Europeanization and Changing Planning in East-Central Europe: An Easterner's View

Abstract

The way that European integration influences planning has become a frequent issue for discussion in planning over recent years. Also, the changes in the European Union (EU) resulting from its recent enlargement attract attention from scholars, including planners, mostly from the countries of the ‘old’ EU 15.This contribution tries to join the two topics from the viewpoint of an easterner who has immediate experience of past as well as present issues of planning in East-Central Europe. It deals with specific readings of common European planning challenges and attempts to analyse the European impact on domestic planning in these countries.

Notes

1. From many attempts for articulation of sociocultural regions of Europe, we follow Musil (2005), which from long-time past perspective distinguishes the ‘traditional’ core regions of western continental (France, Switzerland and Benelux) and north-western island (Great Britain and Ireland), to which approximate two originally peripheral regions of Nordic and western Mediterranean (Spain, Italy and Portugal) and western part of central European region consisting of western Germany, Austria and Slovenia. The eastern part of the central European region (from eastern Germany and Czech Republic in the west to Latvia in the north and Hungary and Croatia in the south-east) remains outside the core, as well as the whole eastern Mediterranean (from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Rumania to Greece and Cyprus) and eastern Regions (Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia and Moldova).

2. For example, the cases of the reformation of the Church, which was actually started by the Hussites in Bohemia in the fifteenth century, the birth of modern nation state that led to quite different ends in France and in the Habsburg monarchy, as well as specific process and social impact of industrial revolution in East-Central Europe (cf. e.g. Wandycz, 1992).

3. The national concepts may not have the same meaning if only translated from one language to another, and even within one language if it is shared by different planning systems (e.g. Austria, Germany and Switzerland).

4. For better understanding the historic roots of mentality of East-Central Europeans, I recommend reading a very insightful book by Wandycz (1992).

5. Czech integrated plans for city development that derive from integrated operation plans are prepared aside local development plans.