Training professionals for cross boundary planning

For decades Dutch transport policies are dominated by two themes: congestion and environment. Extensive research has revealed planning concepts that can improve the performance of the networks as well as reduce the environmental impact of traffic and transport, by taking into account spatial planning policies. Such concepts have been introduced in the Dutch policy realm with limited success. Generally speaking there still is a great lack of cooperation between the fields of traffic and transport and spatial planning, or between various levels of government, at the cost of accessibility and environment. The recent shift in Dutch traffic and spatial policies to decentralize power and policy implementation from the national to the regional level might encourage regional transport and spatial planners to integrate the policy realms towards cooperation or even to collaboration. This article describes the design of a training for transport engineers and spatial planners to improve their capabilities to cooperate successfully and to work more effectively on the regional themes of accessibility and environmental impact. The training focuses on projects that can be characterized as cross boundary cooperation. The training is based on the theories and practices of the learning organization and on a constructivist perspective on learning. The article shortly describes the theoretical framework and gives some practical experiences with the introduction of these learning concepts.