Interdependencies of Spatial Planning «in» and «for»Europe Effects of European spatial planning perspectives on the spatial planning systems of the Nordic countries especially at the regional planning level
Date
1999
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AESOP
Abstract
A new catchword, as bright and promising as a rainbow, echoes in our circles: «European Spatial Planning». The term covers at least two different concepts. Ever since the first official draft of the «European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP)» was presented and adopted in Noordwijk (1997), European Spatial Planning has been mainly connected to the idea of planning for Europe. In addition, however, there is another conception, a bottom-up approach, on which the ESDP is based: European spatial planning also describes the variety and diversity of spatial planning concepts and systems within Europe.
In this contribution I will try to briefly examine the interrelationship between planning for Europe and planning in Europe, focusing on the Nordic countries and especially their regional planning level. The principal aim is to investigate, how different European spatial planning systems influence the spatial planning approach for Europe and vice versa. To facilitate discussion, I use a grouping of European national spatial planning systems into certain families, one of which covers the Nordic countries. In the first part of the paper I look at the question of families/groupings of spatial planning systems in Europe.
Proceeding from this to the main topic of this paper, the second part touches the question of the influence of the ESDP on the Nordic countries as manifest at the regional planning level. Since spatial planning is not included in the competence of the European Commission, the ESDP is designed as a bottom-up and not a top-down process. In fact, it is an inter-governmental approach adopted by the EU member states, although it has often be claimed that the ESDP is a product of French, German and Dutch planning thinking and planning traditions (Rusca 1998). Viewed from the perspective of planning families, this would mean that the ESDP rests on a mixture of Napoleonic and Germanic styles. If this is the case, what would this mean for planning in Europe, i.e. the bottom-up dynamics? Even more problematic s the reverse side of the coin: Would the top-down pressure strengthen harmonisation tendencies affecting other planning traditions in Europe?
Description
Book of abstracts : AESOP PhD workshop 1999, Finse, Depertment of Geography Univeristy of Bergen, Norway
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CC-BY