In Dutch planning, there has always been an important role for spatial concepts. Their role has arguably changed with the recent decentralization of planning to the regional and local level. At the national level, guiding concepts of a more procedural nature have replaced the more substantive and place-based spatial concepts, leaving more room for regional and local interpretation. At the regional and local level, spatial concepts are still in use, but this seems to be in a more communicative, negotiating and developing role than before. In this paper, we analyse how place concepts are used to exercise power, mobilize recourses and frame meaning over the use of the peri-urban areas, in the changing Dutch planning context. This paper focuses on two competing place concepts for overlapping green urban fringe areas in The Hague Region, which have been promoted by different actor constellations and which represent different visions about the meaning of these peri-urban areas. The case study allows conclusions about the changing role of spatial concepts in Dutch spatial planning.

In light of the challenges imposed by climate change, many countries are ‘planning’ for energy transition. Interactions between different actors in transition arenas, help shift the current complex socio-technological energy system towards a new sustainable one. A critical issue is integrating the new energy system with other land-uses and spatial issues. In the Netherlands, regional design ateliers were organized to explore and address these challenges. We conceptualized the regional design ateliers on energy and space as systemic transition arenas in planning for energy transition and analysed their contribution to the regional energy transition process. The design ateliers played an important role in creating insights into regional energy transition and its spatial implications. This raised awareness and affected the perspectives of several stakeholders on energy transition. Our study also showed that some important (spatial) aspects, such as smart combinations with other land-uses and the transport and storage of energy, received little attention during the ateliers, leading to unfinished conversations. We argue that regional design ateliers should also be organized in the upcoming stages of ‘planning’ for energy transition to further fuel the transition process and fully exploit the benefits of regional design ateliers as systemic transition arenas.

This article identifies two alternative collaborative spatial planning discourses: a leading government with societal participation and self-governance by societal actors with government participation. It shows how the boundary between the roles of governments and societal actors in collaboration discourses is shifting, but also how both collaborative planning discourses exist alongside each other in two Dutch urban regions: Eindhoven Region and Parkstad Limburg. In both regions, these alternative discourses on role division in collaborative planning are similar, even though Eindhoven is a growing region in which the local and regional governments collaborate intensively with companies, and Parkstad Limburg is a shrinking region that more actively involves citizens. The article concludes with reflections on the need to manage boundaries in collaborative planning.

Over the last few decades, interaction and collaboration with stakeholders and communities in the design and development of our environment have become integral parts of landscape architecture practice. This article explores the position of this kind of designing in postgraduate landscape architecture education in Europe. An analysis of the international master’s curricula in landscape architecture of 29 universities across Europe shows there is some attention paid to participatory, collaborative, and transdisciplinary design in several, but not all programs. However, participatory, collaborative, and transdisciplinary design is an important topic in the current discourse amongst landscape architecture scholars. This may indicate an increase in attention to the topic in European landscape architecture education curricula in the (near) future.