ENGAGING IN THE MUDDY FIELDS OF PLANNING IN NEO- LIBERAL TIMES Guy Baeten Department of Social and Economic Geography University of Lund, Sweden Although I work at a geography institute and have a geography doctorate, I still consider myself first and foremost a ‘planner’. Planning is my prime interest and natural research home, largely because of my stay at the Institute for Urban and Regional Planning in Leuven throughout the nineties and my cooperation with Louis Albrechts. I, like so many others, have greatly benefited from Louis’ capacity to set up and manage large-scale research projects that would allow researchers to delve into research questions over a lengthy period of time. Our research group was involved in a five-year research project on transport planning (Impulse Programme Transport and Mobility), and our research efforts resulted in a book: Mobiliteit. Landschap van macht en onmacht (Transport. Landscape of Empowerment and Disempowerment). It was a rare attempt to introduce (critical) social theory in the analysis of transport plans and transport infrastructures. Together with other leading thinkers then at the Institute, in particular Erik Swyngedouw and guest professor Philip Cooke, Louis Albrechts always insisted on bringing together social theory and concrete planning processes. That is a very difficult balancing act. Given the nature of planning, it is easy for planning researchers to skip theory and slip into applied research, that is, assisting in drawing up plans. Or the other way round, leave the muddy fields of concrete planning work and withdraw in the splendid isolation of intellectual commentary. Louis did neither and was always engaged in real planning work and theoretical renewal (he had his own advice: “read books at least one day per week”). Our transport book nicely reflected Louis’ approach to planning research. An array of historical empirical detail from case studies such as the TGV station