Spatial Planning and the Complexity of Turbulent, Open Environments: About purposeful interventions in a world of non-linear change

This chapter constructs a kind of reasoning that is supportive of this alternative frame of reference. It argues that discontinuous change is the only constant factor in the world that people are part of, and what seems stable to them is actually nothing more than a temporary period of persistence. The chapter explores the meanings and background of the relevant ideas in this discussion, such as non-linearity, complexity and uncertainty. Complexity thinking and spatial planning seem almost antagonistic, a conflict of reasoning. The chapter shows that how transformations and bifurcations can be understood as mechanisms of non-linearity and change. It confronts contemporary planning theory with set of ideas from the complexity sciences and evolutionary model, and how the model frames reality in a non-linear and transformative way. Van der Leeuw adopts a non-linear perspective, which he describes as ‘the archaeology of innovation’, to elaborate on how humans have created a socialized environment.