Creating a space for cooperation

This chapter is concerned with the role of spatial planning in shaping soft spaces and reconfiguring territorial spatial imaginaries in cross-border contexts. The empirical focus is the cross-border context of the island of Ireland. The chapter focuses in particular on the relationship between the use of soft spaces in spatial strategies and policy discourses and the emergence of institutional spaces for cross-border cooperation and spatial planning. Ethno-national conflict in Northern Ireland, based on competing territorial claims, has shaped the context for regional development and North-South ¹ relations over the past century (Anderson, 2008; O’Dowd and McCall, 2008). Processes of strategic spatial planning, working through soft spaces at multiple scales, have played a significant role in the reframing and renegotiation of the spatial relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the period of relative political stability since the cessation of armed conflict in Northern Ireland in the 1990s (Albrechts et al., 2003; Murray, 2004).