The Importance of Context and Comparison in the Study of European Spatial Planning

Abstract

The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) was agreed in 1999 at Potsdam, Germany, as a non-binding framework intended to guide spatially significant policy-making at different spatial scales in order to achieve a more balanced and sustainable growth of the EU territory. This paper develops a conceptualization of the nature of transnational planning frameworks such as the ESDP and presents a framework for the investigation of the application of their policy orientations in the spatial planning systems of European states. It is argued that investigations of the application of transnational spatial development frameworks like the ESDP and the ‘Territorial Agenda of the European Union’ document adopted by EU member states in 2007, need to be sensitized to the diversity of territorial contexts in which these apply, and that a contextualized and comparative approach is therefore essential in evaluating their influence in Europe's varied territories.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws primarily on doctoral research conducted at the Department of Civic Design at the University of Liverpool under the supervision of Dr David Shaw. The research was supported financially by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The author would also like to acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers of the paper whose comments helped with its revision.

Notes

1. Recent crises in the process of European integration, for example, that were provoked by the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty by voters in the Netherlands and France in 2005, have, however, tended to re-emphasize the continued significance of nation states and national politics, and the need for caution in regarding the EU as an emergent polity with its own intrinsic and expansive patterns of governance.