There is extensive literature on the agency of actors in urban and regional planning which draws on a wide range of theoretical lenses and concepts. One of the recurring themes is the relationship between agency and structure—the mutual interdependence between individual actions and collective institutions, rules, and norms. This article provides a narrative overview of the wide range of literature on agency and structure in relation to spatial planning clustered around six interrelated themes: institutions, discretion, pragmatism, networks, leadership, and emotions. It identifies new avenues for research, paying particular attention to empirical, scalar, and methodological issues.

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Both planning practice and research increasingly acknowledge the existence of new scales and governance arrangements alongside and between statutory planning systems. Examples of new scales of non-statutory planning are large-scale megaregions and macro-regions. Drawing on examples from North America and Europe (Southern California and the Danube Region respectively), this article examines how new processes of cooperation at this scale can influence other statutory levels of decision-making on spatial development. The analysis of spatial delineations, discourses, actors, rules and resources associated with megaregions and macro-regions suggests that this type of ‘soft planning’ can foster territorial integration when a perception exists that there are joint gains to be made, when informal rules are negotiated in context-specific and bottom-up processes, when soft spaces are used as arenas of deliberation to renegotiate shared agendas, and when actors succeed in ensuring the anchorage of informal cooperation in other arenas.

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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 article analyses the academic concept of “soft spaces” from the perspective of traveling planning ideas. The concept has its origin in the United Kingdom but has also been used in other contexts. Within European Union policy-making, the term soft planning has emerged to describe the processes of cooperation and learning with an unclear relation to planning. In the Nordic countries, soft spaces are viewed as entangled with the logics of statutory planning, posing challenges for policy delivery and regulatory planning systems. This article highlights the conceptual evolution of soft spaces, specifically acknowledging contextual influences and the changing relation with statutory planning.@en

The impact of European policies strongly depends on their interpretation and application by domestic actors. This is especially true in fields such as European spatial planning and development, which are characterised by informal agreements and fragmented competences. Consequently, EU policies only gain importance if domestic actors consider them relevant and establish links to their respective areas of influence. The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) is often regarded as a success story in European spatial planning and is relatively well known among planners across Europe. The Territorial Agenda documents, often considered successors to the ESDP, have not been met with the same enthusiasm and interest. This contribution uses the concept of storytelling to explain why the ESDP was at least partly successful in appealing to planners. Moreover, it discusses the role and importance of planning education in fostering interest in European spatial development.@en

This symposium presents the results of a roundtable of well-known European spatial planning scholars critically engaging with Andreas Faludi's The Poverty of Territorialism. A Neo-Medieval View of Europe and of European Spatial Planning (2018). The book allows readers to rethink the current debates surrounding territorialism in the context of the European Union, as well as its implications for democracy. In particular, it argues that the open-ended character of the European project requires continuous efforts to (re)conceptualize spatial relations both inside and outside of existing administrative containers, in turn putting the democratic control of state territories and their development in question. Shedding a light on the above, this contribution presents some of the discussion that emerged during the roundtable. Its convenor (Giancarlo Cotella) introduces the aims and scope of the event, before leaving the floor to the critical considerations proposed by one of the participants (Eva Purkarthofer). Finally, the author of the book is given the chance to reply.@en

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