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SPATIAL GOVERNANCE HOME PAGE
URL: http://www.spatialgovernance.com/index.htm
© John S. Cook - Created on 5 June 2004
Last modified
07/12/05 16:50
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INTRODUCTION |
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This website aims to promote understanding
about spatial governance. Spatial governance involves modern ideas about
governance; but it focuses more particularly on a wide variety of situations
where knowledge and mutual understandings about both time and place are
important to successful social, economic and ecological outcomes. These
understandings are important to the ownership, occupation, government and
administration of territory in all its forms; as well as the activities that
occur in a particular territory.
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GOVERNANCE |
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Spatial Governance as an Aspect of
Governance
Spatial governance is an aspect of governance more generally. 'Governance'
relates to human organisation of
various kinds: government and non-government - commercial and non-commercial
- formal and informal. It is thus a broader term than 'government' and deals
with a variety of more general human social interactions and their social,
economic and ecological outcomes.
In general,
governance revolves about three interactive areas of
information-intensive activity: namely, an authority
regime, a planning regime, and
a monitoring regime.
An Index
to Governance Issues provides access to more detailed analyses and
information on concepts associated with governance. An analysis of
Information Structure in Spatial Governance
shows that the idea of spatial governance has a wide variety of practical
applications.
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PLANNING |
Planning Functions
Planning involves a range of information-intensive
activities aimed at improving performance by design or 'on purpose'.
Improving performance taking advantage of future possibilities - or avoiding
- future possibilities.
Belief that something may be possible in the future depends to a
significant extent on what has been shown to be possible in the past.
Thus, the planning regime - with its orientation to the future - is
interdependent with the monitoring regime - with its orientation in the past.Planning depends on imagination,
purpose and design. At the outset, a plan exists mainly in the
imagination. It is essentially a work of fiction unless it is
implemented and becomes a reality. Purpose is a consequence of some human motivation or
desire to change the world in some degree - for better or worse. Design
involves working out how to achieve some purpose within constraints of
what is deemed possible in:
 | a technical sense - something that can be done;
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| an economic sense - something that is affordable; and |
| a political sense - something that is socially
permissible and acceptable. |
This issue is expanded in
Information Structure in Spatial Governance. |
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MONITORING |
Implications of Learning through
Experience
An ultimate and abiding issue in all systems of governance involves how
it can be decided that a system is performing satisfactorily. Generally,
deciding that something is done satisfactorily implies an understanding
of what a system is supposed to do: that is, the purpose it is supposed
to fulfill.
Monitoring involves observing key variables of a system under some form
of governance to see if it it is performing satisfactorily.
This process of observing - becomes a
is an essential element of learning through
experience. observing and recording
in observing social and economic systems, the observer is
often part of the system under observation and may be changed in some
degree by the process of observing
This issue is expanded in
Information Structure in Spatial Governance
and Index
to Monitoring Issues |
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LINKS |
| SPATIAL ORGANISATION AND GOVERNANCE |
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| TERRITORIAL GOVERNANCE |
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| SPATIAL SCIENCES AND ANALYSIS |
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| SPATIAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE |
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