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Overcoming Fragmentation in Southeast Europe
With the expansion of the European Union, the countries of Southeast Europe have finally been brought together within one socio-political entity. The restructuring of these economies following globalization and neoliberalization has meant that this region has become much more open to geopolitical shifts and trends. While the various countries have all entered into the slow process of European integration, the historic fragmentation of this region has led to various conflicts and contradictions in the restructuring and transition of national economies. This volume provides a theoretical and comparative overview which examines the prospects for spatial cohesion in this region. With the need to handle persisting problems and conflicts from the past while coping with new economic and political structures, Southeast Europe proves to be a challenging yet fruitful testing ground for how best to overcome fragmentation and establish a long-term process of social and economic integration.
Strategic Planning for Contemporary Urban Regions
This book is an account of how the Milan Provincial Administration and a team of researchers from Milan Polytechnic worked together to develop a new 'Strategic Plan' for Milan's urban region. Informed by innovative conceptions of both how to understand cities in the contemporary world, and engage in strategic planning work, this experience has already attracted considerable international attention. The authors now consolidate their contribution into a comprehensive account which continually relates theory and practice Examining the Milan Plan in detail, the book explains the profound transformations which put great pressure on the traditional descriptive tools so planners must engage in the production of new ones. It also proposes that these transformations affect the way in which urban policies and planning processes are designed. The project offers insights into - and new directions for - planning theory more generally, while at the same time testing this powerful and innovative research hypothesis in an important European city empirical study. In detailing the results of this project, this book proposes useful ground-breaking approaches to planning for similar urban regions.
De-coding New Regionalism
Bringing together comparative case studies from Central Europe and South America, this book focuses on 'new' regions – regions created as political projects of modernization and 're-scaling'. Through this approach it de-codes 'New Regionalism' in terms of its contributions to institutional change, while acknowledging its contested nature and contradictions. It questions whether these regions are merely a strategy of neo-liberal adjustment to changing political and economic conditions, or whether they are indicative of true reform, greater citizen participation and empowerment. It assesses whether these regions are really representing something new or whether they are a reconfiguration of traditional power relationships. It provides a timely critical analysis of 'region-building' and the extent to which national processes of decentralization and sub-national processes of regionalism can enhance the effectiveness and responsiveness of governance.
Inventive City-Regions
Virtually every city-region in West and Central Europe has developed policies and strategies to attract, retain and encourage creative industries and knowledge-intensive services. Since most of these citiy-regions tend to see a creative knowledge economy as 'the best bet for the future', one of the main goals of such policies and strategies is increasing the international competitiveness of their city-region. Using the cities of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Birmingham, Helsinki, Leipzig, Manchester, and Munich as case studies, this book explores the spatial, economic, historical, socio-demographic, socio-cultural and political conditions that may determine whether a city-region is or can become attractive for creative and knowledge-intensive companies, and for the talented people working for or founding these companies. A comparison of the case studies and an overview of the key findings, similarities and differences which lead to policy recommendations as well as suggested directions for further research will make this book attractive to urban and regional academics, planners and students.
Democratization and Market Reform in Developing and Transitional Countries
This book explores the pivotal role of think tanks in the democratization and economic reform movements by evaluating their overall effect on the transformation process in developing and transitional countries around the world. James G. McGann assesses twenty-three think tanks, located in nine countries and four regions of the world: Chile, Peru, Poland, Slovakia, South Africa, Botswana, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, that have most impacted political and economic transitions in their respective countries. The author examines the role they played in the process of democratization and market reform during the late 80s and 90s and identifies the importance of think tanks in these processes by evaluating their overall effect on the policymaking process. He argues in the early stages of a transition from an authoritarian regime to an open and democratic society the activities of think tanks are especially critical, and they have provided a civil society safety net to support these fragile democracies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, democratization, development, economic development and civil society.
Discourse Dynamics in Participatory Planning
This book introduces the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to the study of participatory planning. CDA uses linguistic analysis to elucidate social issues and processes and is particularly suited to institutional practices and how they are changing in response to changing social conditions. Illustrated by two case studies from Australia, it examines the talk between the various participants in a formal stakeholder committee context over five years, during which time they went through several phases of changing power dynamics, conflict and reconciliation. The book demonstrates the value of CDA to this field of research and develops specific techniques and conceptual tools for applying the methodology to the 'formal talk' context of collaborative planning committees. It also sheds light on the dynamics of interaction between 'stakeholders' and bureaucracies - particularly with respect to inherent communicative barriers, power inequalities, and the development of new discursive practices.
Reshaping Planning with Culture
Planning is described as being increasingly sidelined by the impacts of neo-liberal restructuring. At the same time, 'culture' is nowadays seen as the world's key intellectual resource possessing new creative weight in sociological, economic and environmental terms. This book argues that, in the light of this cultural turn, there is the opportunity to re-position planning and proposes an original, practical and robust system of 'culturisation'. Culturisation is defined as the ethical, critical and reflexive integration of culture into planning and potentially other areas such as public administration, corporate strategy and development thinking. Cultural theory, planning theory, global governance policy and recent, innovative culturised practices are all explored to this end. The new theoretical and practical approach put forward shows how deeper, richer and more relevant ideas about culture can be utilized in planning, and is illustrated with international examples and two major case studies detailing new vistas for a refurbished planning.
Planning Cultures in Europe
Bringing together an interdisciplinary team from across the EU, this book connects elements of cultural and planning theories to explain differences and peculiarities among EU member states. A 'culturized planning model' is introduced to consider the 'rules of the game': how culture affects planning practices not only on an explicit 'surface' but also on a 'hidden' implicit level. The model consists of three analytical dimensions: 'planning artifacts', 'planning environment' and 'societal environment'. This book adopts these dimensions to compare planning cultures of different European countries. This sheds light not only on the organizational or institutional structure of planning, but also the influence of deeper cultural values and layers on planning and implementation processes.
Integration of the Greater European Spaces
This volume contains the proceedings (in English and French) of the International seminar "Integration of the greater European spaces" about the sustainable spatial organisation of the Greater European area. Topics range from geopolitical considerations to territorial impact assessment of concrete projects, and comprehensive reports on the activities undertaken under various European initiatives and programmes of cross-border, transnational and inter-regional co-operation. Particular attention was paid to the presentation of successful regional and local spatial development projects.
