Your Sustainability Is Not My Sustainability: In-between Spaces for Meaningful Collaboration between Local Stakeholders and Planning Professionals to Construct Congruent Frames over Contested Meanings

Urban sustainability is a highly contested topic because the challenges of sustaining urban ecosystems are interlinked with environmental justice and equity concerns. In urban planning processes, this requires more collaboration between professionals and local stakeholders (citizens and entrepreneurs). Yet, participatory processes in urban planning are strained with various challenges. This article suggests that in order to consciously shape communication for meaningful collaboration, it should be studied as a function of communication spaces, termed “in-between spaces”. These so-called in-between spaces are studied through the comparative analysis of two such spaces in the same brownfield redevelopment project in Amsterdam. The first space was created by an instrumental participatory process and the second through a co-creative approach. The spaces were studied through desk study and action research. The results indicated that fuzzier boundaries of in-between spaces and methodological plurality are needed for creating new congruent meanings, creating inter-dependencies between actors, and potentially fostering transformative learning, needed for sustainable urban development. Secondly, this article offers grounded insights into the contested interpretations of sustainable development between different sets of actors and identifies the potential of well-designed in-between spaces to make these tensions constructive. Lastly, this article highlights the diverse use of phronetic management (wisdom or ‘mindfulness’ in learning and leading attitudes for pragmatic action) by actors and the use of visual and creative methods for creating congruent meaning between actors, provided that local stakeholders feel ownership over the creative process and resulting output.