Water and its related heritage play a very special role in cities and regions in Europe. Historic water infrastructures such as bridges, quays and riverfronts, port facilities, sluices, dams, or water mills, specific water-based urban and rural landscapes, but also intangible aspects of water-linked heritage, such as water management knowledge, and values and traditions, can provide a sturdy foundation for an ecosystemic approach to sustainable urban and regional development. Water-linked heritage is unique in this respect because it connects the environmental, economic and social domains, reflecting the three pillars of sustainability. By valorising water-linked heritage as a vector of ecosystemic transformation of cities and regions, we can tap into its often overlooked potential to engage diverse stakeholders, to strategically link places connected by water, and to cut across disciplines, administrative and sectoral boundaries. In other words, water and heritage connected to it can be a powerful vector of change in cities and regions that allows for building on the past practices and facilities to face the challenges of tomorrow. In the Manifesto, the Delft University of Technology departs from the experience of the WaVE project and its five locations - Breda, Alicante, Aarhus, Ravenna and the Ister-Granum Euroregion, to draw lessons on the potential of water-linked heritage to drive ecosystemic urban and regional transformations and to sketch a manifesto for the future of this heritage. The first section introduces the WaVE project and the future challenges for water-linked heritage. The second one overviews the main actions taken by the project partners and the lessons that were drawn from the interregional learning process facilitated by WaVE. Finally, the third section presents a manifesto for the future of water-linked heritage, providing policymakers and stakeholders with inspiration and guidelines for tapping into the potential of water and heritage to nudge our cities and regions to drive eco-systemic change that our cities and regions need. ... Read more

This document presents the methodology for organising, preparing for and running knowledge transfer activities at the Interregional Knowledge Exchange Sessions (IKES), which are the WaVE project’s milestones and moments where partners meet and exchange knowledge. The methodology also outlines guidelines for choosing and adapting foreign good practices to be included in the partners’ action plans. ... Read more

This paper outlines the methodological framework for engaging stakeholders in the work on the Interreg WaVE project. More specifically, taking the notion of ‘co-creation’ as an overarching principle, it provides the project partners with guidance on how to prepare and organise engagement of all relevant stakeholders in: (1) the process of elaboration of regional status quo analyses for the redevelopment sites covered in the project; and (2) preparation of action plans for these sites; while providing insights into (3) how to keep the participating stakeholders engaged in collaboration beyond throughout the project’s duration and beyond. ... Read more

This paper presents a methodology for the elaboration of Regional Status Quo (RSQ) to be applied in each of the five sites of the WaVE project. Given the emphasis on co-creation in the WaVE project, the steps for preparing a RSQ outlined here are related with the adequate levels of engagement of stakeholders. The methodology is complemented by guidelines on identification of good practice for the purpose of inter-regional knowledge transfer. ... Read more

This report summarises the findings of the JPI Heritage Plus PICH Project’s nvestigation of the impact of the reform of urban planning on the historic built environment. The project team conducted twelve in-depth case studies in Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK covering three settings: the built heritage of historic urban cores, former industrial areas and the urban landscape. The findings are more fully reported in three comparative reports which compare findings for each setting in the four countries; in four national reports which look across the three settings in one country; and 12 case study reports. ... Read more

The objective of the COMPASS project was to provide an authoritative comparative report on changes in territorial governance and spatial planning systems in Europe from 2000 to 2016. This Final Report presents the main findings, conclusions and policy recommendations. The COMPASS project compares territorial governance and spatial planning in 32 European countries (the 28 EU member states plus four ESPON partner countries). COMPASS differs from previous studies in that the accent is not on a snapshot comparison of national systems, but on identifying trends in reforms from 2000 to 2016. It also seeks to give reasons for these changes with particular reference to EU directives and policies, and to identify good practices for the cross-fertilisation of spatial development policies with EU Cohesion Policy. The research is based on expert knowledge with reference wherever possible to authoritative sources. Experts with in-depth experience of each national system were appointed to contribute to the study. The research design involved primarily collection of data from the 32 countries through questionnaires and five in-depth case studies of the interaction of EU Cohesion Policy and other sectoral policies with spatial planning and territorial governance. ... Read more

Focusing on three of the Central and Eastern European countries–Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary–the paper investigates the evolution of spatial planning systems and the introduction of strategic planning practices from the beginning of the post-communist transition in the early 1990s to the present. It sheds new light on this issue by applying the conceptual lens of historical institutionalism to explain this process and elucidate the role of the accession to the European Union (EU) as a catalyst for change. In particular, the paper identifies and analyses the critical junctures at which path dependencies emerged and later constrained the capacity of the regional and local actors to adjust to the EU Cohesion Policy framework and engage in strategic planning as part of it. ... Read more

Focusing on regions in three of the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs), Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary, the paper investigates the evolution of spatial planning approaches and the introduction of strategic planning practices at the regional and local levels. This paper focuses on the period between the beginning of the post-communist transition in the early 1990s, through the period of preparation to the accession to the EU from mid-1990s to 2004, and the first decade after that event. The paper draws on the concepts borrowed from the historical institutionalism and Europeanisation research to explain this process and shed light on the role of the EU accession in it. The accession required the candidate countries to adjust their regional development policies and planning systems to the EU cohesion policy and its peculiar framework, based on multi-level governance and territorially targeted financial support for regional development. This involved reforms of territorial administration, the development of regional policies, and the building of the capacity for administering EU funding (structural funds - SF), and also required introducing elements of strategic spatial planning to adapt to the policy’s programming principle, which requires that the funding is used to support projects that are part of multi-annual strategies and place-tailored operational programmes. This paper investigates the extent to which this requirement stimulated learning and diffusion of strategic planning practices among the regional and local authorities in these countries where the term ‘planning’ itself remained somewhat ‘tainted’ and associated with the rigidities of the planned economy of the communist era. This study draws on qualitative data from interviews with regional and local actors in Polish, Czech and Hungarian regions, as well as an analysis of secondary sources. Additionally, spatial planning acts and their development in the EU context are examined. While the EU and its cohesion policy overall promoted strategic spatial planning and the development of place-based strategies in the three regions studied, both at the regional and to a lesser extent at the local level, the degree of institutionalisation of these practices remains differentiated. Strategic planning often remains limited to window-dressing, hiding a lack of actual strategic thinking and lack of consideration for territorial characteristics and place-specific investment needs. This article identifies several factors hampering the institutionalisation of strategic spatial planning in CEECs that stem both from the legacies of the past as well as from instrumental approachs to EU cohesion policy: overemphasis on the ‘absorption’ of EU funds as opposed to actual strategic use of this source of funding, weak participatory traditions, persistence of patronage networks affecting decision-making, and the reluctance of the central governments to let regional authorities set their own development priorities. ... Read more