Positioning European Spatial Planning

The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) is being described as 'inter-governmental'. The original initiative was for a Community spatial strategy for the delivery of the Structural Funds. Coming from France, it met with opposition. So it was that the successive six-monthly Presidencies of the EU took turns in managing the process. In truth, however, without Commission support the ESDP would not have come about. Now that the ESDP is on the books, the Commission is claiming a leadership role. Taking a position on this, one needs to view spatial planning against the backdrop of general thinking about European integration. Positions in the literature are often presented as polar opposites, like that of 'neo-functionalists' putting faith in integration on the one hand and that of 'realists' emphasizing the continuing dominance of nation states on the other hand. However, a growing body of literature is not about these 'grand theories', but about the actual workings of European institutions. It takes a middle ground and invokes concepts which planning writers are accustomed to, like networks, discourses and governance. From this literature it appears that mutual learning, a feature also of the ESDP process, is common in European integration. European spatial planning must be seen as part and parcel of an emergent system of European multi-level governance. In it, power is exerted at multiple levels of government. Denying the Community a spatial planning role is not realistic, therefore.     

Space Against Time: Competing Rationalities in Planning for Housing

Foucault's understanding of government as the 'conduct of conduct' is adopted in order to investigate how the state 'governs at a distance' across space and through time. Rationalities and techniques of governance are identified as the main means by which the state establishes 'networks' across the domains to be governed. The effort required to keep the networks in place is emphasized and it is indicated that conflict can emerge around the rationalities and techniques that underpin governmental networks. A case study examining how conflict unfolds is outlined drawn from the planning-for-housing sector in England. It is shown that governmental rationalities associated with 'developmentalism' are coming into conflict with those associated with 'sustainable development'. It is argued that a new rationality of government is thus beginning to recast the networks of planning and that this rationality privileges space over time.     

Planning Control on the Northern European Periphery

From different pasts and currently different connections to EU, Latvia and Norway in the last few years have created new legal frameworks for their national planning systems and hence for planning control. This paper explores similarities and differences between these two planning control systems and related tendencies in the revision of planning legislation adopted in recent times. Methodologically, the study makes a distinction between acting organizational subjects and the rules of the game that affect their performance. Together with the planning organization, such formal institutional factors indicate modes of planning control as well as possibilities for creating coherence across planning hierarchies. The conclusion indicates similarities between the two systems, but also differences. These apply to some extent to organization, responsibilities and contents of planning control on regional and national levels and especially to their respective institutional approaches for creating consistency and symmetry in planning across local, regional and national levels. The recent legal revisions do not indicate any kind of tendency for convergence between these planning control systems. On the contrary, some of these changes reveal different approaches to modes of planning control.     

European Spatial Planning Between Competitiveness and Territorial Cohesion: Shadows of Neo-liberalism

This paper analyses the use of the concept of territorial cohesion in policy documents produced by the European Union. It is an idea celebrated in community documents, such as cohesion reports, the Territorial Agenda of the European Union and the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion; after more than a decade of political debate, the concept is about to gain a legitimate institutional role, after being included in the Lisbon Treaty, and is among the competences that the EU shares with other member states. At first, territorial cohesion seems to oppose the logics of neo-liberalism by reinscribing welfare problems and policies in spatial terms. However, using the analytical framework of cultural critics, and intending cohesion to be a discourse carried on by a community of European scholars and policymakers, the research will discuss the conceptual relationship between competitiveness and territorial cohesion in European policies and narratives.     

The Importance of the Fundamental Right to Property for the Practice of Planning: An Introduction to the Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights on Article 1, Protocol 1

Article 1 Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the “peaceful enjoyment” of ones possessions. The use of land development tools and planning tools therefore will necessarily find a boundary in the protection of the fundamental right to property by Article 1. This contribution gives a general survey of the interpretation and application of Article 1, and discusses the general testing scheme adopted by the European Court. This contribution focuses on case law of the Court involving town and land planning instruments and aims to define general principles in this field.     

The 2002 Congress of the European Schools of Planning

In the month of July 2002, the city of Volos in Greece was the stage for the XVI European Congress of the European Schools of Planning. Several attendees from all over the world presented 360 papers, grouped in 11 sessions. The keynote speakers of the opening sessions were Professor Andreas Faludi and Professor Peter Marcuse. The closing sessions were shared by Professor Rachel Alterman and Professor Alessandro Balducci (the new AESOP president). There was still time to present an overview of the next Olympic Games, at Athens, in 2004. This note also mentions briefly the next conjoint congress of AESOP and ACSP in Brussels, Belgium, 8-11 July 2003.     

Planning in the 1990s: An international agenda

This paper, originally presented to the AESOP‐ACSP joint conference in Oxford in 1991, stresses that both in Europe and in the US, there is a major difference for planning in the switch from boom to recession. During the 1990s a major challenge will be to find new ways of public‐private partnership in financing new urban infrastructure at a time when developer contributions — a major innovation of the 1980s — have dried up. This particularly applies to the European high‐speed train system — one critical element of which will run through the East Thames Corridor, one of Britain's major urban developments in the coming years. In the US, planners are likely to remain more locally focused, less internationally concerned, than in a Europe in which national barriers are rapidly eroding.     

Discourses of Mobility and Polycentric Development: A Contested View of European Spatial Planning

This article carries out an analysis of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), a policy document which represents a critical moment in the emergence of a new discourse of European spatial development. The analytical approach probes at the power relations which have shaped the ESDP framework and its contents, focusing on the twin core themes of spatial mobility and polycentricity. The analysis concludes that in the contested policy process a new spatial discourse of economic competitiveness is emerging at the expense of social and environmental interests. This new discourse will be further contested as implementation takes place in an uncertain policy environment.     

An Anatomy of Spatial Planning: Coming to Terms with the Spatial Element in UK Planning

“Spatial planning” is a phrase that now resonates throughout many planning systems across the globe. It is being used as a label to describe pan-national, regional, strategic and even aspects of local planning processes. Within the UK, spatial planning is being utilized alongside, or even in place of, more traditional phraseology associated with planning, such as “town and country planning”. It is being used by a range of institutions of the State, professional groups and academic commentators to describe the processes of planning reform, modernization, policy integration, and strategic governance that politically are now required to make planning fit for purpose in the 21st century. The precise meaning and definition of spatial planning remains difficult to pin down, as does its origins within the UK. This paper attempts to dissect the various components of the spatial planning phrase and set out the meaning and origins of the term in the UK context. It covers re-territorialization, Europeanization and integration origins of spatial planning thinking and provides a conceptual, rather than practical, debate on the anatomy of spatial planning, situated within ongoing processes of institutional transformation, through the lens of governance and distinctiveness in state policy development.     

Curbing Optimism Bias and Strategic Misrepresentation in Planning: Reference Class Forecasting in Practice

The American Planning Association recently endorsed a new forecasting method called reference class forecasting, which is based on theories of planning and decision-making that won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics. This paper details the method and describes the first instance of reference class forecasting in planning practice. First, the paper documents that inaccurate projections of costs, demand, and other impacts of plans are a major problem in planning. Second, the paper explains inaccuracy in terms of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Third, the theoretical basis is presented for reference class forecasting, which achieves accuracy in projections by basing them on actual performance in a reference class of comparable actions and thereby bypassing both optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation. Fourth, the paper presents the first case of practical reference class forecasting, which concerns cost projections for planning of large transportation infrastructure investments in the UK, including the Edinburgh Tram and London's £15 billion Crossrail project. Finally, potentials for and barriers to reference class forecasting are assessed.     

An Imperial Vision: The American Presence at European Trade Fairs

Book reviewed in this article:
Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s     

商务客人的酒店需求特征及其在酒店规划设计中的应用

本文通过对广州、深圳、东莞等地的高星级商务酒店的住客调查,总结出商务客人对酒店设施与服务产品的需求特征,即重视酒店地理位置与商务设施、强调酒店的豪华与文化相结合、喜欢客房商务功能完善与装饰富有特色、喜欢酒店内康体娱乐设施多样化等,并根据这些需求特征,对商务酒店规划设计过程中的文化定位、功能规划、建筑设计、装饰设计提出了包括选址、商务设施配备、大堂与客房装饰格调、客房商务功能设计以及客房的房型比例、康体娱乐项目安排等方面的具体建议。     

How the Hands of Time Mould Planning Instruments: Iterative Adaptation Pushing Limits in Rural Areas

Apart from the concept of space being a main concern of spatial planning, the concept of time, too, has a role. Not only by setting time limits to substantive plans; planning is also subject to time and the implications of this are analysed in this paper. Planning instruments age and need cyclic maintenance for staying effective, a process referred to as iterative adaptation. But adaptation may not be sufficient when society has evolved too far away from the situation of the instrument's conception, whereby not only the content of plans should be considered (corresponding with substantive needs of society) but the intervention philosophy as well (corresponding with the image society has about the proper role of the government). In addition, each iterative adaptation takes time that may prove to be insufficient in a dynamic context. This paper refers to the rural planning instrument called land consolidation to demonstrate how time has moulded it and what the limitations for adaptation are.