ABSTRACT
Dimensions of the European Spatial Development Policy (ESDP) have informed the research that has been presented in the chapters of this book. Fundamental to the ESDP is a vision of the future that emphasizes the importance of spatial planning and which promotes more integrated actions across policy fields, as compared with the sectoral focus that dominated EU policy-making in the past (e.g. Faludi and Waterhout, 2002). Within the fabric of ESDP conceptualizations, polycentric development is favoured, in which three scales are acknowledged: the inter-regional, for which the creation or encouragement of multiple growth regions is seen as desirable; the intra-regional, which envisages sustained socio-economic dynamism for a number of city-regions; and, the city-region, in which the promotion of multiple growth points and the integration of urban and rural are seen as fundamental (e.g. Tewdwr-Jones and Williams, 2001, p.38). For this book, the key geographical scale has been the city-region. Within a city-region framework, critical questions have been asked about the construction and maintenance of urban-rural partnerships (Commission of the European Communities, 1999, p.25). The critical ESDP assumption is that rural and urban are not distinctive. Rather they are integrated, in a mutually dependent and reinforcing interchange, which ensures that urban problems are also rural problems, and vice versa. Hence, rural areas around cities are in a two-way dynamic, so cities and their hinterlands require integrated spatial development strategies. Within the ESDP, it follows that city-regions are not ‘black boxes’, nor are hinterland zones central city appendages. More accurately, city-regions are conceived as comprised of overlapping rural-urban influences. As the incidence and intensity of change forces varies in urban as well as in rural realms, so does the nature of their interactions, with the success of efforts to stimulate socio-economic conditions ‘… very dependent on local conditions’ (Commission of the European Communities, 1999, p.22). But which local conditions are critical?
