How Discourses on Leisure Affect Regional Development in the Province of Fryslân: a Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective

Jasper Meekes, Constanza Parra Novoa, Gert de Roo

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademic

    Abstract

    Leisure is seen as an important factor for regional development in the province of Fryslân and many other predominantly rural and peripheral areas. However, planning for leisure, requiring high spatial quality, is a complex challenge. This is due to the fragmentation of leisure policy, but also to the position of leisure on the fringes of urban and rural, nature and agriculture. Additionally, the meaning of leisure changes over time due to the temporary nature of discourses on leisure. This paper provides an operationalization of complex adaptive systems to analyze the role of leisure in regional development by looking at the way in which discourses on leisure both shape and are shaped by regional development. The paper, which follows an earlier paper on the evolutionary development of leisure, is structured in three parts. The first part positions the research in the debate on complexity and complex adaptive systems in planning. The second part argues for the use of discourse analysis in this complex adaptive systems approach. The argument builds on the notion of discourses on leisure as based on as well as constructing social reality. The third part presents a model integrating complexity and discourses and providing an opening for operationalization.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationAESOP Annual Conference, Utrecht, 2014
    Publication statusPublished - 10-Jul-2014

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