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From Trends to Visions: The European Spatial Development Perspective

Nordregio Report 1999:4

"In the future, spatial development issues in the EU can only be resolved through co-operation between different governmental and administrative levels. In the wake of European integration, closer relations at all levels need to be developed: between the regions themselves and between the region and the national and European institutions."

Thus begins the first section of the new European Spatial Development Perspective, ESDP, itself a multiparty experiment led by the European Commission and enlisting planning expertise represented by National Focal Points in all fifteen Member States. Nordregio, which has served as co-ordinator for the European Spatial Planning Study Programme, has held several conferences in these new trends in spatial development and on the visions growing out of them - which can be expected to shape the future spatial dimension of the European territory.

This volume is a compilation of selected articles from the conference entitled "Trend and Visions", held in December 1998 at Nordregio in Stockholm. They reflect the varied contemplations of a number of scholars on regional and spatial development on the question of what this new direction will mean.

Contents:

Christer Bengs: How to build bridges: ESDP - planning between politcs and science

Lise Lyck: European space: an economic and political perspective

Rob Atkinson: The European spatial development perspective: an urban view

Wil Zonneveld: Shifting conceptualisations of cores and peripheries

Niels Boje Groth: The Baltic Sea Region: a region covered by two transnational perspectives