La aplicación de la Estrategia Territorial Europea (ETE) a la región de Castilla-La Mancha requerirá, en su diseño, contemplar diversas fuentes de análisis territorial. En este artículo se expone ...cómo abordar la información ofrecida por algunas de estas fuentes, como la Población Vinculada, las Relaciones Interterritoriales derivadas de la Encuesta de Infraestructuras y Equipamientos o los territorios LEADER y PRODER. El objetivo es establecer los posibles centros y subcentros que organizan este espacio regional, siguiendo la metodología propuesta por la ETE, en un territorio en el que las experiencias de desarrollo territorial han sido escasas.
Since coming to power in 1994 successive ANC-governments have engaged in a series of attempts at national spatial development planning in South Africa. These engagements have received scant treatment ...in the planning literature. In this paper a broad overview of these initiatives is provided, with an emphasis on the different instruments; the context in which they were developed; the institutions that were proposed and/or created in support of the instruments; and the extent to which the instruments were implemented and what their levels of success were. The paper concludes with a call for comparative research, including South Africa, in this arena.
The fact that they have created the European Union (EU) notwithstanding, Member States are suspicious of, and even hostile to it. This creates a dynamic that is often puzzling, and this is also true ...for spatial planning. The latter is not a competence of the European Community, but there is the inter-governmental European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and INTERREG. Also, in this framework, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) has been set up with the purpose of providing an analytical base for following through on the ESDP agenda. Meanwhile, the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe has identified territorial cohesion as an objective of the Union and a competence shared with the Member States. While waiting for its ratification, the European Commission formulated its proposals for cohesion policy for 2007-2013. Against this backdrop, Member States resumed their initiative to give them a presence in a future territorial cohesion policy led by the Commission. In the changed circumstances after the French and Dutch ‘no’ to the Constitution, their ‘Territorial Agenda for the European Union’, due to be adopted in May 2007, will be even more significant. The Slovenian Presidency of 2008 may put this document before the European Council, which would be the first time that territorial issues had been discussed at this level.
The fact that they have created the European Union (EU) notwithstanding, Member States are suspicious of, and even hostile to it. This creates a dynamic that is often puzzling, and this is also true ...for spatial planning. The latter is not a competence of the European Community, but there is the inter-governmental European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and INTERREG. Also, in this framework, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) has been set up with the purpose of providing an analytical base for following through on the ESDP agenda. Meanwhile, the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe has identified territorial cohesion as an objective of the Union and a competence shared with the Member States. While waiting for its ratification, the European Commission formulated its proposals for cohesion policy for 2007-2013. Against this backdrop, Member States resumed their initiative to give them a presence in a future territorial cohesion policy led by the Commission. In the changed circumstances after the French and Dutch ‘no’ to the Constitution, their ‘Territorial Agenda for the European Union’, due to be adopted in May 2007, will be even more significant. The Slovenian Presidency of 2008 may put this document before the European Council, which would be the first time that territorial issues had been discussed at this level.
When it was adopted in 1999, the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) was considered as a guiding document for actions and policies dealing with spatial planning from European to local ...levels. As a non-binding document, it was supposed to “shape minds” of actors implementing spatial planning actions and policies. However, according to a report published in 2007 by a consortium of European researchers within the framework of the European Spatial Planning Observatory Network, the ESDP remained widely ignored. According to the report, this situation could be explained by a weak dissemination of the ESDP objectives at European and infra-European levels. This article argues that the weak impact of the ESDP is less related to the unsatisfactory process of information dissemination than to the technocratic making of the ESDP. It argues that what is at stake when dealing with ESDP type document is the involvement of the actors in charge to implement policies, notably at infra-national scales. Taking into consideration this situation, the author makes propositions to insure a better application of European objectives in terms of spatial planning.
The article describes the motives, objectives and findings of preparing a perspective for territorial development of the Baltic Sea Region and discusses issues related to its implementation. ...Particular attention is paid to Northwest Russia and Kaliningrad region. Promoting innovation clusters, metropolitan networks and urban-rural partnerships, improving accessibility as well as enhancing maritime spatial planning and management are key issues to be solved in transnational cooperation
The link between urban centers and the countryside, including movement of people, goods, capital and other social exchanges, play an important role in processes of rural and urban change of a ...country. Major demographic and spatial changes have been typical for Serbia in the second half of the 20th century, caused by a dynamic primary urbanization process, i.e. by intense migration trends between rural areas and towns (cities). A special attention in this paper is given to the small urban centers in Serbia (small towns with population of less than 20,000) as the first magnet in proximate contact with the rural surroundings, and the one that therefore could have the greatest influence on organization structure and development prospects of the rural areas. In addition to being difficult to substantiate criteria for urban classification, small towns themselves do not represent a homogeneous group of settlements, and this makes it even harder to put up generalizations that would fit to all the settlements of this kind either within our country or cross-borders. However, here are identified certain common features for the small towns in Central Serbia and their development perspective is analyzed in relation to medium towns and cities of the same territory in consideration. Finally, this paper discusses the importance of policies for small town development in light of a real risk that the process of globalisation may lead to the justification of a new concentration of activities in the large cities, increasing the already significant regional differences in living conditions and economic development.
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This article discusses and analyses national polycentric development policies aiming at cohesion. Due to its insertion in the 1999 European Spatial Development Perspective ‘polycentricity’ has become ...an important concept in discussions on Europe’s territorial and economic development. Its content remains however rather unclear. This paper contributes to the discussion on the meaning of polycentricity by looking at national polycentric development policies. These policies can be distinguished according to two types of disparities, or gaps, which they try to bridge. The first concerns the gap between different levels of the national urban hierarchy, the most common being the gap between a primate capital city and the next category of cities. The second gap is the one between cities located in regions with diverging rates of socio-economic development. On the basis of a conceptual and quantitative discussion of these gaps a basic definition is presented of what polycentric development policies are about: policies that address the distribution of economic and/or economically relevant functions over the urban system in such a way that the urban hierarchy is flattened in a territorially balanced way. A discussion of the polycentric development policies of France, Poland and Germany illustrates our findings. The article concludes that for the period 2007-2013 – the new EU budget period – a clear synergy is needed between EU and national policies and that without such synergy policies cannot be effective.
This article discusses and analyses national polycentric development policies aiming at cohesion. Due to its insertion in the 1999 European Spatial Development Perspective ‘polycentricity’ has become ...an important concept in discussions on Europe’s territorial and economic development. Its content remains however rather unclear. This paper contributes to the discussion on the meaning of polycentricity by looking at national polycentric development policies. These policies can be distinguished according to two types of disparities, or gaps, which they try to bridge. The first concerns the gap between different levels of the national urban hierarchy, the most common being the gap between a primate capital city and the next category of cities. The second gap is the one between cities located in regions with diverging rates of socio-economic development. On the basis of a conceptual and quantitative discussion of these gaps a basic definition is presented of what polycentric development policies are about: policies that address the distribution of economic and/or economically relevant functions over the urban system in such a way that the urban hierarchy is flattened in a territorially balanced way. A discussion of the polycentric development policies of France, Poland and Germany illustrates our findings. The article concludes that for the period 2007-2013 – the new EU budget period – a clear synergy is needed between EU and national policies and that without such synergy policies cannot be effective.