Transcending land–sea dichotomies through strategic spatial planning

ABSTRACT

Marine spatial planning constitutes a performative practice whereby territoriality at sea is not only mapped and codified in policy statements but also reworked and re-imagined. The extension of spatial planning to the sea represents an opportunity to develop integrated spatial perspectives cognisant of the diversity of land–sea interactions and transcending existing divisions between maritime and terrestrial policy. Drawing on interpretative policy analysis and critical cartography perspectives, this study examines the spatial imaginaries underlying a particular case of innovative strategic planning at the Dutch North Sea and their capacity to reconfigure existing metageographical understandings of the land and the sea.

KEYWORDS:

• spatial imaginaries
• maritime spatial planning
• metageographies
• the Netherlands
• strategic spatial planning
• land–sea interactions

JEL:

• O21
• Q01
• Q25

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks the four anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on an earlier draft of the paper, and Sarah Topfstädt for assistance in translating documents written in Dutch.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was generously supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) under the project ‘Metageographies and Spatial Frames: Coastal Management as Situated Practice in the International Wadden Sea Region’ [grant number WA 3672/1-1].