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Abstract
Greece is an untypical case from a territorial planning perspective at a European level as it faces constraints and limitations arising by its peripheral position and the limited accessibility to major economic agglomerations and markets. The opportunities of benefiting from a European spatial development strategy are further reduced by missing neighbours, external and internal asymmetries. From the Greek point of view, European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) can be evaluated in terms of three different axes of reflection: improving linkages and spatial relationships to neighbouring countries (particularly European Union member states); bringing national level issues to the European agenda of spatial planning policies; bringing to the national level of spatial planning European-wide relevant issues. In this view ESDP does not reflect the particularities of spatial development in Greece (lack of territorial cohesion, fragmented national geographic space, etc.) but had indirect beneficial effects on the Greek planning system at a national level in spreading institutional innovation, good practices, etc. However, the influence which the ESDP is likely to have on spatial organization and development remains in doubt.
Notes
1. A measure of population potential (that is a combined measure of market size and accessibility) ranks Greece in the 17th place in a pan-European scale (Petrakos, Citation2000).
2. Considering the fact that before World War II there was only a short peaceful period of time 1923–1940 and before that the Balkan wars or the wars of independence, it is clear that Greece had practically very limited opportunities to develop relations with neighbouring countries.
3. The most apparent impact of the ‘missing neighbours’—effect is in the volume and structure of trade. Greece has the lowest export-to-GDP ratio and the lowest intra-industry share of trade in the EU (Petrakos & Pitelis, Citation2001). It is now known that intra-industry trade, which is important for a balanced development of the economic relations and the economic base of a country, is critically dependent on cross-border trade (Greenway & Milner, Citation1986; Grimwade, Citation1989).
4. Petrakos and Pitelis Citation(2001) refer to a process of integration ‘among unequal and distant partners’ (p. 286), in which the core EU countries specialized in capital and technology intensive products, while Greece specialized in labour intensive products. In the absence of cross-border trade, this division of labour can only be a recipe for de-industrialization, as at the international level labour intensive industries have started since the 1970s to move to low cost countries in Asia.
5. Undoubtedly, internal asymmetries have been affected by external conditions. The fact that the country developed its only metropolis in the southern part of the country, in contrast with the experience of the other southern European countries and perhaps in contrast with Central Place Theory, is certainly related with the realities prevailing in the northern borders of the country (Petrakos & Psycharis, Citation2003).
6. This is the case with Attica (the Athens region), which has exported a significant part of its industrial activities to neighbouring regions in an effort to cope with restrictions based on environmental considerations or to take advantage of investment incentives that are not available in Attica. As a result, while there is no doubt that Attica is the most developed region in the country, regional GDP per capita statistics rank it in fifth place (Petrakos & Psycharis, Citation2003).
7. However, the way structural funds were used in Greece has been strongly criticized for producing only minimal results (Economou, Citation1997a, Citation1997b).