From "European Spatial Planning" to "Territorial Cohesion"

“Spatial Planning” is a multifaceted concept that may lead to confusion. Due to its relevance for regional development at the European scale, it is worth a pause to think of its actual meaning. "Spatial Planning"  is used as a European generic label to refer to the very diverse national or regional approaches to land use management: Raumplanung, Aménagement du Territoire, Town and Country Planning, Assetto Territoriale, Ordenación del Territorio, Planowanie Przestrzenne, and so on (Dühr et al., 2010).

Blue banana: distribution of human activities: Reclus, 1989

Moveover, “Spatial Planning” also alludes to a substantive European domain that emerged in the 80s, consolidated during the 90s, and was subsumed into the objective of “territorial cohesion” in the 2000s, until present day. When European Spatial Planning appeared in 1983, the CEE defined it as “the geographical expression of the economic, social, cultural and ecological policies of society. It is at the same time a scientific discipline, an administrative technique and a policy conceived as an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach directed towards a balanced regional development and physical organisation of space according to an overall strategy” (CEMAT, 1983; p.5). Despite its initial policy character, it is worth underlining that European Spatial Planning has never constituted a community competence; instead, its expression has been based on policy cooperation between EU member states through the establishment of spatial strategies and visions, and not through statutory land-use plans (Faludi, 2010).

Policentricity by the ESDP

Since Delors chaired the European Comission in the 80s, strategic European infrastructures and cohesion policy came to the forefront, under the argument that core countries benefited disproportionately from the recent Southern enlargement, and new countries needed assistance to compete (Faludi, 2010). In the following years, some member states and regions recognised transnational spatial development issues and established cooperation mechanisms, subsequently replicated at the EU level through INTERREG. However the generalised political willingness among member states to retain spatial planning competences face to the EU remained (Dühr, 2010; Faludi 2010). 

       During the 90s European Spatial Planning experienced its very political momentum, through the elaboration of a compendium of Spatial Planning systems and policies, and the agreement on the main European spatial development issues. Consequently, the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) in 1999 pointed out five strategic objectives: the achievement of a balanced development, polycentricity, economic competitiveness, prudent management of natural and cultural heritage and parity of access to infrastructures and knowledge.

Macro-regional strategy for the Danube region*

 In the following decade, the Lisbon-Gothemburg Agenda put forward the EU goals of economic competitiveness, social cohesion and to a lesser extent, sustainable development. Politically, the term “spatial planning” was edged to prevent the EU from eventually absorbing central or regional spatial planning competences. Instead, the domain was subsumed under the mere objective of “territorial cohesion”, a fuzzy concept currently under wide public debate that has eased an ambiguous consensus, broadly understood as an “umbrella for the pursuit of balanced development, competitiveness, sustainability and good territorial governance” (Faludi, 2010; p.2). This objective, together with economic and social cohesion, has been recently enshrined at a Treaty level with Lisbon 2007. Nevertheless, the definition of this objective remains controversial, and even contradictory. Along the ongoing discussions, four major understandings have developed. The first contends for "polycentric and endogenous development", privileging "clusters of competitiveness and innovation across Europe" (Myrwaldt et al. 2009, v). A second interpretation of cohesion policy advances "balanced development" aiming at "reducing regional socio-economic disparities" (Ibid.). Thirdly, an "accessibility" approach privileges "equal access to facilities, services and knowledge" (Ibid.), and finally the objective can be understood as a a "form of networking" between the "communication centres and their surrounding areas" (Ibid.). This blurriness may render a real challenge the delivery of an effective implementation and evaluation of territorial cohesion within the EU.

    Currently, the two pillars of European spatial planning (territorial cohesion) include on the one hand two strategic spatial visions, the ESDP (1999) setting the European spatial objectives and the TAEU 2020 (2011), developing territorial priorities. These are applied on the other hand through four major instruments: the cooperation across borders Community Initiative INTERREG, officially “European territorial cooperation”, the new bottom-up and more flexible Macro-regional strategies for transnational cooperation, the also bottom-up grouping of transboundary local authorities instrument EGTC, and the European network of research institutes on spatial planning, ESPON.


CEMAT (European Conference of Ministers Responsible for Regional/Spatial Planning) (1983), “Chartre Européenne de l’Amenagement du Territoire (Chartre de Torremolinos)”, adopted 20/05/1983, Strasbourg, Council of Europe, www.siseministeerium.ee/public/terr.harta.ingrtf.rtf 

Dühr, S., Colomb, C., Nadin, V. (2010) “European Spatial Planning and Territorial Cooperation” Routledge, New York 
Murwaldt, K., McMaster, I., Bachtler, J. (2009) "Reconsidering Cohesion Policy: The contested debate on territorial cohesion" European Policy Research Paper 66. EPRC, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
Faludi, A. (2010) “European Spatial Planning: Past, Present and Future” Town Planning Review. Vol. 81, No. 1, pp. 1-22 
*www.cef-see.org