ESPON ACTAREA Thinking and Planning in Areas of Territorial Cooperation Regional and national spatial planning: new challenges and new opportunities ESPON Outreach event-Université Paris Diderot-28 th (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
This Atlas contains detailed descriptions of 13 European examples of soft territorial cooperation areas. The selection of cases presented makes no claim to comprehensiveness nor (statistical) representativeness. Cases were selected out of a multitude of identified examples with a view on fitting the project’s definition of soft territorial cooperation. Soft territorial cooperation areas were defined as initiatives that define the sectoral scope and geographical boundaries in an ‘open’ or ‘fuzzy’ way, based on a notion of ‘community of intent’ as a voluntary collaboration open to public and private actors who decide to jointly address territory-specific opportunities and challenges. Their other main characteristics are: • a medium to long term integrative perspective (i.e. not limited to the implementation of a single project); • seeking to enhance the capacities of involved players, making them actors of their own development; • renewing relations between institutional levels, secto...
ESPON ACTAREA: Thinking and planning in areas of territorial cooperation Final Report
2017
ESPON ACTAREA has analysed 24 examples of ‘soft territorial cooperation areas’ across Europe, taking as a starting point Swiss efforts to promote thinking and planning in so-called ‘Action Areas’ (AAs), i.e. new forms of soft governance spaces with fuzzy, flexible boundaries that span across national and regional administrative boundaries and link urban and rural development policies. It has identified good practices and developed tools to describe and develop cooperation across Europe, considering both individual cooperation instances and cooperation frameworks put in place primarily by national authorities. Soft territorial cooperation areas are instances of territorial governance. They bring together actors concerned by a set of territorial challenges and opportunities and who are prepared to elaborate and implement strategies to address them jointly. Their sectoral scope and geographical boundaries are generally defined in an ‘open’ or ‘fuzzy’ way. When choosing case studies, th...
European Planning Studies, 2012
This article contributes to the discussion about spatial planning in and for Europe by discussing territoriality in the strategies and practices of the territorial cohesion policy of the European Union (EU). The need for new ways of thinking and acting spatially are strongly promoted within the EU's spatial development policies, and the addition of territorial cohesion as one of the main objectives of the EU alongside the economic and social cohesion has brought the debate on European spatial planning back onto the political agenda. Territorial cohesion policy advocates the idea of soft planning, where new soft planning spaces cross the administrative borders within the EU territory. Accordingly, strategic planning and development policies at national and regional levels are engaged with the policy by promoting soft spatial imaginaries characterized by relational understandings of space. The article explores through two empirical materials related to the Member States' definitions about territorial cohesion and the case of the Bothnian Arc, whether, and if so, how, the new soft planning spaces are visible in the conceptualizations and regional-level practices of territorial cohesion policy. The study illustrates that the conceptualizations of territorial cohesion and regional practices still lean on traditional understandings of territoriality. Clearly, there are mismatches between the soft planning visions for single European space and the practical development governed through traditional administrative territories.
European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation: a means to harden spatially dispersed cooperation?
National territories are often too small to handle complex trends and challenges such as those associated with globalization. This led to Europe-wide debates on governance styles and transnational policy documents such as the Territorial Agenda of the European Union (Informal Ministerial Meeting on Urban Development and Territorial Cohesion, 2007). Additionally, the European Union (EU) has encouraged regions to cooperate across borders, including through transnational and interregional cooperation programmes, comprising both territorially contiguous and spatially dispersed areas. Cross-border cooperations (CBCs) are a voluntary mechanism for the development of common strategies, which often utilize flexible structures. However, different national regulations and competencies can hamper the implementation of joint objectives (Gärditz, 2009; Ricq, 2006). This situation resulted in an increased demand for legal recognition and institutionalization of CBCs. In 2007, the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) was introduced to manage CBCs as multilateral institutional bodies with legal personality and, thereby, reduce the challenges of cooperation. EGTCs were designed to be capable of taking binding decisions and to stabilize or 'harden' longer-term collaboration. EGTCs typically manage funds on behalf of their international members and have a dedicated team of staff. By July 2016, 63 EGTCs had been established as well as others at different stages of development. ABSTRACT in the past decade, over 60 european groupings of territorial cooperation (egtcs) have emerged, which are intended to help institutionalize cross-border cooperation. this paper analyses how establishing an egtc contributes to the institutional 'hardening' of the spatially dispersed variant of cross-border cooperations and examines the attendant challenges. the research seeks to contribute to current debates concerning 'soft spaces' and makes the case that egtcs represent a flexible tool for the hardening of spatially dispersed cross-border cooperations.
European Spatial Planning and Territorial Cooperation
Routledge eBooks, 2010
List of plates List of figures List o] tables List of boxes Preface Acknowledgements List of acronyms and abbreviations PART I Introducing the European dimension of spatial planning 1 Introducing the European Union as a planning subject Introduetion 2 Why study European spatial policy and planning? 6 The scope and structure of the book 8 2 Arguing for and against European spatial planning Introduetion 9 Arguments [or and against planning 10 Competence, subsidiarity and proportionality 12 Transnationality 16 Cohesion and more balanced spatial development 17 Spatial policy and the costs of non-coordination 19 Conclusion 21 Further reading 21 3 The language challenge and terminology
Espon-Interstrat. Espon in Integrated Territorial Strategies
2012
The INTERSTRAT project’s overall aim is “to encourage and facilitate the use of ESPON 2013 Programme findings in the creation and monitoring of Integrated Territorial Development Strategies (ITDS) and to support transnational learning about the actual and potential contribution of ESPON to integrated policy-making.” We defined integrated territorial development as ‘the process of shaping economic, social and environmental change through spatially sensitive policies and programmes’.
2013
This report presents the final results of an Applied Research Project conducted within the framework of the ESPON 2013 Programme, partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund. The partnership behind the ESPON Programme consists of the EU Commission and the Member States of the EU27, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Each partner is represented in the ESPON Monitoring Committee. This report does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the members of the Monitoring Committee. Information on the ESPON Programme and projects can be found on www.espon.eu The web site provides the possibility to download and examine the most recent documents produced by finalised and ongoing ESPON projects.
Conditions and Challenges of Territorial Cooperation
Journal of Intercultural Management Vol. 4, No. 4, December 2012, pp. 5–17, 2012
Civilization processes, interpreted according to the flow economy model, incline one to conceptualize territorial management in terms of Multilevel Governance. This approach explains the context in which territorial cooperation becomes a primary factor and one of the key dimensions of regional development. In many fields, territorial multi-sector partnerships focused on planning, organizing or just running everyday activities within territorial units are playing an increasingly important role in governance systems. This enhances the significance of public participation in territorial management. This paper presents researches showing the way cultural dimensions constitute the most complex and sophisticated challenges when the setting the rules and practices of interoperability within the network of public, private and social organizations. The quoted findings explain how many difficulties must be overcome in order to establish cooperative inter-organizational management systems stimulating territorial development.