Investigating the partnership approach in the EU Urban Agenda from the perspective of soft planning

At the European level, several strategic documents concerned with spatial and urban development have been published during the last decades. While these documents are essential to communicate European ideas and objectives, they are often regarded least influential in practice due to their abstract nature, legally non-binding status and lack of allocated resources. Though these limitations apply to the EU Urban Agenda, this recently published policy paper introduces partnerships as a new implementation tool. The partnerships can be regarded as innovative in two respects: On the one hand, they involve new actors, most importantly cities, in European policy debates. On the other hand, they ensure the anchorage of the Urban Agenda with a broad range of actors at various spatial scales without challenging its legally non-binding status. The Urban Agenda can thus be understood as another example of the move towards soft European spatial planning and urban development. This article investigates the notion of partnership as a soft planning and governance tool within the Urban Agenda. Moreover, based on expert interviews, it presents early opinions and expectations of actors involved in the development of the Urban Agenda and the partnerships on affordable housing.     

Politics of tangibility,intangibility, and place in the making of a European cultural heritage in EU heritage policy

The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is ‘placing heritage’ – affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialisation of a European cultural heritage and the production of physical European heritage sites are crucial elements in the policy through which the EU seeks to govern both the actors and the meanings of heritage. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of diverse policy documents and informational and promotional material, this article presents five strategies of ‘placing heritage’ used in the EU initiatives. In addition, the article presents a theoretical model of circulation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage in the EU heritage policy discourse and discusses the EU’s political intents included in the practices of ‘placing heritage’.     

The EU integrated urban development policy: managing complex processes in dynamic places

One of the European Union’s 2014–2020 cohesion policy’s new aims is to promote integrated urban development strategies that enhance sustainable urban development. Following the emergence of the integrated urban development policy, city policies in EU show a trend in that direction but overall changes towards a sustainable integrated urban development are limited. One of the major problems for planners and implementing actors seems to be the management of complexity, which originates in three sources: the policy, the planning and implementation processes as well as the implementation place. The paper elaborates on the question: what is triple complexity and how can planning and implementing actors of the EU integrated sustainable urban development policy manage it? The paper suggests the use of a place-oriented theory and proposes a theory-guided ex-durante (ongoing) evaluation called Place Scan. I assume that the method can support planners and implementing actors to manage complexity and to improve quality of ex-durante evaluations.     

CHILDHOOD IN A NEOLIBERAL UTOPIA: PLANNING RHETORIC AND PARENTAL CONCEPTIONS IN CONTEMPORARY STOCKHOLM

This article addresses how neoliberalism as a utopian ideal of the urban affects the practices of planners and parents, drawing on Stockholm, Sweden, as an example and foregrounding how these adult conceptions of the city are manifested, both socially and physically, and shape children's geographies. Through an analysis of planning documents and interviews with planners and parents, this study shows how Stockholm's planning is clearly conditioned by neoliberal beliefs, but rather than being linked with political sympathies, neoliberalism is expressed as a contemporary urbanism. This specific urbanism is not compatible with children's independent mobility and easy access to nature and play spaces, but demands, as expressed by planners and parents, certain “sacrifices” in order to be achieved. The study shows that age is an organizing norm in terms of spatial justice in the city and that ideological beliefs about the urban development affect how this (in)justice is organized. The planning documents reflect utopian neoliberal ideas about a specific urban identity, and when private actors are given more influence over what is being built and which spaces are developed, there is a deliberate transition from welfare‐planning values and the belief that children and adults have equal rights to urban neighbourhoods. This is expressed as a necessary transformation to a more urban and globally competitive city but given the extent to which welfare values are taken for granted in Sweden it is unlikely that the effect this transition will have on social and spatial justice in the city is recognized.     

Strategic Planning as Region Building on the Eastern Periphery of the EU

This article describes how region-building is performed by four strategic planning initiatives in north-eastern Slovakia, highlighting a tension between balanced and concentrated development perspectives in Slovak regional policy. The plans are read as records of an institutionalizing process, the product of which is the creation of a lasting collaborative relationship between actors. If strategic planning could fulfil a mobilizing and integrating function in eastern Slovakia, it would constitute a significant contribution to the successful negotiation of social and economic transformations associated with post-communist structural change and European Union (EU) accession. Region-building is complicated by an over-emphasis on endogenous perspectives among local actors, hindering vertical integration, and an indeterminacy about the scale at which such an integration is best performed.     

European Integration and Spatial Rescaling in the Baltic Region: Soft Spaces,Soft Planning and Soft Security

Abstract

Spatial rescaling arguably represents one of the most significant recent changes in planning. Rescaling processes do not merely imply changes in powers across existing layers of decision-making, but also entail new scales of intervention, new actor constellations and new geometries of governance. A wide range of examples of spatial rescaling can be seen across Europe, varying from local through to regional and international. The emergence of “soft spaces”—regions in which strategy is made between or alongside formal institutions and processes—is one of the phenomena associated with contemporary spatial rescaling. These spaces are often overlapping and characterized by fuzzy geographical boundaries. The formation of soft spaces is often articulated in terms of breaking away from the rigidities associated with the practices and expectations of working within existing political or administrative boundaries but can also be viewed as providing a means of bypassing formal procedures and reducing democratic accountability. Focusing on European territorial cooperation and development strategies in the Baltic region, this paper discusses how they are contributing to spatial rescaling in soft spaces and how the strategies can be seen as a form of soft planning and as a means to promote soft security policy (which could be considered as a wider form of foreign policy).     

Institutional Arrangements and Political Mobilization in the New Italian Regionalism: The Role of Spatial Policies in the Piedmont Region

The paper focuses on the resurgence of the regions as protagonists of the process of the state rescaling in many European countries. In the EU countries this process can be seen as a result of a mix of economic and institutional factors, which have been producing an increasing competition between the central governments and the regional authorities. The rise of the multi-level governance and of the so-called Euroregionalism has reinforced the role of the regional scale in the territorial development: on one hand, with new actors like agencies and organizations engaged in the economic development (FDI attraction, place marketing, innovation and learning), on the other hand by the resurgence of “old” actors, such as the regions, in many cases empowered by processes of institutional devolution. The literature has investigated this re-composition of the political space with regard to the “hollowing out” and the “rescaling” of the state. On the base of these theoretical underpinnings, we discuss some empirical evidence from the Italian experience, in order to show whether and how the regional structures are not only “spaces for policies”, but also “spaces for politics”. Over the last decade, the changes in legal framework, the external inputs from supranational levels of government—the European Commission—and the re-territorialization processes have introduced many elements of innovation in the role of the regions. By illustrating the case of the Piedmont Region, we try to demonstrate that the transition towards the region as an active space of politics can be mediated by the sphere of the policies, especially the spatial ones.     

Regional Policy and the 'Regionalization' of University-Industry Links: A View from the English Regions

As several senior figures in UK Government have recently professed to want to promote the knowledge-driven economy across the nation, discussion of university-industry ties in less-favoured regions is particularly salient. This account documents how UK central government efforts to encourage greater university-industry links have increasingly taken on a regional dimension but then stresses that these efforts do not constitute a 'regional policy' (in the traditional sense of measures that seek to reduce interregional economic disparities). This activity is then set within the context of overall Government and European Union (EU) funding to universities which is also at odds with stated government aims of lessening regional economic disparities. The article goes on to highlight how mainstream regional policy, particularly that of the European Commission, has seen considerable support for university-industry activity in the regions but has faced an uncertain future due largely to the spectre of fund-draining EU expansion. The article concludes by asking what policies might be pursued for university-industry links to be increased in weaker regions. The underlying aim of the article is to contribute towards raising the profile of universities in debates about reducing interregional economic disparities (that must, in turn, be much higher on the public policy agenda).     

New forms of multi-local working: identifying multi-locality in planning as well as public and private organizations’ strategies in the Helsinki region

Over the last decades, there has been a significant development towards new forms of multi-locality, particularly for job-related reasons. In addition to offices, many can work in multiple places (such as the home, co-working spaces, coffee shops and public libraries). In addition to workers in start-ups and small entrepreneurs, who are traditionally known to be more mobile, white-collar workers employed by organizations are increasingly becoming multi-local. However, little is known about the ways in which multi-locality is addressed within the urban regions. This phenomenon has been studied at Aalto and NMBU University within the BEMINE research project by analysing recent policy and planning documents, as well as organizations’ strategies within the Helsinki region. In addition to a literature review, a qualitative analysis of planning documents was conducted as well as semi-structured interviews with five organizations (both private and public) in Finland employing mobile white-collars. The findings reveal that while policy-makers and city planners have not yet addressed the complexity of multi-locality, both private and public organizations are focusing on more concrete multi-local strategies and working practices. More dialogue is needed amongst policy-makers, city planners and organizations to address multi-locality at different levels of analysis and planning.     

Europe as a global actor: empire by example?

The European Union (EU) spreads its norms and extends its power in various parts of the world in a truly imperial fashion. This is because the EU tries to impose domestic constraints on other actors through various forms of economic and political domination or even formal annexations. This effort has proved most successful in the EU's immediate neighbourhood where the Union has enormous political and economic leverage and where there has been a strong and ever‐growing convergence of norms and values. However, in the global arena where actors do not share European norms and the EU has limited power, the results are limited. Consequently, it is not only Europe's ethical agenda that is in limbo; some basic social preferences across the EU seem also to be unsustainable. Can Europe maintain, let alone enhance, its environmental, labour or food safety norms without forcing global competitors to embrace them? The challenge lies not only in enhancing Europe's global power, but also primarily in exporting rules and norms for which there is more demand among existing and emerging global players. This means that Europe should engage in a dialogue that will help it to establish commonly shared rules of morality and global governance. Only then can Europe's exercise of power be seen as legitimate. It also means that Europe should try to become a ‘model power’ rather than a ‘superpower’, to use David Miliband's expression. The latter approach would imply the creation of a strong European centre able to impose economic pains on uncooperative actors. The former would imply showing other actors that European norms can also work for them and providing economic incentives for adopting these norms. To be successful in today's world, Europe needs to export its governance to other countries, but it can do it in a modest and novel way that will not provoke accusations of ‘regulatory imperialism’.     

From Cohesion to Territorial Policy Integration (TPI): Exploring the Governance Challenges in the European Union

The European Union (EU) is searching for new approaches to manage problems that span different policy sectors. In the regional policy field, incompatibilities between the EU's territorial development objectives and its transport, agricultural, competition and environmental policies, are well known. The need to integrate territorial policy concerns into these sectoral policies (territorial policy integration or “TPI”) has recently emerged as a key policy priority. This article examines the EU's capacity to implement TPI. It does so in relation to two member states (Germany and the Netherlands) and the European Commission. It finds that the administrative implications of implementing TPI are far more demanding than any of these actors are currently able to handle. Moreover, some EU-level networks are potentially relevant to TPI, but these are mostly focused on regional policy matters (i.e. they are relatively inward looking). If these administrative issues are not taken more seriously, “integration” will struggle to make headway in an EU which is notoriously sectorized.     

Planning Small Regions in a Larger Europe: Spatial Planning as a Learning Process for Sustainable Local Development

An enlarged Europe is addressing the challenge of territorial cohesion on the basis of a disciplinary and operative framework formed by a number of evolving documents and provisions to be applied and developed at different administrative and planning levels. Rapid and profound changes have occurred in previous decades as far as institutional framework, the role of actors and issues to be tackled are concerned, within a re-scaling process of territorial governance. In this context, small territories can take advantage of European funds, but experience a hard confrontation with the market economy and supra-local visions, use of resources and infrastructure projects. A decisive role, in many countries, has been gained by regional authorities, which must mediate among various territorial levels, institutions and actors involved in a multilevel governance process. The paper focuses on spatial and regional/territorial planning processes among the European dimension, Member States and regions, on the basis of a case study conducted in Northern Italy. The aim is to determine the role of European spatial planning as a “learning machine” [Faludi, A. (2008) European Territorial Cooperation and Learning, disP 172, (1/2008), pp. 3–10.] able to support processes of mutual learning and cooperation, overcoming the attitude of compliance to upper level schemes and financial programmes rather than innovating usual procedures and territorial planning.     

European Union Competition Policy and the European Territorial Cohesion Agenda: An Impossible Reconciliation? State Aid Rules and Public Service Liberalization through the European Spatial Planning Lens

The territorial and spatial planning impacts of European Union (EU) economic and competition policies have remained under-researched in the field of European spatial planning, in contrast to other EU policy fields. This briefing explores how two elements of the EU competition policy, the regulation of “state aid” and the liberalization of “services of general interest (SGI)”, have significant implications for the pursuit of the objective of territorial cohesion through spatial planning and territorial development policies at different scales. The paper first reviews the development of the concept of territorial cohesion in the EU discourse and policy agenda since the mid-1990s, as well as the contribution of public services (Services of General Interest, or SGI in EU jargon) to it. It, then, reviews how the EU state aid rules and liberalization policies affect the state's ability to intervene (i) in support of sub-national territories which are lagging behind or suffering decline, and (ii) in the provision of public services across the national territory, specifically in peripheral regions or areas where the provision is not catered for by the market. The conclusion of the paper outlines the additional challenges to the pursuit of territorial cohesion in the EU posed by the post-2008 economic crisis and suggests avenues for future research.     

The European Union in South-East Asia: continuity and change in turbulent times

This article looks at the creation of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and itsimpact on European Union-South-East Asian relations. It suggests that as withother regions of the world, the EU uses framework agreements to regulatecontact with other international actors. The article argues that the EU's renewed interest in the region, signposted by the Commission's 'Towards a new Asia strategy' and the proposal 'Creating a new dynamic in EU-ASEAN relations', as well as the formation of ASEM, is driven by three principal concerns: a need to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War period by extending structured contact to new interlocutors beyond ASEAN; a need to restate the EU's credentials as a stakeholder in the region, thus legitimizing European political and economic interests alongside those of other global actors such as the United States and Japan; and a new-found interest in defining acceptable economic and human rights standards as a precondition of privileged contact with the EU.
However, while ASEM offers greater connectivity between different activitiesof the EU and may bring a more coordinated approach to the relationship, it is unlikely to lead to a qualitative shift in engagement. For a variety of reasons–notably the lack of geographical proximity, economic asymmetry, and a preoccupation with central and eastern Europe-South-East Asia will remain a marginal area of engagement for the EU. With regard to future developments,structured contact between the EU and South-East Asia will survive not leastbecause of the potential economic importance of the latter and the continuingcompetition in the region from the United States, Japan and China.     

Spatial Units for EU Territorial Governance: Findings From a Study on North-Western Italy

This article explores the possibility of identifying spatial units that are more suitable to manage the European Union territorial governance process than the traditional administrative districts or crude statistical partitions. To this purpose, the article presents a study on North-Western Italy, which the author has developed recently in the framework of a research project promoted by the Italian Ministry of Infrastructures to prepare a spatial vision for the Italian National Strategic Reference Framework under the EU cohesion policy 2007–2013. While updating the reader on the Italian approach to EU cohesion policy and on developments in this area, the article particularly draws the attention of European planners to the concept of “Interdependent Territorial Systems” as spatial units contributing to combine the relevant dimensions of EU territorial governance in a proactive planning process.     

THE EUROPEANIZATION OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT: LOCAL STRATEGIES AND EUROPEAN SPATIAL VISIONS IN NORTHERN FINLAND

By exploring the Europeanization of current practices of regional spatial planning, this article sets out to demonstrate the evolution of the European integration project. Specifically, by creating spaces of engagement to which the local and regional actors are “forced” to adapt, the emergence of European spatial planning has made planning practices at the regional level more complex and complicated. As such, the present study contributes to the current understandings of Europeanization by exploring the European integration process through the geographical conceptualizations of space and scale. These conceptualizations are used to illustrate the multidimensionality, complexity and subtlety of the geographies of Europeanization. The empirical investigations show that regional and local spatial policies are strongly engaged – both explicitly through the “technicalities” and implicitly through the “mentalities”– to the spaces of Europeanization. The engagement affects the effectiveness of sub‐regional spatial planning by promoting mismatches between the strategic frameworks and the material practices of the policy. Overall, the article illustrates that the geographies of Europeanization are continuous processes, which take place – often unrecognizably – in manifold discursive and material practices in various geographical contexts.     

Imagining the ideal city,planning the gender-equal city in Umeå, Sweden

Focusing on imaginaries of the ideal city is an important method to illustrate the power of ideas, imagination, representations and even visions, and how these dimensions influence the way in which cities are organized and lived. In this article, we argue that one current and important city imaginary in a Swedish context is the gender-equal city. In this imaginary, the gender-equal city becomes a symbol for the open, tolerant, bustling, safe city, a city aiming to attract the middle and creative classes. However, at the same time, the imaginary of the ideal, gender-equal city is highly ambiguous. This ambiguity will be discussed throughout the article. Based on present planning projects in the city of Umeå in Sweden, we will discuss how the imaginary of the gender-equal city is presented, filled with meaning and used in place marketing, with the overall ambition of discussing the possibilities and pitfalls of what we call the gender-equality planning strategy. The aim of the article is to study how the city of Umeå is acting to create a gender-equal city and what kind of imaginaries these practices build on. The material consists primarily of a case study focusing on projects that aim to create an equal city, and also includes analyses of policy documents and media reports. This study illustrates how imaginaries are produced through local projects and different imaginaries provide different spaces for politicizing gendered power relations.     

Spaces of violence: A typology of the political geography of violence against migrants seeking asylum in the EU

This paper, based on research conducted with asylum seekers in three European Union (EU) member-states, examines the connections among various forms of violence against forced migrants in different state settings. Because violence that is produced within states is not uniform and often transcends borders, understanding how it varies across different geographical settings illustrates the complexity of the risks that migrants face. This paper presents a typology that examines interconnections between the production of various forms of violence and the complex spaces that constitute irregular migration into the EU to better understand these multifaceted factors and why we can anticipate certain forms of violence in a particular space. It also fosters future avenues of research as it provides a foundation for greater collaboration and advocacy to expose and rectify hierarchical imbalances of power and actors responsible for such violence.     

Europe,the rise of Asia and the future of the transatlantic relationship

This article examines how, in a global strategic context presided by the rise of Asia and the US rebalance towards that region, Europeans are contributing to transatlantic burden‐sharing—whether individually or through the EU/NATO. As Asian powers reach westward and the US shifts its strategic priorities eastward, classical geostrategic delimitations become gradually tenuous. Particularly important are the ‘middle spaces’ of the Indian Ocean, central Asia and the Arctic, in that they constitute the main avenues of communication between the Asia–Pacific and the European neighbourhood. The article seeks to understand how evolving geostrategic dynamics in Europe, the ‘middle spaces’ and the Asia–Pacific relate to each other, and how they might impinge on discussions on transatlantic burden‐sharing. It is argued that the ability of Europeans to contribute to a more equitable transatlantic burden‐sharing revolves around two main tenets. First, by engaging in the ‘middle spaces’, Europe's key powers and institutions are helping to underpin a balance of power in these regions. Second, by stepping up their diplomatic and economic role in the Asia–Pacific, strengthening their security ties to (US) regional allies and maintaining an EU‐wide arms embargo on China, Europeans are broadly complementing US efforts in that key region. There are a number of factors that stand in the way of a meaningful European engagement in the ‘middle spaces’ and the Asia–Pacific, including divergent security priorities among Europeans, the impact of budgetary austerity on European defence capabilities and a tendency to confine foreign policy to the immediate neighbourhood. The article discusses the implications of those obstacles and outlines some ways in which they might be overcome.     

European integration through ‘soft conditionality’. The contribution of culture to EU enlargement in Southeast Europe

Abstract

This article discusses how the European Commission employs cultural policy to facilitate EU enlargement processes. Since 1989 the European Commission has funded cultural programs in accession states as a ‘soft’ complement to its ‘hard’ conditionality. It reflects a more general trend in which the EU employs alternative modes of governance to deal with resistance against EU interference in national affairs. By investing in culture, the EU hopes to stimulate transnational cooperation, economic growth, social cohesion and identification with the EU. However, the outcomes of these investments cannot be predicted. Characteristic for soft policy programs is that participating states are responsible for their eventual interpretation and implementation. By comparing the policies and practices of EU cultural investments in accession states Southeast Europe, and particularly in Serbia, this paper discusses the limits and possibilities of EU funded initiatives to enlargement revealing an increasing governing through soft conditionality.