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.     

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.     

Freedom of Establishment Versus Retail Planning: The European Case

Studies on retail planning in European Union (EU) Member States tend to be nationally oriented and, at best, compare national retail planning systems. They also appear to be based on an implicit assumption that retail planning should not be designed to fit the Single European Market (SEM). This paper analyses a series of judgments by the European Court of Justice and activities undertaken by the European Commission and concludes that this assumption is misguided and incorrect. The bottom line is that retail planning can interfere with freedom of establishment—one of the fundamental EU freedoms laid down in the Treaty of Rome—by limiting the realization of new shopping outlets and by redirecting retail to preselected locations. Such restrictions may be allowable if the Member State in question is able to demonstrate that they are non-discriminatory, appropriate and proportional on the basis of the interpretations of these fundamental principles in European Law. There is a European Retail Action Plan which aims to organize national retail planning systems in such a way that they are compatible with the principles of the SEM.     

The Importance of Context and Comparison in the Study of European Spatial Planning

The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) was agreed in 1999 at Potsdam, Germany, as a non-binding framework intended to guide spatially significant policy-making at different spatial scales in order to achieve a more balanced and sustainable growth of the EU territory. This paper develops a conceptualization of the nature of transnational planning frameworks such as the ESDP and presents a framework for the investigation of the application of their policy orientations in the spatial planning systems of European states. It is argued that investigations of the application of transnational spatial development frameworks like the ESDP and the ‘Territorial Agenda of the European Union’ document adopted by EU member states in 2007, need to be sensitized to the diversity of territorial contexts in which these apply, and that a contextualized and comparative approach is therefore essential in evaluating their influence in Europe's varied territories.     

Early European Experience in Marine Spatial Planning: Planning the German Exclusive Economic Zone

Marine spatial planning is emerging as an integrated, resource management-led approach to governing the use of the seas. Recent initiatives include those of some north European countries, including Germany, which has now completed a plan for its federal offshore territory. In this article, an analysis is presented of this pioneering plan and the consultation process behind its production, with a particular emphasis on the treatment of different sectoral interests around which the plan was structured. This revealed the attempts to coordinate not only the different demands at sea by means of allocation of areas and cross-sectoral considerations, but also the uneven representation of activities with certain interests gaining strongly and others effectively marginalized. This study provides early empirical evidence of the tensions involved in the attempt to adopt a spatial approach to marine governance. This new domain for planning is situated in the overlapping, but distinct domains of marine management and spatial planning. The conceptual backgrounds of both are drawn upon in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and in suggesting how marine plans might gain by giving close attention to the broader principles of marine and strategic planning.     

Planning Time: An Emergent European Practice

In the 1960s, a reduction in the time spent at work promised an increase in leisure time. Architects and planners thought that the effects of this could lead to a new form of city. Nowadays, new changes in production, technology and gender relationships de-synchronize the time regime and have fundamentally changed life in cities. Tourism and globalization exchange across the world different cultures of time. In France, the UK, and other European countries time policy is dealing with the problems arising from these changes. This article presents a short overview of time planning in Italy in two main domains: time for care, and city time. It focuses on issues such as the social demand for new shops's and services' opening hours, or how the life cycles of individuals and populations are accommodated in urban spaces. Other problems, usually not thought of in terms of time concerns, such as rehabilitation of blighted areas, historic preservation and traffic flow control, may also be treated through a time approach. Two models of planning process are presented at the end of the paper.     

Spatial Planning in the Baltic States: Impacts of European Policies

Baltic societies have been transformed rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s, whereas planning institutions and organizational cultures in the Baltic States have only changed rather incrementally despite various national and European pressures for reform. As a consequence, the extent of Europeanization of spatial planning has been limited in the Baltic region, and the effects of cohesion and structural policy measures have been quite modest. This paper focuses on these changes in spatial planning in the Baltic States and is divided into three main parts. The paper begins by describing the historical and cultural context of spatial development in the Baltic States. Second, it discusses processes of Europeanization of spatial planning in the specific context of the Baltic States, and third, it considers whether these processes may be leading to policy convergence in the region.     

The European Union and Major Infrastructure Policies: The Reforms of the Trans-European Networks Programmes and the Implications for Spatial Planning

The European Union (EU) has been involved in influencing major infrastructure in the fields of transport and energy mainly by means of the Trans-European Networks (TENs) programme begun in the 1990s. Other macro-planning and wider spatial planning exercises, including the European Spatial Development Perspective, made reference to such infrastructure systems, particularly in relation to the need for connectivity and mobility, but normally did not attempt to intervene in an area seen as one of the prerogatives of national states. Much more important have been the wider programmes of liberalization pressed by the EU since the 1980s, but these have had no specific geographical content. A revision of the TENs programmes since 2008 has led to proposals to increase the role of the EU, by drawing up continent wide schemas indicating needs for future investment in many fields of both transport and energy, and introducing new procedures to streamline decision-making by designating projects as of European interest. The initiatives in transport and energy are described here, including the two Regulations currently under discussion within the EU institutions. These include major proposals for cross-European multi-modal transport corridors within an EU core network, and regional schemas for energy drawn up primarily by energy industries and government counterparts. Both are likely to be of real significance for spatial planners throughout the continent, and have major impacts on the shapes of future infrastructure networks. These proposals are analysed, as cases of the rescaling and re-ordering of government, giving more force to the EU in these fields, and reinforcing sectoral- or silo-based decision-making. It is argued that somewhat different outcomes will result in the few areas, such as the Baltic, where long-term macro-regional collaboration has been present, from the rest of Europe, where these sectoral programmes may complicate further the mix of planning impacting on each region, making even more confused the accountability of governance. Suggestions are made for the careful assessment of these schemas by national and regional governments, and for the creation of some spatial planning analytical capability at the EU level, which could examine this type of proposals, with powerful spatial impacts.     

The European Union as an Ethical Community and What This Means for Spatial Planning

The European Union has adopted in its official publications a number of ethical values which can be identified and made explicit: they are values which concern the material content of policies and values of human rights. Although the relationship between those values and practice is not always direct, it can legitimately be expected that the values influence the content of the EU's spatial policy. With the extension of the EU policy to include territorial cohesion, the core values have been given an explicitly spatial dimension. Nor can the member states ignore those values, because formal legislation of the EU works through into the practice of those states: that increases the significance of EU values for the spatial planning of the member states. For those reasons, planners should know what those values are and how they can influence spatial planning.     

The Potential Implications of the European Union Water Framework Directive on Domestic Planning Systems: A UK Case Study

The transformation of planning across Europe in recent years has been characterized by new processes at different spatial scales that reach across traditional boundaries. This Europeanization of planning processes is reflected in the emergence of cross-border initiatives, new spatial relationships and the enhancement of regional policy-making. In using the case of the UK this article analyses the possible ramifications of adopting the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). It is demonstrated that the WFD, despite its apparent focus on water regulation, is symptomatic of wider European Spatial Planning processes that are seeing a reshaping of attitudes, witnessing the emergence of new networks and challenging traditional sovereignties of planning.     

The Engagement of Territorial Knowledge Communities with European Spatial Planning and the Territorial Cohesion Debate: A Baltic Perspective

Abstract

Recent, dramatic spatial development trends have contributed to the consolidation of a unique territorial governance landscape in the Baltic States. The paper examines the transformation of this evolving institutional landscape for planning practice and knowledge, which has been marked by the disintegration of Soviet institutions and networks, the transition to a market-based economy and the process of accession to the EU. It explores the evolution of territorial knowledge channels in the Baltic States, and the extent and nature of the engagement of actors' communities with the main knowledge arenas and resources of European spatial planning (ESP). The paper concludes that recent shifts in the evolution of these channels suggest the engagement of ESP has concentrated among epistemic communities at State and trans-national levels of territorial governance. The limited policy coordination across a broader spectrum of diverse actors is compounded by institutionally weak and fragmented professional communities of practice, fragmented government structures and marginalized advocacy coalitions.     

The Chester Congress of 1849

Abstract

Two Roman polychrome mosaics, depicting Europa and Orpheus, are preserved in their original settings in a town house of Roman Sparta. Discovered last century, they have been inventoried, but not studied in detail. Probably both were produced by the same local workshop in the third to fourth century, sharing characteristics peculiar to Greek mosaic. They appear to mirror each other. The depiction of Europa near Orpheus occurs rarely in the classical repertory. This collaborative research defines the pictorial originality of each mosaic. Europa, an archaic image, reflects the iconography of the Nereids. Orpheus may have copied a lost painting. The choice of motif and possible symbolic readings are examined. Perhaps the tenets of Orphic thought pervaded the images. Such a combination might bear witness to tastes and attitudes in Greece during the late Roman period.     

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.     

Dealing with Sustainability Trade-Offs of the Compact City in Peri-Urban Planning Across European City Regions

The compact city has become a leading concept in the planning of peri-urban areas. The compact city concept is often advocated as “sustainable” because of claims that include lower emissions and conservation of the countryside. The literature shows, however, that there are certain trade-offs in striving for compaction, especially between environmental and social aspects of sustainability. In this article, we describe expressions of the compact city concept in the planning practice of several European urban sample regions, as well as policies and developments that contradict the compact city. We look at examples of positive and negative impacts of the compact city that were observed in the sample regions. Further, we discuss attempts by planners to deal with sustainability trade-offs. Being aware that developments in the peri-urban areas are closely connected to those in the inner city, we compare the sample regions in order to learn how the compact city concept has been used in planning peri-urban areas across different contexts in Europe: in Western, Central and Mediterranean Europe, and with growing, stable or declining populations. We conclude with recommendations with respect to balance in applying the compact city concept.