This book explores the ways in which the EU features overlapping spheres of authority. Using territorial ideas prevalent in the Medieval Period, Andreas Faludi offers ways to rethink the current debates surrounding territorialism in the EU. Challenging contemporary European spatial planning, this book explores how modern planning puts the democratic control of state territories and their development in question. The notion of democracy in an increasingly interconnected world is a key issue, and as such Faludi advocates a Europe where national borders are questioned, and ultimately transgressed. Progressive and timely, this book is an invaluable read for academic and practicing planners concerned with European planning and co-operation. Critical social and political geographers will also benefit from the revolutionary insights Faludi offers.

This book explores the ways in which the EU features overlapping spheres of authority. Using territorial ideas prevalent in the Medieval Period, Andreas Faludi offers ways to rethink the current debates surrounding territorialism in the EU. Challenging contemporary European spatial planning, this book explores how modern planning puts the democratic control of state territories and their development in question. The notion of democracy in an increasingly interconnected world is a key issue, and as such Faludi advocates a Europe where national borders are questioned, and ultimately transgressed. Progressive and timely, this book is an invaluable read for academic and practicing planners concerned with European planning and co-operation. Critical social and political geographers will also benefit from the revolutionary insights Faludi offers.

Since its foundation the European Union has gradually developed policies that are aimed at achieving increased economic and social cohesion. This book examines the most recent of these, the concept of territorial cohesion.

Territorial cohesion is the pursuit of balanced development, competitiveness, sustainable development, and good governance. These concerns are most readily addressed by the formulation of spatial strategies under the umbrella of spatial planning, that brings together a multitude of public and private actors in a process that requires cohesion, coherence and co-operation.

This book traces the development of spatial planning at European level and argues that spatial planning can become a vehicle, not only for territorial cohesion, but for EU policy generally.

In this second book in a series on European spatial planning, the authors examine territorial cohesion as a successor concept to the European Spatial Development Perspective. Fundamental ideas about Europe and its distinct "model of society" lie behind the concept of territorial cohesion, which can be understood as a goal of spatial equity that tends to favor development-in-place over selective migration to locations of greater opportunity. This approach contrasts with an American social model that views the equity principle behind territorial cohesion to be diametrically opposed to the efficiency principle based on free mobility of labor.