ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the meaning of the spatial development concepts that are shared among the politicians and the planning community of the European Union (EU), as seen from the perspective of the East-Central European (ECE) countries, with occasional reference also to Eastern Europe. For the purposes of clarity, we include the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, and in many respects also Eastern Germany and non-EU Croatia in East-Central Europe. We make this distinction to distinguish ECE from Eastern Europe, which consists of the Baltic States, Bulgaria and Romania and the ex-Yugoslavia states that were not classified in the former category. These countries were not centrally involved in formulation of current EU spatial development concepts, but accepted the agendas that evolved around these concepts as part of their accession obligations. The discourse on European territorial cohesion and balanced development originated in the ‘old’ EU member states and retains a much higher profile amongst academics in these countries than amongst academics in the ‘new’ EU even now. The objective of this contribution is therefore rather to raise some issues that may not be clearly expressed due to the uneven level of their discussion in different parts of the EU-27. In the first section of the chapter the concepts under consideration are outlined. The following section explores the frameworks, complexities and realities of the territorial cohesion agenda for ECE before the application of these concepts in the context of ECE reality is considered in more detail.
