Jantine Grijzen

Jantine Grijzen (1983) studied political science at the University of Amsterdam, specialty public administration: citizenship and democratic governance. She obtained her Masters degree in 2004.  Her PhD research focuses on: Planning nature and landscape: under what circumstances does expertise impede or enhance collective policy making? It addresses the role of planners in environmental planning. Under what circumstances does their expertise impede or enhance collective policy making in the Netherlands?

The Dutch land use system is meant to facilitate a balanced land use, and a legitimate decision making process on development and protection. However, typical compromises reached in contemporary policy processes have fragmented the landscape, impoverished nature quality and have not contributed directly or indirectly to an improvement of urban life. Projects have been characterized as sub-optimal, slow to implement and often incoherently coordinated with other (local, regional, national) projects. When it comes to landscape and nature policies lack the scale of intervention specialists deem necessary. The period of crises of the last decade has invoked experiments of alternative practices of planning. Until now the failure of the planning system is blamed on various macro-sociological changes, such as an increasing complexity within a risk society, fading distinctions between state and market, combined with an ideological shift away from state intervention.

The PhD research will address above developments from a new point of view: the role of planners and the way they mobilize their expertise. Herewith it combines epistemological theories on the production of knowledge and reason with those on planning and (democratic) governing.

The PhD-research is part of the NWO-GaMON project, funded by NWO, the ministry of OC& W, VROM and LNV.

http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/j.grijzen/