Urban Area Development as an Expansive Learning Process: the Relevance of Monitoring and Evaluation

Disciplinary professionals in the field of urban area development deal with the task of preparing the (urban) world that is not yet there. In times of increasing complexity and the invariably rise of contradictions, we propose that continuous learning between actors involved can make the urban area development process more resilient: less susceptible to crisis and more responsive to changing demand. In this paper, we build on our REAL CORP 2019 contribution (Peek & Stam, 2019) and further substantiate the idea of learning as afoundational principle of urban area development and examine whether Engestrom’s (1987) Activity Theory and expansive learning may be a useful conceptual framework to mobilise learning. We highlight the opportunities of expansive learning through monitoring and evaluation and use primarily outcomes of the monitoring and evaluation tool we designed for Merwe-Vierhavens, a transforming port-industrial area in Rotterdam, to analyse opportunities for expansive learning in the urban area development process.