This special issue approaches regional planning as a contested arena of strategic planning. With this view, we transcend the idea that regional planning is purely a matter of scale and approach the complexity of regional planning from three perspectives: interests, institutions and relations. The perspective of ‘interests’ reveals the various underlying motivations connected to regional planning. The perspective of ‘institutions’ addresses the encounter of formal and informal rules, norms and discourses shaping planning and governance practices. The perspective of ‘relations’ uncovers the complex constellations of actors and processes associated with planning, involving various administrative scales, territorial entities and sectoral policies.

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This article furthers the unconsolidated theoretical discourse on planning cultures, focusing on the region as a highly dynamic planning scale. The article discusses regional planning cultures, distinguishing two meanings: regional planning cultures in regions, referring to regionally specific approaches visible in planning practice, and cultures of regional planning, referring to a shared, abstract understanding of regional planning. The article proposes a refined view on the “culturised planning model” (CPM) with the aim to advance from a static model towards a framework for understanding differences among planning cultures over time and between geographical contexts.@en

This paper criticizes traditional models of urban–regional expansion, which depart from monocentric ideals of urban core and ring. The original spatial-cycle model (SCM) suggests repeating stages of urbanization, suburbanization, disurbanization and re-urbanization. We reconceptualize the relations between core(s) and ring(s) to test the formation of urban regions under mono-, multi- and polycentric trajectories. The analysis employs local population data in functional urban regions in Finland, Austria and the Netherlands, three countries with different urbanization patterns, for the period 1961–2011. Results suggest a ‘break of the cycle’ in polycentric regions and a shift towards a different period, which we call ‘syncurbanization’.

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Economic geographer Andrés Rodríguez-Pose argued recently that declining peripheries are increasingly becoming ‘places that don’t matter’ in the formation or implementation of national or European Union (EU) regional policies. In turn, this might result in a triumph of populist anti-establishment movements in peripheries, posing a threat to well-being in both the prospering and the declining regions. We argue that ‘places that don’t matter’ also exist in Finland, a country that has a long tradition of regional policy and equalizing welfare schemes. Our focus is on administration rather than politics, however. We look at the Finnish peripheral regions of Kainuu and Lapland, discussing the practices of spatial planners, who influence and implement EU and national regional policies in these regions. We ask how strategic spatial planning in Kainuu and Lapland is affected by the revengeful and antagonistic attitudes towards the ‘elites’ who, allegedly, are not directing a sufficient amount of attention to the peripheries. We look at the planning practices and institutional settings within which they work from the perspective of agonistic planning theory, asking whether and how spatial planners can turn the antagonistic and potentially revengeful attitudes into productive forces that could positively affect spatial development in these regions.@en

Rapid expansion of settlements and related infrastructures is a global trend that comes with severe environmental, economic, and social costs. Steering urbanization toward well-balanced compactness is thus acknowledged as an important strategic orientation in UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG-11) via the SDG-indicator “Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate.” The EU’s simultaneous commitment to being “a frontrunner in implementing […] the SDGs” and to striving for “no net land take until 2050” calls for relating the concepts of land consumption and land take to each other. Drawing on an EU-centred questionnaire study, a focus group and a literature review, we scrutinize definitions of land consumption and land take, seeking to show how they are interrelated, and questioning the comparability of respective indicators. We argue that conceptual clarifications and a bridging of the two notions are much needed, and that the precision required for definitions and applications is context-dependent. While approximate understandings may suffice for general communication and dissemination objectives, accurate and consistent interpretations of the discussed concepts seem indispensable for monitoring and reporting purposes. We propose ways of addressing existing ambiguities and suggest prioritizing the term land take in the EU context. Thereby, we aim to enhance conceptual clarity around land consumption and land take—a precondition for solidly informing respective policies and decisions.@en