ABSTRACT
This chapter presents how discourses of European Spatial Planning appear to have gone out of fashion in recent years. It also presents a specific storyline, namely looking at the evaluation of territorial cohesion norms in seminal EU policy documents. The chapter examines the norms of European spatial planning entrenched in the European Spatial Development Programme, then moving on to trace how territorial cohesion became the key concept for the formation of more place-based ideas of cohesion. It discusses how the concept of territorial governance was then suggested as a process for achieving territorial cohesion. The chapter argues that territorial governance will remain dependent on the local institutional capacity to deliver results and integrate territorial knowledgeability into policy, programmes, projects and other actions. It suggests that the concept of territorial governance as conceptualised and discusses a new avenue to reintroduce some of the original good intentions associated with the concept of European spatial planning.
