ABSTRACT

The past thirty years have seen a proliferation of new forms of territorial governance that have come to co-exist with, and complement, formal territorial spaces of government. These governance experiments have resulted in the creation of soft spaces, new geographies with blurred boundaries that eschew existing political-territorial boundaries of elected tiers of government. The emergence of new, non-statutory or informal spaces can be found at multiple levels across Europe, in a variety of circumstances, and with diverse aims and rationales.

This book moves beyond theory to examine the practice of soft spaces. It employs an empirical approach to better understand the various practices and rationalities of soft spaces and how they manifest themselves in different planning contexts. By looking at the effects of new forms of spatial governance and the role of spatial planning in North-western Europe, this book analyses discursive changes in planning policies in selected metropolitan areas and cross-border regions. The result is an exploration of how these processes influence the emergence of soft spaces, governance arrangements and the role of statutory planning in different contexts.

This book provides a deeper understanding of space and place, territorial governance and network governance.

part 1|22 pages

A conceptual framework for soft spaces

part 2|126 pages

Soft spaces in France, Germany, the Netherlands and England

chapter 2|20 pages

‘A good geography is whatever it needs to be’

The Atlantic Gateway and evolving spatial imaginaries in North West England

chapter 3|32 pages

Governance arrangements in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region

Between hard and soft institutional spaces

chapter 5|34 pages

Evolving regional spaces

Shifting levels in the southern part of the Randstad

part 3|64 pages

Cross-border soft spaces

chapter 7|23 pages

Soft spaces across the Fehmarn Belt

Cross-border regionalism in practice

chapter 8|18 pages

Cross-border soft spaces of the Upper Rhine

Overlapping initiatives from the Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau to the Trinational Metropolitan Region of the Upper Rhine

chapter 9|21 pages

Creating a space for cooperation

Soft spaces, spatial planning and cross-border cooperation on the island of Ireland

part 4|23 pages

Conclusions and outlook