders itself.

The preparatory study mentions the spatial fragmentation of the Flemish settlement structure explicitly as the main reason for developing an urban growth managemen<sup>t</sup> instrument. It states that, in Flanders, there is currently no clear separation between "urban" and "open space" and it introduces the ambition to break with the trend of a primarily land use-oriented spatial policy. The study presents this intent as the:

"( ... ) directed interweaving and bundling of functions and facilities, among which the economic functions, within the urban areas, above all absolute priority is to use and manage the existing urban structure as well as possible (... ) the preservation and where possible strengthening and expansion of open space. (... ) This breaking of the trend aims for the protection of open space, counteracting the fragmentation, and the separation of open space and urban areas [55]".

In the RSV itself, this is translated into the central strategic spatial policy concept of deconcentrated clustering: striving for a greater bundling of activities within Flanders' decentralized urban structure. The principle is positioned explicitly as a means of combatting urban sprawl:

"Deconcentrated clustering goes against unbridled suburbanisation and fragmentation and thus reduces the pressure on the countryside [39]".

Combatting sprawl in order to reduce—or at least restrain—the growing negative effects on mobility, environment and cost of public services was, hence, originally one of

<sup>11</sup> All quotes from interviewees, press and policy documents are translated from Dutch by the authors.

<sup>12</sup> In Flanders, these firms perform a mix of architectural, urban planning and research work with some of their staff moving freely in both academic and practitioners' circles. In fact, one of the firm's directors played an important role in developing the RSV itself. Furthermore, building private sector capacity through developing expertise regarding the new structure planning framework was a deliberate strategy of those designing the RSV to improve the quality of its implementation [1].

the main goals of this first overarching spatial plan for the Flemish region. The demarcation of urban areas was to be the prime instrument to realise this:

"The demarcation of the urban areas is considered an essential policy measure in order to stop the urban flight and ribbon development, to be able to realise a "supply policy" regarding additional housing and space for economic activities and safeguard the rural areas from urban development ([39], p. 212)".

This discourse is found in the vision section of both documents and, as such, outlines a number of "grand goals" for the future without going too deeply into particulars. The documents also show that the original methodology to arrive at a demarcation proposal (delineating an urban area and identifying certain areas for rezoning to create a supply of well-situated development areas) was a rich one that considers many socio-spatial indicators before proposing a desired spatial structure.

In terms of actors, the process was supervised by the Flemish regional authorities, though shaping a vision for the urban area itself was considered a task for the municipalities. Therefore, the intent was to give provinces and municipalities the opportunity to provide their input at various moments in the process.

However, this method stood in a tense relationship with the customary practice of land use planning. The newly introduced planning system had to operate against the background of the preceding generation of zoning plans that fix the permitted use of every plot of land in the Flemish region and that continue to shape the spatial-political reality up to this day. While the new planning system preferred a more open strategic "structure planning" process over the existing "passive" national zoning plans, many actors were used to a rule-based practice oriented to the legal certainty of zoning. One of the designers of the RSV mentions the tension between these two paradigms:

"We were not always very happy with that. Because what we wanted to do was partly at odds with the traditional zoning plans. Those are aimed primarily at legal certainty ( ... ) while we would have preferred to depart from a vision and then see which technical, juridical conditions were necessary to transform those interventions in reality (E2)".

There was a keen awareness among the promotors of the RSV (actors) that the success of its strategic spatial planning vision depended on discursive and institutional support of other public and private actors. As part of that strategy, zoning logic did serve a purpose as a resource to ensure their cooperation when implementing the RSV's policy goals by promising them possibilities of future spatial expansion. Thus, the preparatory study already recognizes the importance of sectoral targets for housing, industry, et cetera, when it states that "the translation of these [targets] to an urban area is precondition to establish a demarcation." While concluding that vision is important to achieve the desired spatial structure, the study emphasizes that:

"The spatial concepts for an urban area have to be aimed at possibilities for expansion. Especially the targets regarding housing and commercial areas have to be translated to the terrain [55]".

Despite the presence of this tension, the vision of counteracting spatial fragmentation was carried forward into the Antwerp demarcation process by a key actor: the same urban planning firm that had produced the preparatory study was commissioned to produce the demarcation proposal for the Antwerp Metropolitan Area.

#### *4.2. Phase 2: Increasing Tension (2003–2005)*

While the private planning firm could be considered a champion for the new structure planning approach, when the time came to demarcate the Antwerp Metropolitan Area, it quickly ran into other actors: a disinterested City of Antwerp and opposition from both its fringe municipalities and the Flemish Region. This would lead to a loss of resources for broad consultation and the development of city–regional coordination. Lack of formal political support seriously weakened the vision of safeguarding the future through combating urban sprawl and provided room for the land use paradigm to come to the fore.

As a first step towards a demarcation plan for the Antwerp Metropolitan Area, the private planning firm drew up a proposal in a consortium formed with subcontractors responsible for communication and citizen participation. Subsequently, an extensive formal consultation programme was planned. The proposal's discourse reflects the RSV's evaluation of space in Flanders, characterising the Antwerp Area as a "checkerboard of fragmentation", a network city, or a "polycentric whole of fragments, of poles, of dense and less dense places" [56]. To guide development, the proposal aims to realise a supply of development areas within the metropolitan area of Antwerp; it reads:

"The pressure on the countryside can only be controlled by catering to the spatial needs for housing and commercial activities in the urban area ([56], p. 13)".

In order to realise these aims, a demarcation line is drawn and proposals are made to activate some (residential, industrial and commercial) reserve areas, while eliminating others. The document also includes proposals for infrastructure renewal, investments in housing and culture, regional, transnational and global networking, and the creation of a metropolitan green structure as goals accompanying the demarcation exercise. Finally, by explicitly extending mentions of "Antwerp" to "the Antwerp region"13, the demarcation proposal repeatedly underlines that this is an effort to be made not just by the city of Antwerp, but by all of the municipalities involved (discourse). It states that cooperation can be realised in a "strong and coherent metropolitan framework" which could be pursued by a potent planning administration on metropolitan level or "a platform that supports the metropolitan policy" ([56], pp. 35, 51, 149).

However, the ambitious vision of counteracting sprawl through the development of a spatially concentrated city-region laid out in the demarcation proposal was impeded by other actors: the Antwerp fringe municipalities and the Flemish Region itself. First, the complex and time-consuming policy context in the Antwerp region restrained working towards city–regional cooperation. The relationship between the city and the fringe municipalities is historically fraught with tensions as far as spatial planning is concerned (see Chapter 2 in Reference [57]). As a part of these tensions, fringe municipalities often self-identify as rural, to stress their independent character as opposed to the (urbanised) City of Antwerp [58]. Therefore, the discursive concept of "urban area" quickly acquired a negative connotation, which, in turn, resulted in political and public resistance to the planning process. There was also fear in some fringe municipalities that the demarcation would be a prelude to future mergers, causing local politicians to start attending meetings originally intended for Flemish and local planning officials. The planning firm reported, nonetheless, that support for the metropolitan area was growing steadily at this time. Various respondents still recall a two-day workshop with stakeholders held in an abbey in one of the fringe municipalities, which acted as "neutral ground" outside Antwerp city limits according to one respondent (A-P5).

The early involvement of local politics was initially welcomed by the Flemish administration as an opportunity to generate support for the project. At the same time, though, the regional level had a low estimation of municipal expertise—also found in other demarcation processes [45]. Building up municipal planning capacity as a resource was another aim of the RSV, but it had not advanced very far at the time of the Antwerp demarcation. When asked about the time available to occupy oneself with the demarcation process, one fringe municipality planner responds:

"Yes, very limited you know? The main task is handling permits, planning is a task at the side. So, I didn't really treat it very substantially (A-S2)".

<sup>13</sup> This sounds more subtle in Dutch: een verruiming van "Antwerpen" naar "het Antwerpse" (p. 37). A formulation with sufficient vagueness not to be politically threatening.

At the Flemish level, in 1999, a Liberal Party Minister had taken the place of Christian-Democrat and Socialist predecessors who had initiated the RSV and the new planning framework. From this moment, measures aimed at restraining growth outside the urban areas were weakened. In terms of rules, this resulted in a failure to meet the envisioned supply policy in the urban areas with a restrictive land development policy beyond them [30,59]. The planning firm was also not granted permission by the Flemish administration to execute the public consultation part of the assignment and was not paid for work already performed. Consequentially, little resources were spent on promoting an agenda of city–regional cooperation. The private planning firm also noted the lack of a key public figure (actor) to support the strategic spatial planning vision behind the demarcation process. The then mayor of the city of Antwerp was approached to fulfil this pioneering role, but declined because he felt that involvement of his office would fuel distrust in the fringe municipalities.

In fact, the City itself took a back bench in the demarcation process. As one city planning official summarized the attitude: "We'll do it because Flanders is doing it. But we'll decide for ourselves what exactly we'll have to do" (A-S1). For any rezoning it wanted to initiate, it had ample planning resources to organise itself and it was, therefore, not interested in the Flemish rezoning exercise. Interviewees also report a direct link between city politicians and ministers of their party in the Flemish Government. This "vertical connection" functioned as a resource to influence important decisions and resulted in the private planning firm and regional planning officials being taken out of the loop for all the important dossiers regarding the city.

Though discursively still representing the vision of the RSV, the tension between this vision and the land use logic is already visible in the 2005 final demarcation proposal. The erosion of the RSV's vision can be seen where the text explicitly states that it does not want to interfere with the borders, plans and powers of the individual municipalities and does not aim to create new administrative authorities. Despite repeatedly stressing the need for city–regional cooperation, the text mentions the low levels of support and enthusiasm for the demarcation process. The approach, lacking resources for the consultation programme, is recontextualised as an approach through "predominantly informal contacts". The goal of working towards city–regional cooperation was henceforth abandoned in favour of what one interviewee calls a much more "procedural process" (A-S1). Another city official recalls:

"Although the planning firm started from the ambition of the RSV, from a demarcation line to a programme for the Antwerp region, they were not allowed to work like that, they had to return to the old way of rezoning and -colouring. In effect this is almost a zoning plan (A-P5)".

#### *4.3. Phase 3: Economic Engine for Flanders (2007–2009)*

When the preliminary demarcation plan was published in 2008, its discourse had transformed into one of "creating space" for expansion, omitting completely the RSV's aim of counteracting unbridled suburbanisation and fragmentation and reducing pressure on the countryside. The prime discursive legitimation presented in the preliminary plan is the continued development of the Antwerp area's position as metropolis and economical engine for Flanders. This, was argued, requires improvement of the quality of the locations for employment, housing, metropolitan services, natural and landscape structures, roads and public transport [50]. The preliminary plan only contains two cursory mentions of the spatial fragmentation of the Antwerp area before moving on to discuss quantified targets for housing and industrial development. The land use logic that already played a role in the earlier phases of policy formulation—both as the legal inheritance of the previous planning system and as *resource* to ensure stakeholder support—takes centre stage in this phase. Thus, the process reflects the exact political-institutional dynamics of land development leading to the spatial fragmentation that the initiators of the RSV sought to transform and contain. Reflecting critically on the process, one city official concludes that the demarcation

was reduced to "a number of banal zoning changes" but not to a serious action plan, that, for instance, also included a mobility policy (A-S1).

The Flemish spatial planning administration processed the demarcation proposal into a regional spatial plan. This means that administration and the cabinet of the Minister were the actors that possessed the power to represent and foreground certain voices and arguments from the previous stage and filter out others. Possessing this "power of summary" [60] without the obligation to offer legitimation, the regional administration could also make a different selection of areas for rezoning. Indeed, at this stage, several areas proposed for rezoning and development in the previous phase were left out. Others were added that were not included in the earlier demarcation proposal, either because they were deemed unfit for development by the private planning firm or because they were advised negatively by the City. Eliminating the already existing zoning of a number of areas is no longer mentioned. Finally, some areas for "metropolitan functions" are inserted into the plan. These provide zoning for a water purification installation, a soccer stadium, regularization of a golf course and a commercial area attached to the local airport. Zoning interventions like these were not conceived as part of the demarcation instrument though it could be argued that finding locations for these kinds of supra-local functions is not contrary to the vision of developing a coherent metropolitan area. Yet various interviewees felt these metropolitan functions to be the result of political deals between the City and the Flemish Government and the lobbying of private market parties. In particular, the minister who was elected in the Antwerp constituency and hence had a local political stake in the demarcation process (E3, A-S1, A-P5). Overall, we can thus conclude that, in this phase, the growth managemen<sup>t</sup> logic of drawing development to some zones in order to prevent it in others was dropped. Despite their caution, the municipalities had been fairly constructive partners during the production of the private planning firm's demarcation proposal. This changed when the classification of urban areas was adopted by other policy sectors as a criterion (rule) for the allocation of public resources such as healthcare facilities and cultural centres14. This raised the stakes of (not) falling within an urban area and led to "power plays" between the stakeholders involved reminiscent of the turf battles described by Knaap and Nelson [6]. Similar to the strategy of the city, politicians from fringe municipalities attempted to safeguard their municipality's interests at the Flemish level by exerting influence through "vertical" party lines as well. Furthermore, the animosity between city and fringe came to a head. One interviewee in the Flemish Administration describes the process as:

"How can I as a city gain power over the adjacent municipalities, and how can I as fringe municipality keep the power of the city out? That's what it came down to. And absolutely nothing more, no cooperation (E1)".

In some municipalities the demarcation became the subject of local political struggles. Opposition parties politicized the demarcation dossier and attempted to co-opt citizens' protests (see also Coppens, Van Den Broeck and Van Wymeersch [53]). One mayor viewed the opposition's stirring up of fears of being absorbed by the city as a strategy of keeping the majority on its toes (A-P3). However, majority politicians resisted the demarcation as well, in sometimes fateful *discourse*. A local alderwoman is quoted in the press:

"Because of the plans, some farms will be doomed to disappear since the area will have become unliveable (Gazet van Antwerpen, 21 November 2008)".

*4.4. Phase 4: "Coordinating Objections" (2008–2009)*

Spatial plans in Flanders, like that of the demarcation, are subject to a public inquiry prior to approval by the government. In this last phase of the policy implementation

<sup>14</sup> A point interesting in its own right. The adoption of planning categorizations by other policy sectors could be regarded as a desirable intent of a strategic spatial planning instrument. In the Flemish case, however, this led to struggle and dissatisfaction which expressed itself in a lack of cooperation at the local level that then extended to the Flemish regional level.

process, it becomes clear that the ambition to realise the demarcation in line with the original strategic spatial planning vision has completely withered away and has been replaced by a predominant focus on distribution of resources and rules of the game. In this step in the process, the public inquiry instrument acts as a "regulative device" [60] that takes up some voices and neutralises others. It marks a genre-shift in the planning process from formulating (beneficial) spatial policy to responding to objections. The responses formulated by the Flemish Committee of Spatial Planning to the objections made in the public inquiry were analysed by the researchers. Figure 3 shows the types of the 1375 arguments used15.

Overall, the original strategic spatial vision of restraining sprawl in Flanders played no significant role in the objections to the plan. With only 4.1% of responses referring in one way or another to the spatial vision, it was not a major argumen<sup>t</sup> in the responses of the committee either (Figure 3). Nor did the chairman of the Committee consider adjudicating objections on the basis of the original planning vision its task. They rather took a rule-based view where the Committee is mostly focused on "coordinating technical objections" so the plan could ultimately be approved:

"The objections had to be coordinated and then we expect from Vlacoro a technical recommendation. ( ... ) Yes, it was a technical committee. So, in principle you have to depart from the RSV that was approved by parliament. Vlacoro did not judge that. It's more about: How shall we propose to solve these technical objections? (E4-1)".

The public inquiry rather triggered responses of citizens and other parties who felt their (landed) interests to be threatened by the urban policy within the demarcation line. This can be seen in the numerous objections that focus on land use type as a resource (re)distributed by the plan:

"The regulations for the natural area are unclear, can I build a stable for animals, does the area need to be fenced in, can the terrains be grazed, . . . ([51], p. 14)".

<sup>15</sup> These numbers include "internal references": responses to objections that refer to previous responses in the report.

"The 33 ha of the industrial zone is too little considering the high target number. One wonders whether the site doesn't have the potential to incorporate more ([51], p. 33)".

"Why is the Fort of Kruibeke included in the demarcation and not that of Zwijndrecht? The fort of Kruibeke also needs to be excluded from the demarcation ([51], p. 33)".

There are also many procedural challenges to previous plans, regulations, urban planning legislation, and the authority of the Flemish Government to make zoning decisions usually made by municipalities. Most of these, however, have a clear aim of stopping or promoting zoning decisions. The resource-oriented focus of the way urban growth managemen<sup>t</sup> was implemented through this regional spatial plan was also noted by the committee in its general remarks:

"The plan is strongly based on the obligation to realize the quantitative targets, which means that there is sometimes less attention left for the spatial quality of some proposed urban developments ([51], p. 102)".

Although the public inquiry instrument is designed to allow the voice of citizens and interest groups to be heard, it functions as a regulative device where the "right kind" of discursively and institutionally framed objections (predominantly of a rule-oriented legal nature) are more likely to succeed. In fact, most objections are rejected, or—another example of the power of summary mentioned in Section 4.3—recontextualised and referred to the committee's general remarks (Figure 4). One citizen-activist who led a local group that opposed the inclusion of his neighbourhood in the demarcation summarizes the difficulty of mobilizing the resources and knowledge to phrase objections:

**Figure 4.** Responses considered in the public inquiry.

There is no capacity. It's almost impossible as a citizen nowadays to object properly against a complex plan. And then you have to know the procedures too. Planning law is tremendously complex. You can't know that as a citizen, you have to hire a very expensive specialised lawyer. There is no money for that. Who is going to gather that? Who will pay for that? And you have to do all of that within a month. That's practically impossible! (A-A1).

Ultimately, the public inquiry led to the elimination of three of the twenty-seven areas to be rezoned. A fourth area was retracted by the Flemish Government a year after the approval of the final demarcation plan in 2009. Four lawsuits were filed with the Council of State, but these only aimed to annul parts of the metropolitan area developments due to local concerns and did not pertain to a larger strategic spatial planning vision. As mentioned by the respondents, filing lawsuits requires resources that only specific actors are able to mobilize: time, knowledge and skills to construct a well-documented dossier and the financial means to hire specialized legal counsel. This left most citizen-activists disillusioned with the process and the value of filing objections:

And apart from the number of objections you filed, or the number of signatures you collected, that is of no import. The law is the only thing of import. [Politicians say] we belong in the urban area so we can't say no [to development]. –Yes, but what about *our* arguments? In what way do you represent *our* interest? The interest of the common citizen, of the current residents? And there is absolutely no answer to that (A-A2).

Thus, the public inquiry instrument could not ensure the implementation of the original policy vision of restraining sprawl, but served instead as a regulative device to address public participation in a way that maintained the tried and true practice of zoning logic with its emphasis on rules and resources. The result is captured by one rather disillusioned planning official:

And what it became in the end is at its Belgian, right? Something very administrative, something legal-technical, zoning, securing, putting it into concrete. Was that the intent? I don't think so, but oh well. That's the only thing people know in Flanders right: securing, juridical (knocks on table). Which rights do I have, up to which plot? And that entire structure planning philosophy is translated in demarcations at the plot level, property titles ye<sup>t</sup> again. What is allowed, what isn't? That uncertainty of "in time, what could this become??" A Fleming doesn't want that (laughs) (E3).
