Whose Permits? The Tenacity of Permissive Development Control in Flanders

This paper explains how a permissive planning permit system is embedded in Belgian/Flemish society and how this contributes to urban sprawl. We base our analysis on an institutionalist approach as developed in previous and current research and analyse the Flemish planning permit system since 1962 as one of different interacting planning systems, all (re)produced, maintained, transformed and struggled over by specific individual and collective actors and shaped by a range of institutional dynamics. The analysis shows how in the dynamics of the Flemish planning permit system, a general struggle between actors defending property-based private initiative and actors arguing for collective action in space is especially apparent. In this struggle, property ownership expressed through a permissive planning permit system and limited enforcement of regulations is seen to be predominant, especially in the 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Changes in the 1990s, making the planning permit system more strict, have partly and momentarily challenged the institutional frame which structures the predominant planning permit practice, but left the logic of individual property largely untouched. Today, the Flemish planning permit system has again been reoriented towards the protection of private property, which hampers the capacity of government to implement a coherent spatial policy.