Rethinking the Spatiality of Spatial Planning: Methodological Territorialism and Metageographies

Abstract

This paper argues for increased attention to the role of territory and territoriality in framing sociospatial discourses in the context of spatial plan making. In particular, it is suggested that the engagement of political actors with processes of spatial planning tends to be framed within particular spatial imaginaries which reflect established political-administrative and territorial boundaries. It is contended that a critical analysis of the territorial framing of processes of spatial planning is necessary in order to understand the capacity for spatial strategies to effectively challenge and reconfigure established sociospatial imaginaries in functional or relational terms. It is suggested that spatially explicit public policy statements, such as planning strategies, may be characterized by specific assumptions of territorial space, in a similar manner to which mainstream social science has contained implicit assumptions of state-centrism. The salience of territorial spatial imaginaries is demonstrated in the case of European spatial planning and through a local case study of city-regional spatial planning and politics in the Greater Dublin Area.

Acknowledgements

This article draws on PhD research conducted at University College Dublin (UCD). The research was, in part, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Urban Environment Project, hosted by UCD Urban Institute Ireland (2006–2009). The Urban Environment Project was sponsored by the Irish Environmental Protection Agency as part of the ERTDI programme which is funded through the National Development Plan. The author would also like to acknowledge the support of the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, National University of Ireland Maynooth, where he was employed as a postdoctoral research fellow until November 2011.