RGS Conference, Cardiff, Aug 2018| 1 Terry van Dijk, Assoc.Prof. Design and Planning University of Groningen, the Netherlands t.van.dijk@rug.nl Leadership in an age of co- and self- Abstract In an age of governments retreating and citizens standing up for themselves, processes of deliberation on the futures of places have become egalitarian. Practices of designing-with- citizens, or designing-what- citizens-like have been applied extensively. For some places and problems, local opinions are not the only reality. Where do experts come into play? Are they accepted as such, and are citizens prepared to learn about parts of reality they didn't have a clue about? And what if the citizens cannot find agreement, who exerts leadership? Is any overarching authority granted the right to tell what way to go? This paper presents a number of cases, discussing the value of leadership and expertise in making places better. Let’s start at the foundation | Bringing about deliberate spatial change is at the heart of the human species. How else can we live on our planet? We need shelter, pastures, roads, ditches to sustain ourselves. Our attempts to adjust places to our needs can be divided in 3 eras. Medieval cities emerged more or less accidentally as the result of numerous individual deliberate actions. The buildings were deliberate, their arrangement mostly accidental. We call these patterns organic, since they grew from the interactions between numerous actions. Successful attempts to direct the larger structures (Sienna, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Washington DC) grew in number where powerful institutions of church and business could do so. Much later, science, technology and the power of government produced the modernist project of blueprint perfection for the new cities built in the 1950s and 1960s, and the attempts to improve the city centres. Suburbanisation, motorisation and city formation were felt to be necessary. The arrangement was deliberate, the buildings too. Not all modernist endeavours were appreciated in hindsight. From the 1970s on, modernism was criticised for ruining the social fabric. The battle between the large-scale and scientific, and the small-scale and emotional, continues until this day. The communicative turn sought to redress these transgressions. Today’s orthodoxy |The current communicative planning cultures pride themselves for rejecting the blueprint and rejecting concentration of power with the governmental institutions only. Regret over past megalomania, the rejection of the great truths of science and religion, and the fear for power concentration have put the individual on a pedestal. The individual is granted the highest authority. Like Jane Jacobs addressed the mockingly labelled ‘orthodoxy’ of modernist planning, today’s scholars should interrogate the