BrabantStad - Een netwerk van steden en provincie in Noord-Brabant

Abstract

BrabantStad, a network of cities and Provincial government in Brabant

This Master’s thesis focuses on the coexistence of network and territory as principles of spatial structuration in an “urban network”. In the Dutch context, an “urban network” is a form of administrative co-operation at the regional scale in-between urban municipalities and a Provincial government. To gain insight into how such a network operates, a study is conducted on histories and spatialities of Dutch regional co-operation in general and BrabantStad in particular. The BrabantStad case is primarily studied through interviewing nine informants familiar with the phenomenon, each having varying degrees of involvement in the network. As a result, views from both insiders as well as outsiders of BrabantStad are obtained. Using a qualitative approach, partly based on principles of “grounded theory”, an outline of a conceptual model on the “urban network” is constructed at first. This model is developed further only after the case study was carried out. Four aspects appear to be crucial towards an understanding of an “urban network”: space (I), organization (II), time (III) and values (IV). With regard to the spatial aspect, the dynamic character of different ways to organize space is underscored, along with the relations between cities in BrabantStad and their surrounding regions.