ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how spatialities get constructed in spatial policy making, and considers how these construction processes might be conceptualised and analysed. The overall argument is that the analysis of spatial policy discourses will benefit from using a combined framework of concepts and techniques of discourse analysis, together with an understanding of the social construction of space and spatiality. The chapter illustrates how new spatial policy discourses create new systems of meaning about space, based in this case on the language and ideas of polycentric urban systems and hyper mobility. It shows how this discourse becomes institutionalised in a new set of spatial practices shaping European space and identity. The chapter examines the treatment of frictionless mobility in emerging spatial policy discourse in the European Union. It aims show the benefit of bringing cultural sociology to bear on the analysis of spatial policy discourses.
