Cohesion policy contributing to territorial cohesion: Scenarios

This paper first discusses the present and uncertain future of EU Cohesion policy. The Barca Report argues for all developmental policies, including EU Cohesion policy, to be place-based. This makes for territorial cohesion becoming an important element in the equation. Territory is after all the arena in which households and businesses and...

Territorial cohesion post - 2013: To whomsoever it may concern

Conceived as a motion for resolution, the paper considers territorial cohesion now being on the statute book, the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion, Barca making the case for integrated, place-based strategies, the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and the future of Cohesion policy. The recommendations reaffirm that ‘geography matters’,...

European spatial planning: Past, present, future

Three stages have been identified in the development of the EU: the launch era; the doldrums era and the renaissance/boom era. Presently though, the EU is in a crisis. These stages serve as a framework for discussing the past, present and future for European spatial planning. Thus, during the launch era there were unsuccessful attempts to make...

Reinventing spatial planning in a borderless Europe: Emergent themes

This paper is a follow-up to the Chicago Round Table ‘Emergent Research Themes on European Territorial Governance’ in 2008 questioning the view of EU territory as the sum of mutually exclusive territories under nation-state control and pointing out the existence of overlapping jurisdictions. Themes were: (1) the relationship between the EU and...

Cohesion, coherence, cooperation: EU policy beyond hard territoriality