The number of publications on social innovations has significantly increased over the past decades. Meanwhile even policy-makers build their hopes on socially innovative solutions and their ‘transformative power’. However, what is still needed is a better understanding of the processes and...

The aim of this paper is to understand the social process of the emergence and institutionalization of innovations in spatial planning (which we describe as ‘social innovations’). The paper is based on a recently finished empirical and comparative study conducted in four distinct areas of...