KU Leuven researcher Tristan Claus (P.PUL research group) won the Prize for the Young Urban Planner 2023 for his paper ‘A private house, a rule of law: the articulation of private interests into national legislation’.
By analysing interaction patterns between homeowners and policymakers, Tristan uncovered the decision-making process for rebuilding rights of dwellings in zones allocated to agriculture in Flanders. The paper “shatters the belief that spatial planning in Flanders is a rational activity in function of the public interest and shows how securing individual interests significantly hinders the achievement of societal goals,” the jury said.
The paper is written in Dutch and is accessible at https://plandag.net/