Knowledge and Learning in Complex Urban Renewal Projects; Towards a Process Design



Learning in urban renewal - PhD project Janneke van Bemmel OTB Delft

increasingly important nowadays, for society in general as well as for urban renewal, namely
knowledge. During the execution phase of urban renewal processes, which means the actual building
process, capital, labour and land (including bricks and mortar) can be seen as the main production
factor. In the planning phase however, when policy documents, plans and designs are developed, the
main production factor is knowledge. Knowledge workers, such as urban developers, architects,
neighbourhood economists, and policy-making officials, typically do the activities that are carried out
during the planning phase. A knowledge worker is someone who has to learn relatively often and a lot
to be able to fulfil his or her primary task well (Weggeman, 2000). Because the environment of urban
renewal processes changes all the time, it is impossible to use the same plan or design over and over
again and on every location. This means that urban renewal cannot become a routine job. Gathering,
developing and applying knowledge is essential to make sure that plans and designs are tailored to
what is needed and desired for a specific location at a specific moment.

For knowledge work, the top-down planning paradigm, in which managers make the decisions
and employees carry out these decisions, is unsuitable (Weggeman, 2000). It is virtually impossible
for managers to make the right decisions based on all the information they gather. The only
alternative managers in knowledge intensive organisations have, is to rely on the loyalty and
knowledge of their employees. This alternative boils down to knowledge management, which entails
the stimulation of the development, the sharing and the use of knowledge.

To conclude, learning is of vital importance for urban renewal processes, based on the high
uncertainty as well as on the knowledge intensive character of the work that needs to be done,
especially in the early stages. Following Van der Knaap (1998), the goal of learning for processes of
policy formation and execution, is to reach intelligent, reasonably priced and, above all, increasingly
better solutions for complex problems in society. However, it is very difficult to measure the extent to
which a solution is ‘good’, intelligent, or even reasonably priced. That is why the goal of learning for
this research project is to increase the extent to which decisions made are based on the knowledge
available (knowledge use), which in turn depends on the extent to which knowledge was developed
and shared. For this research, the benefit of learning for urban renewal processes lies in the increased
use of relevant knowledge in decision-making, which will have ‘better’ decisions as a result. Better in
the sense that decisions are to a larger extent based on the relevant knowledge that is available in the
network.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PROCESS DESIGN

The research project of which this paper is part, aims at developing a process design for increasing
the quality of urban renewal processes through increased knowledge use during decision-making. The
idea of designing a process design is borrowed from Van Aken (2005). He argues that in architectural
design (amongst others), the organization or ‘design’ of the design process often receives too little
attention and that if a process design is made at all, it usually concerns a previously used process that
was copied or somewhat adapted. However, as Van Aken argues, for complex, large-scale, knowledge



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