Polycentricity in Transnational Planning Initiatives: ESDP Applied or ESDP Reinvented?

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Polycentricity in transnational planninginitiatives: ESDP applied or ESDPreinvented?Erik Gl⊘ersen , Kaisa Lähteenmäki-Smith & Alexandre DuboisPublished online: 29 Nov 2007.

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ARTICLE

Polycentricity in Transnational PlanningInitiatives: ESDP Applied or ESDPReinvented?ERIK GLØERSEN, KAISA LAHTEENMAKI-SMITH &ALEXANDRE DUBOIS

Introduction

Polycentric development has been an important issue at the metropolitan scale(e.g. Albrechts, 1998; Priemus, 1998; Hall & Pain, 2006) and in national planningstrategies (Meijers et al., 2005). It has also had a prominent position in processessurrounding the drafting, approval and subsequent discussion on theimplementation of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) fromthe first drafting meetings of the early 1990s up until recent debates over the futureESPON programme after 2006. The present article describes and investigatessome of the reasons behind this success, and tries to analyse how the notion ofpolycentricity could be developed further.The authors will describe the position of the polycentricity issue in relation to

the emergence of a European spatial policy discourse. Since the early 1990s,European planning debates have brought together a multitude of actors, from theacademic and policy worlds, with a variety of understandings and objectives. Thebasis for producing a European planning discourse has been the perceptions ofterritorial challenges upheld by these actors, sometimes shared, other timesconflicting, rather than the spatial configuration of Europe as such. All thesestakeholders have furthermore had their own disciplinary and professionalbackgrounds and planning cultures, with specific vocabularies and epistemicbasis attached to them. This has lead to obvious challenges in organizing amultilateral European debate. The complexity of the discursive integrationprocesses in European territorial planning has been amplified by the lack of aformal European competence in this policy field and thus the lack of mandatearound which the discourse could be based. At the same time, a strong andincreasing European influence can be perceived at all scales.These specific characteristics of European planning debates offer in our view

the first possible explanation why polycentricity has been so often referred to.

Erik Gløersen, Nordregio, PO Box 1658, SE-111 86 Stockholm, Sweden.Email: [email protected]

Planning, Practice & Research, Vol. 22, No. 3,pp. 417 – 437, August 2007

ISSN 0269-7459 print/1360-0583 online/07/030417–21 � 2007 Taylor & Francis 417DOI: 10.1080/02697450701666761

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Indeed, bringing a multitude of notions from specific countries and academic fieldsinto the debate would have required stakeholders to explain them and put theminto their respective policy context before any discussion could be envisaged.Instead, the focus has been on the construction of a new European vocabulary andon debates over what each of the new terms should mean. This discursive processhas in turn presupposed a set of notions that were sufficiently vague to serve asreceptacles for the wide range of perspectives envisaged by the involvedstakeholders. Polycentricity proved to be a particularly suitable notion to be usedas such a facilitator of discussions.A second possible explanation is linked to the position of planning in wider

European policy contexts. Being perceived as secondary or subordinate to sectoralpolicy fields (e.g. regional development or transport), this situation creates acommitment among involved stakeholders to ‘defend the territorial dimension’ (ofall policies of relevance to spatial development). Expressions such as ‘polycentricity’can in this regard be a way of reflecting a potential or presumed convergencebetween a range of policy perspectives, which is deemed useful insofar as it mayexternally convey the impression of a consensus. In this respect polycentricityexemplifies the European policy and is promoted as a communication tool.A third type of explanation is linked to the European spatial and territorial

policies as such. Their main concern is not to define and implement concretepolicies, which are dealt with at the level of member states, as argued above, butrather to provide a framework and some guiding principles. This does not implythat the European level aspires to neutrality. Specific types of dynamics andterritorial patterns are on the contrary promoted, based on notions of‘sustainability’, ‘quality of life’ and even ‘harmony’. But, at the same time, in aspirit of subsidiarity, one accepts that the implementation of these objectives willbe different in each country or region. Each European policy aim will in otherwords encompass different sets of concrete means and goals. Polycentricity servesas such a policy objective characterized by ‘multifinality’. It is in this respectsimilar to ‘territorial cohesion’, as pointed out by an Austrian EU-presidency noteon the Governance of territorial strategies (Austrian Federal Chancellery, 2006).These different objectives pursued through the use of ‘polycentricity’ also widen

the semantic field covered by this notion. For stakeholders involved in transnationalplanning policy initiatives or research projects dealing with polycentricity, the issueis therefore whether the concept should be ‘applied’, or if it can only be ‘reinvented’.The present article considers two communities confronted with this issue. The firstof these is ESPON, the European Spatial Planning Observatory Network. ESPON isa European applied-research programme, implemented in the 2001 – 2006 periodand financed and administered under the INTERREG Community Initiative. Itsmain aim has been to ‘set up to support policy development and to build a Europeanscientific community in the field of territorial development’ (ESPON website). It hasmainly focused on gathering quantitative evidence on territorial trends in Europe andon assessing policy impacts. With a total budget of 17 million Euros for this purposefor the period 2001 – 2006, it has organized over 30 research projects involvingsome 650 researchers from across Europe.The second type of communities comprises the various groups of researchers

and practitioners working with polycentricity within the framework of the

Erik Gløersen et al.

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INTERREG programmes.1 The raison d’etre of INTERREG, since its inception in1990, has been to combat the negative effects of national borders on regionaldevelopment and to support the regions on the borders of the Union in theirattempt to cope with disadvantages caused by their geographical location (on theborder), in a sense turning the disadvantage of national boundaries into a factor ofempowerment through the strengthening of cross-border, interregional andtransnational varieties of cooperation in regional and spatial development. Theapproach implemented has had broadly the same wider goals as Europeanintegration as a whole, namely the strengthening of economic and social cohesionacross the Union and the fostering of balanced development of the continentthrough cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation. During theselected 2000 – 2006 programming period, three strands of INTERREG co-operation were implemented. Strand A was dedicated to cross-border cooperation,Strand B to transnational cooperation and Strand C to interregional cooperation(less territory-bound and more cross-sectoral). The present article focuses onStrand B, as it has been argued that its transnational cooperation areas representthe first attempt to constitute a more polycentric Europe by building so-called‘Global Integration Zones’ outside the core areas of Europe, as well as bystimulating a bottom-up approach to the development of links between regions(Zonneveld, 2005).ESPON and INTERREG are both European community initiatives that have

worked with the concept of polycentricity, but differ in a number of respects.Whereas ESPON essentially seeks to constitute a European-wide evidence basefor the territorial political agenda of the European Commission, INTERREGdevelops local, regional, interregional and transnational coalitions of practitionersand academics seeking to develop joint solutions to concrete challenges. However,as pointed out by Waterhout and Stead (this issue 2007), the evidence gathered byESPON is of little relevance for regional and local authorities in relation toconcrete policy actions.Broadly speaking, one can argue that both ESPON and INTERREG are about

creating knowledge bases and platforms of information exchange in the areas ofregional and territorial development and spatial planning. As researchers workingwith applied research into regional development, the current authors have beendirectly involved with these two policy initiatives. This has led to address thefollowing questions:

. How has the knowledge base been developed and what is the process throughwhich the two interlinked initiatives come together and achieve useful cross-fertilization, taking into account the different mode of building the epistemicbase and achieving learning within and across the communities that have beenformed around these two initiatives?

. How has one managed the necessary bridging of the gap between research andpractice in this case? (The concept of polycentric development is taken as anillustrative case where such cross-fertilization may occur.)

. Is the process of cross-fertilization and cognitive learning limited to arhetorical or discursive integration or are there indications of genuine learningbetween the ESPON and INTERREG ‘communities’?

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The present article addresses the experiences and challenges in respect of thesequestions through successive and parallel descriptions of ESPON and INTERREGprocesses, and by seeking to determine to which extent each of them either seeksto ‘apply’ or to ‘reinvent’ the ESDP approach of polycentricity. As a frameworkfor these accounts, we however first dwell on the concept of ‘policy learning’ andargue that polycentricity needs to be understood as a notion at the crossroads oflearning processes and assertive action.

Learning Communities, Governance Platforms and Communitiesof Interest

The discursive, communicative and policy related hypotheses on the success ofpolycentricity as a European policy buzzword that were described above all relateto the communities in which planning policies are being formulated. As such, theycan be interpreted as ‘epistemic communities’, a concept more familiar frominternational policy coordination in the area of environment.2 Here the idea wasthat communities emerge as arenas where collective policy entrepreneurship ispromoted and shared understandings of policy problems and their scientificallybased solutions can be elaborated. This is most likely to be the case in anenvironment where shared understandings are created in formative stages of policymaking, based on shared scientific and disciplinary understandings of the policyproblems and their solutions (Haas, 1992). Similar notions, such as ‘knowledgeecologies’ (Stopford, 2001, p. 276) have been developed elsewhere. In this case, ashared social system approach to shared tasks, problem-solving puzzles andintellectual curiosity all contribute to what is recognized as valid, relevant and infact useful information, research content, as well as evidence and data.There has in recent years been an increased focus on policy learning, both in

terms of facilitating, but also monitoring and adding to the main strategicprogramme objectives within the Structural Funds in general and INTERREG inparticular. Learning has been seen both as an instrument and as an outcome. Jointlearning and process evaluation should be emphasized in addition to the traditionalmore cost-benefit-based and quantitatively set goals relating to accountability,efficiency and impact assessment (e.g. Hummelbrunner et al., 2005, p. 20). Thishas been supported by the policy community (including the EuropeanCommission) and research and evaluation community alike.In one sense learning has always been an integral part of territorial policy and

the Structural Funds, in particular as evaluation has been an important element ofthe Structural Funds support system ever since the first reform of the funds in1988. When it was first introduced, the objective of accountability (showing thatthe financial resources were used correctly and efficiently) was the mainmotivation of the European Commission in its approach to evaluation, with aparticular focus on ex post evaluation, undertaken after the intervention.Gradually, however, a greater emphasis has come to be placed on the learningaspects of evaluation, with an accompanying shift towards process evaluation(Lahteenmaki-Smith, 2007). Here a focus on learning as a cumulative process ofparticipants of different types in a given policy intervention, resulting inimprovement and sustained action has been promoted and local institution


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building leading to increasing the capacity of people to initiate action on their ownhas been defined as a central goal (European Commission, 2004, p. 2).The analysis of the interplay between these actors allows for a critical

assessment of the relative importance of policy ‘learning’. It has been argued thatwhile much of the process of soft policy coordination in the EU and of‘Europeanization’ has in recent years been conceptualized in terms of learning, thecase for policy learning may in fact have been overstated and cognitive andnormative policy learning between member states as the generalized learningassumption stands in sharp contrast to the limited amount of empirical evidenceprovided so far by scholarly research on this issue (e.g. Kroger, 2006, p. 3). In fact,Kroger (2006) usefully reminds us of the competing interests that policy-makersand stakeholders are faced with when involved in European cooperation: learningis only one of such interests of limited instrumental value, while in most casesother interests and concerns involved in collective action, e.g. uncertainty overoutcomes, diverging interests, political conflict etc. may simply override thelearning interests, valuable as they may be in themselves. By way of consequence,it seems relevant to analyse how the real politics of European exchange andnegotiation can lead to evolutions in national spatial planning policies, rather thanapproach these in terms of ‘learning’ only.This two-fold perspective on European integrative processes also reflects the

shift from government to governance. In terms of polycentric development, it is aprocess of multilevel nature that involves an emergent system of continuousnegotiation among governments at several territorial tiers – supranational,national, regional and local. A broad process of institutional creation anddecisional reallocation is therefore needed. Relations of power and negotiationwithin political spaces have to be reorganized, as some previously centralizedfunctions of the state are moved up to the supranational level and others down tothe local/regional level (Marks, 1993, p. 392). These processes are naturallycentral to the main tenets of planning theory, as the move from technocraticplanning to communicative action and further on from communicative planning toa more power-conscious planning theory (Friedmann, 1992; Flyvbjerg &Richardson, 2002, pp. 56 – 58). As such, putting the ‘learning’ processes in thecontext of participation in new cooperation schemes or institutional setting is away of approaching changes in power structures.We therefore consider two processes: the improved knowledge about planning

systems, normative planning concepts, territorial structures and trends and policieson the one hand, and the adaptation to changing power structures on the other.Admittedly, these two processes may be difficult to differentiate in practice,especially as the accumulation of appropriate knowledge is a central vector ofassertion in a power structure. In analytical terms, one however needs to separatethese two notions as they entail different types of relationships between the‘producing’ and ‘receiving’ bodies of the learning process.Furthermore, there are both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of learning

processes and of adaptations to changing power structures. The ‘vertical’dimension refers to the linkages between higher and lower levels of government,including their institutional, financial and informational aspects. Here, localcapacity building and incentives for effectiveness of sub national levels of


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government are crucial issues for improving the quality and coherence of publicpolicy. The ‘horizontal’ dimension refers to cooperation arrangements betweenregions or between municipalities. These agreements are increasingly common asa means by which to improve the effectiveness of local public service delivery andimplementation of development strategies. These categories allow us to establish aschematic categorization of the knowledge and assertion processes involving localand regional bodies.As illustrated by Table 1, this categorization of policy learning processes can

also be used as the basis for a typology of some of the main approaches topolycentricity envisaged in the literature. ‘Polycentricity as a normative planningprinciple’ is exemplified within the ESDP process, whereby a general and vaguelydefined notion became a European political catchword which actors withinterritorial policy and spatial planning can use as an instrument of leverage for thepromotion of their strategies. The dissemination of knowledge about the inclusionof polycentricity in a European planning document, from European-levelcommunities and down to the regional or local ones, gave an impetus to newtypes of initiatives.In the case of ‘polycentricity as a model based on increased regional and/or

local autonomy’ the driving force is rather at the national scale. Polycentricregional policies abandoning ambitious redistributive schemes and replacing themwith an increasing regional competence and responsibility for growth anddevelopment for offer an example of such policies.The ‘polycentric’ dimension is then formalized in terms of institutional

centrality and foreseen economic development patterns, rather than urbanmorphology. ‘Polycentricity as a model promoting horizontal linkages’ relies onthe capacity of local and regional authorities to free themselves from traditionalhierarchical patterns of diffusion of information, knowledge and experience, andto connect with other areas with similar situations in the same area or in othercontexts. The increased degree of ‘polycentricity’ is in this regard based on animproved capacity for taking initiatives independently of the hierarchical context.

TABLE 1. Schematic categorization of the policy learning and assertion processes involving local andregional bodies

Policy learning Assertion within power structures

Verticalprocesses

Coherence-building through thedissemination of knowledge.

Polycentricity as a normativeplanning principle

Struggle for competence/devolution-centralization

Polycentricity as a developmentmodel based on increasedregional and/or local autonomy

Horizontalprocesses

Exchange of experience/inspiration/good practice

Polycentricity as a developmentmodel promoting horizontallinkages (as an alternative tohierarchical ones)

Competition/strategic cooperationPolycentricity as a way for local andregional actors to adapt to a morecompetitive economic context


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Finally, ‘polycentricity as an adaptation of local and regional actors to a morecompetitive economic context’ is related to the rhetoric of regional effects ofglobalizing economic trends. The underlying hypothesis is that local economieswhich previously functioned within a geographically speaking restrictedfunctional environment are now exposed to global competition. This process isdue to reduced trade barriers, deregulation and increased accessibility. At the sametime, their improved access to world markets creates potentials for new economicdevelopments. This increases polycentricity insofar as all levels of the urbanhierarchy can participate in international trade. The observation of urban trendshas however demonstrated that these potentials for increased equilibrium areeffectively countered by the concentration of economic power and wealth in asmall number of ‘global cities’ (Friedmann & Wolff, 1982; Sassen, 1991).To summarize, one should envisage polycentricity as a concept at the

intersection between processes related to power struggles between differentgeographical levels on the one side, and knowledge of territorial trends andpossible strategies to promote more balanced spatial structures in a context ofconstantly increasing polarization on the other. This way of approachingpolycentricity provides us with a backdrop against which we analyse thedevelopments it has inspired in ESPON and within INTERREG communities.Echoing Davoudi’s (2003, p. 979) remark on polycentric development, claimingthat it ‘means different things to different people’, our theoretical model on thepolysemy of polycentricity provides us with a framework for assessing howpolycentricity is dealt with in different kinds of European planning communities,such as the ESPON and INTERREG ones.3 The understanding of polycentricitytherefore requires a two-fold perspective on European integrative processes, as anaccumulation of appropriate knowledge among stakeholders (‘policy learning’)and as an assertion of these same stakeholders within established and emergingpower structures.

The ESPON Programme: Polycentricity Leading to a Dead End?

The ESPON study on ‘the role, specific situation and potentials of urban areas asnodes in a polycentric development’ was thought and designed as an empirical test(or, rather, confirmation) of the ESDP vision of territorial development in Europe.The project was requested to produce results contributing to the ‘furtheroperationalisation . . . of the policy aims and options adopted in the ESDP’. Thisincluded ‘the reinforcement of cities and regions (as the ESDP states) as result ofan integrated approach considering policies for the development of ‘‘gatewaycities’’’ (ESPON Monitoring Committee, 2001). This implied producing evidenceon where and how the development of such ‘gateway cities’ could occur.In order to understand this focus on ‘gateway cities’, one must refer to the

understanding of European geography that prevails in the ESDP. The ESDPidentifies a European core, delimited by the London, Paris, Milan, Stuttgart andHamburg metropolitan areas and designated as the ‘Pentagon’. This ‘Pentagon’ isidentified as the only ‘outstanding larger geographical zone of global economicintegration’ in Europe. The absence of alternative ‘global economic integrationzones’ is perceived as a problem, especially in comparison with the United States


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where multiple such areas can be found. Based on this diagnosis, the ESDPconsiders that ‘the creation of several dynamic zones of global economicintegration, well distributed throughout the EU territory and comprising a networkof internationally accessible metropolitan regions and their linked hinterland(towns, cities and rural areas of varying sizes), will play a key role in improvingspatial balance in Europe’ (Commission of the European Communities – CEC,1999, p. 20). Counterbalancing the ‘Pentagon’ is in other words one of the mainobjectives pursued by the ESDP.In this respect, ESPON was initially expected to provide evidence which would

facilitate the implementation of the ESDP in European Community cohesionpolicy and the spatial planning policies of member states. The Directorate Generalfor Regional Policy (DG Regio) of the European Commission however had aleading role in this process, while member state representatives primarily sought topreserve national interests in the ESPON programme. Admittedly, an activecontribution of all Member states to the creation of a common EU territorialresearch agenda would have presupposed lengthy and complex consultation pro-cesses, both at the national and European scales. ESPON has not been a con-tinuation of the ESDP in terms of building a European spatial policy community,partly because the time schedule determined by INTERREG programming periodsdid not allow for the same sort of exchanges between national actors.For these reasons, research undertaken by ESPON focused on supporting

decision-making processes within DG REGIO’s field of competence. A mainconcern in this context being the regional distribution of Structural Fund support,ESPON research focused on identifying where polycentric development could beexpected to result from integrative initiatives, rather than seeking to understandwhat polycentric policy would entail and how it could be achieved.ESPON research on polycentricity was therefore driven by two initial

imperatives: a search for possible ‘alternatives to the Pentagon’ inspired by theESDP, and a differentiation between spaces with and without potential forpolycentric development corresponding to the needs of DG Regio. We shalldescribe how this influenced the ESPON understanding of polycentricity andeventually led this part of ESPON research into a dead end.The ESDP concept ‘Pentagon’ is basically a grouping of some of Europe’s

largest and functionally most important cities, concentrated towards the centre ofthe European territory. Searching for alternatives to the ‘Pentagon’ thereforeimplies identifying clusters of cities with a large population and importantfunctions in other parts of Europe. A main first task of ESPON was to characterizeEuropean cities, formalized as travel to work areas or so called ‘Functional UrbanAreas’ (FUAs). These were classified according to their demographic andfunctional importance into nodes of global, European, national, regional and localimportance. The global and European nodes were characterized as ‘MetropolitanEuropean Growth Areas’ (MEGAs), and classified in five subcategories (Figure 1).Those MEGAs situated outside the ‘Pentagon’ could constitute potential buildingblocks for future alternative ‘outstanding larger geographical zones of globaleconomic integration’. The MEGA concept gained a certain momentum in theEuropean planning community, as a way of identifying relevant urban nodes forEuropean scale polycentricity. A consultant report for the city of Antwerp


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(D’hondt et al., 2005) even identified gaining MEGA status as an objective forurban development.The classifications were admittedly generated on the basis of statistically

questionable forms of multivariate analysis (see Gløersen, 2006, for a moredetailed discussion). But more importantly, no model of polycentric integrationhad been applied. The calculations in other words ignored cities that wouldbecome relevant if they applied the principles of polycentric development andjoined forces with neighbouring urban nodes. Furthermore, the classification of

FIGURE 1. The Pentagon and the classification of MEGAs.


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cities indicated that relatively few strong MEGAs could be found outside thePentagon. There were in addition no obvious polycentric integration scenarios forthose that were identified. The classification of European cities gave an improvedknowledge of urban networks in a Europe of 29 countries,4 but did not seem toprovide a solid basis for designing polycentric development options. Thenormative objective of the MEGA classification, whose aim it was to establisha list of nodes that are relevant in terms of European polycentric development, isnot only impossible to implement practically, it is also fundamentallydeterministic, as it is based on the assumption that only the currently strongestnode can achieve global significance in the future.Two possible options have been envisaged to move away from this pitfall. The

first solution is model based, and is to be understood as a theoretical test of thenotion of polycentricity. For this purpose, the interpretation of regional polycentricpolicies was restricted to the mere integration of labour markets betweenneighbouring cities. The model in question intended to assess the effects of auniform, pan-European application of such integration between labour markets onthe European urban hierarchy.For this calculation, areas accessible in 45 minutes around all European FUAs

were first delimited. If two such neighbouring areas overlapped by over one-third,the smaller city was then integrated into the larger one. These new integratedentities were labelled Polycentric Integration Areas (PIAs). One could thencompare the hierarchy of PIAs with the hierarchy of FUAs. Unsurprisingly, onefinds that the main cities gaining from this type of regional polycentric integrationare situated in the European core, where the highest density of overlapping labourmarkets is to be found. The reverse effect can be observed for cities in other partsof Europe (Figure 2). Regional polycentric development based on proximitybetween neighbouring cities and labour markets will in other words increasecontrasts between the core and the periphery at the European scale. This tends toshow that there is not necessarily coherence between polycentric development atdifferent scales: European (‘macro’ in ESPON vocabulary) scale polycentricity iseffectively contradicted by polycentric integration at the regional (‘micro’) scale.The second solution envisaged to produce polycentric development options is

based on the MEGA classification. Considering the MEGAs as the cornerstones ofthe European urban network, a speculative attempt has been made to construct‘European Global Integration Zones’. This is meant to be a possible scenario foran alternative to the dichotomy between the ‘Pentagon’ and the rest of Europe.This solution was designed and implemented by the ESPON project dealing withthe Integrated Analysis of Transnational and National Territories (ESPON 3.1),lead by the German Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR).The ‘European Global Integration Zones’ are zones with major, functionally

well-endowed, metropolitan regions. The metropolitan regions belonging to agiven group are well connected to each other. The travel time between twoneighbouring metropolitan regions by rail or air is below one hour. These zoningsare also delimited so that access to these large cities is better within each zone thanbetween the zones. (See Figure 3).The spatial rationale of such zones can however be questioned, especially in

relation to global integration. Actors at all scales are presumed to turn to the


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metropolitan regions within their zones for global connections, rather than to othercities. More generally, global integration is seen as contingent on spatial proximityto metropolitan regions. Such hypotheses are difficult to endorse. First, global

FIGURE 2. Effect of regional polycentric integration on the urban hierarchy. According to thistheoretical simulation, regional polycentric integration leads to increased contrasts between core and

periphery.


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economic activities are not organized through spatial proximity, but according tonetworks and shared strategic interests. Some commentators note that far fromgenerating ‘zones of global integration’ around themselves, global cities tend todissociate themselves from the wider region to which they belong (Smith, 2003).

FIGURE 3. A future geography of Global Integration Zones in Europe?


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The EU research project Polynet, on the ‘Sustainable Management of EuropeanPolycentric Megacity Regions’ on the other hand argues that one is moving ‘fromglobal cities to global city regions’ (Hall & Pain, 2006). The emerging entities theydescribe are however at a significantly narrower scale than ‘European GlobalIntegration Zones’ described above. The typical clusters are said to be ‘usuallyclose together in terms of distance (typically 3 to 4 miles, 5 to 8 km) and in time(15 to 20 minutes)’. The most distant manifestations of global city regionsdescribed are of punctual nature, and at most some 90 km from the centre of theglobal city. Other authors also question the dissociation between globally relevantcities and the rest of the urban network (McCann, 2004). Globally integratedexport industries can be found at all levels of the urban hierarchy. They cangenerally connect to the global markets without need for mediation bymetropolitan regions. It remains to be verified to which extent spatial proximityplays a role when these industries select their providers of so-called ‘globalservices’ (e.g. specialized banking and insurance services). Overall, thespeculative ‘European Global Integration Zones’ identified in Figure 3 cannotbe grounded in the observed spatial dynamics of globalization.These analyses are nonetheless coherent within the framework within which

they were developed. They are useful because they spell out some problematicaspects in the ESDP objective of creating alternatives to the ‘Pentagon’. Thespeculative delimitation of ‘European Global Integration Zones’ is a way ofvisualizing the underlying ‘geographical imagination’ of the ESDP. This makes iteasier to grasp what this policy options entails, to critique its theoreticalunderpinnings and to assess the geographical imbalances that it may lead to. In asimilar way, the previously described theoretical simulation of how integrationbetween neighbouring cities would affect the urban hierarchy (see Figure 2) is aconcrete application of ESDP principles showing that underlying presumptionson the coherence between polycentric objectives at different scales do nothold true.Overall, the interpretation of the ESDP objective of polycentric development in

the framework of ESPON has lead to a stalemate. This is essentially due to the factthat the research pursued has not so far been able to link to geographical analyseswith the political aspects of polycentric development. The role of actors and agentsof the territory, and the potential impact of their interventions on the territory, isdifficult to quantify. As such, in a context where ESPON focuses on producing‘evidence’ on the basis of which to construct policy, the alternatives topolycentricity as normative planning principle presented in Table 1 have notbeen considered relevant. The way in which ESPON has ‘applied’ polycentricityhas lead into a dead end.The ESPON programme’s main contribution has therefore been to help

establishing that ESDP approaches on polycentricity are problematic in differentrespects. These inputs are useful in orienting future debates over polycentricity. Itis however unclear on which basis to develop alternative polycentric perspectivesto be promoted at the European scale. INTERREG projects that have initiateda number of initiatives inspired by different practitioners’ perspective onpolycentricity independently of ESPON may provide a useful source of inspirationin this respect.


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INTERREG: A Preamble to Polycentricity Waiting to be Followed Up?

Compared to ESPON, the groups involved in INTERREG projects can be said tobe more inclusive. While the former are primarily made up of researchers, thelatter often aim at involving a wide range of actors, including representatives fromacademia, planning practice, business and policy making. However, the activeinvolvement of stakeholders beyond the ‘owners’ (i.e. project leaders) of theprogramme is a concern often raised. The very variety of actors makes it difficultto ensure that all have the same capacity to participate (Hummelbrunner et al.,2005, p. 2). This challenging aspect of organizing wide ranging governance hasbeen raised both on national and local level, and is particularly acute with twotypes of actors: business representatives and national sectoral authorities (e.g.Nordregio & Eurofutures, 2005, pp. 32, 69). This leads to significant differencesbetween the ‘imagined communities’ of relevant stakeholders at each territorialscale, and the ‘concrete communities’ of actors involved in strategic initiativessuch as INTERREG.The INTERREG programmes have been privileged channels to bring the

European spatial development discourse to the transnational and regional levels.As previously mentioned in the introduction, this article will exclusively focus onthe transnational (‘B’) strand of the INTERREG programme, where Europeanspatial policy concepts are most relevant.The Strand B of INTERREG can be perceived as a first attempt to foster a

bottom-up approach on European spatial planning issues and to put into practicethe objective of developing Global Integration Zones outside the core areas ofEurope (Zonneveld, 2005). The INTERREG programme can be deemed animportant vector for disseminating the discourse related to the ESDP, as it aims atbringing forward the transnational dimension of spatial development concerns toregional and national practitioners. A reason for this is the strong focus on ESDPthemes in the content of priorities and measures of the various INTERREGprogrammes for the programming period 2000 – 2006. As a matter ofconsequence, polycentric development gradually became a key concept framingthe INTERREG programmes and guiding the attribution of projects. Hence,INTERREG has created a pertinent forum or platform for exchanging experiencesand practices on policy issues stemming directly from the ESDP document.One of the main achievements of INTERREG is that regional stakeholders

have taken up spatial perspectives developed at the European level. This sharedinterest in developing of European principles for planning and cooperation canbe explained by a convergence of interests between the European Commissionand the regions. From the point of view of the Commission, it is important tonote that spatial development is not formally a competence of the EuropeanUnion, but of its member states. For this reason, there are no binding Europeanplanning policies, but only indicative documents. INTERREG programmedocuments are therefore all the more important as a way of disseminating aEuropean spatial planning agenda. INTERREG furthermore contributes to theEuropeanization of planning by bringing together the transnational and regionaldimensions, thereby demarcating itself from the national perspectives on spatialplanning.


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From the point of view of the regions, a central challenge for planning is thatpublic policies with the most significant spatial impacts are generally decided uponat the national scale (some federal states excepted) and highly sector-based. Thedissemination of ESDP policy options to the regions thus contributes to theterritorialization of spatial planning processes. Regions naturally operate asynthesis of sectoralized national policies. It has also become a means by whichinvolving local and regional actors is made possible, actors that are otherwiseoften excluded from planning processes in their respective national framework.This way of proceeding is also consistent with a new type of European multilevelgovernance, based on the creation of a multitude of networks and forums of publicaction and on regional mobilization (Le Gales & Lequesne, 1998).Based on these converging interests of the Commission and of involved regions,

INTERREG has in effect served as a ‘test-bed’ for the ESDP and has contributedto a further accumulation of thoughts and experiences, providing inputs to thedebate over why ‘European planning’ would be needed and how it could beimplemented. It has contributed to perpetuate the ESDP as an ongoing process.When ‘the ESDP’ is invoked by planning documents, reference is often made tothis ongoing process and not only to the so-called final document published in1999. Back then the idea was that the application of ESDP policy options inpractice at the local/regional level would enable a refining of these options (seeNadin & Shaw, 1998), in order for them to become more territorially relevant.However, as Faludi claimed recently (2006), the ESDP process has reached astalemate, indirectly implying the need to find a new usage for the INTERREG‘experiment’. Accordingly, the eyes of the Commission and of those memberstates supporting the idea of a European territorial perspective are now turned toESPON and the potential mutual learning that it may accommodate between thetwo programmes.As observed by Waterhout and Stead (this issue 2007), polycentric development

has been extensively referred to in the priorities listed by INTERREG programmedocuments. This, the authors note, can be traced back to the guidelines for theINTERREG III programme (2000 – 2006) which make direct reference to theESDP. Polycentricity is an equally important issue at project level. A survey5

performed by Nordregio (Lahteenmaki-Smith & Dubois, 2006) in the early springof 2006 and targeted to the INTERREG IIIB Lead Partners shows thatapproximately 10% of projects claimed to be directly related to polycentricdevelopment, while 40% thought polycentricity was indirectly connected to theirproject activities (Lahteenmaki-Smith & Dubois, 2006).The question is whether the diffusion of polycentricity from programme to

project level can be interpreted as a commitment to the principles of the ESDP, orshould rather be seen as an opportunistic attempt to secure funding. The presentsection envisages concrete uses made of polycentricity in projects in an attempt toprovide an answer.When it comes to the concrete meaning given to the term ‘polycentricity’, the

respondents interestingly focused on aspects relating to territorial agents and theway they interact with each other. 46% identified collaboration links as the mostrelevant aspect of polycentricity, while 31% referred to functional specializationand complementarities. Those aspects related to the spatial characteristics of the


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territories, size and physical links, were deemed substantially less relevant (10%and 13%, respectively). In that sense, the approach of polycentric developmentfavoured in the framework of INTERREG focuses on the interaction andcomplementarities between the agents.The previously mentioned fact that 40% of the respondents thought of their

INTERREG activities as being implicitly related to polycentricity, while only 10%had explicitly referred to it in their project tends to show that the concept is notonly approached opportunistically, but that it is deemed genuinely attractive. Thisattractiveness is however connected to the possibilities offered by polycentricityfor framing the context of cooperation among project partners, rather than to itsexplanatory power or capacity to meet territorial challenges. In fact, transnationalcooperation within INTERREG is often as such considered to be a polycentricinitiative (Zonneveld et al., 2006). This relates to the perception of polycentricityas a development model promoting horizontal linkages as an alternative tohierarchical ones, as mentioned in Table 1. The wide support to polycentricity canbe interpreted as the expression of a need for renewed planning practices at lowerterritorial scales.Polycentric initiatives within INTERREG can therefore be interpreted as a way

of questioning traditional national frameworks for the conception and implemen-tation of strategic territorial planning, where hierarchical systems play the mostprominent role. The possibility of developing interactions transnationally, withactors at the same level of the territorial hierarchy in other national contexts,appears as a potential strategy of local or regional empowerment. This use ofpolycentricity naturally leads to very different perspectives that those initiallyconceived of both at the metropolitan scale and in national planning strategies.Polycentricity can be said to be reinvented by INTERREG communities.Overall, the survey identifies three main aspects of polycentric approaches

within INTERREG. First, polycentricity is a framing concept rather than aconcrete policy objective. By using it, planners and policy makers express aconsensus around aims such as ‘multiplying the number of ‘‘growth engine’’regions and cities’ and ‘achieving territorially balanced development’, rather thandefining concrete actions to achieve them. Second, polycentricity is a strategy forimproving the interaction between agents, rather than a way of describing theterritory or a normative planning agenda. Third, polycentricity can be seen as astrategy of regional empowerment, as transnational connections can allowstakeholders to question or transcend traditional national, hierarchical frameworks.INTERREG participants have in other words formed communities which they

consider as intrinsically polycentric. Rather than merely appropriating polycen-tricity, stakeholders construct cooperation structures which embody their ownconception of polycentric development. In a communicative planning perspective,in which the referent for decision making is embedded in the perceptions of actorsinvolved in strategy building and in the institutional setting for their interaction(Healey, 1997), territorial action in favour of more polycentric development couldemerge from such structures. There is however a risk that this auto-referentialpolycentricity (i.e. groups of actors defining polycentricity as their belonging tothese very groups) can be unproductive. The cooperation between stakeholders atsome stage has to lead to concrete strategic proposals with a potential impact on


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the territory. Shared forums and platforms for discussion and exchange are neededin order to foster ‘communities of practice’ and the committed and sustainednature of the relationships between agents in INTERREG projects reinforces thesense of building a community.In that regard, the previously mentioned INTERREG survey enables to cast a

light on the nature of the relationships between the community’s agents. The LeadPartners were asked to assess what the main benefits from INTERREGcooperation were. The most cited alternatives were the Transfer of best practices,Innovative ideas and solutions and Establishment of permanent forms ofcooperation (Lahteenmaki-Smith & Dubois, 2006). The former confirms ourargument that the main added-value of INTERREG lies in its ability to catalyse thesearch for innovative joint solutions on common challenges and to foster processesof collective learning on planning practices between the participants. Conse-quently, INTERREG cooperation leads to the creation of new practices on spatialplanning issues, which go beyond the mere juxtaposition of individual experiencesand knowledge. The latter, i.e. the establishment of permanent forms ofcooperation, emphasizes the turn of INTERREG partnerships into effectivecommunities.Understanding the nature of the community itself makes it possible to grasp the

process it engenders. In that sense, the notion of ‘communities of practice’,emerging in social sciences as a concept accounting for processes of collectivelearning and for the accumulation of shared knowledge, works as a useful tool forunderstanding the INTERREG community. Communities of practice are definedas a group of actors ‘formed by people who engage in a process of collectivelearning in a shared domain of human endeavour’ (Wenger, 2006). The authorsargue that this notion can be usefully applied to INTERREG partnerships. Indeed,their willingness to further develop the basis for shared practices is a fundamentaldefining element of communities of practice.INTERREG has provided an arena for taking the ESDP discourse into regional

and local planning practices. Being an emblematic part of the ESDP,polycentricity was found appealing to the partnerships as a framing concept asit enabled them to reflect on their own nature. INTERREG communities have inother words ‘reinvented’ polycentricity constantly by adapting it to their ownnetwork. However, the fact that polycentricity in INTERREG is essentially auto-referential runs the risk of leading to an ‘intellectual stalemate’. This stresses theneed for the INTERREG community to embrace new, alternative perspectives onthe issue of polycentricity, in the intent to foster cross-fertilization through mutuallearning processes.

Conclusion

In the introduction to this article, three types of hypothetical explanations to thesuccess of ‘polycentricity’ as a key policy concept in spatial development wereidentified. These were respectively linked to the discursive integration processes ofEuropean territorial planning, the communication strategies of involvedstakeholders and the institutional frameworks for policy formulation andimplementation. The observation of the uses made of polycentricity by the


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INTERREG community of practice does not allow us to confirm these hypothesesunequivocally. It however demonstrates that the main explanation for the apparentsuccess of the polycentricity concept is of organizational and communicativenature, through a constant ‘reinvention’ of the concept. This does not necessarilyimply that the involved stakeholders do not have any utilitarian ambitions withtransnational cooperation, and do not seek to develop the concepts and tools whichwould have the greatest potential positive impact on the territory in question. Theoverall explanations of why polycentricity has had such a ‘terrific career’ (Bohme,2002, p. 36) in European spatial planning is however to be found in the dynamicsof interactions between stakeholders, rather than in the relations between planningcommunities and their respective territories. INTERREG communities havetherefore widely considered that the mutual exchanges of experiences, cooperationand integration were constitutive of polycentricity; while concrete description ofthe urban networks in the concerned regions were of secondary importance.When constructing a knowledge base on polycentricity, the focus of ESPON

has on the other hand been on territorial structures and on quantitative andcartographic analyses. This analytical perspective was directly inspired by theESDP, thereby illustrating the ambition of the ESPON programme to applypolycentricity as if it were a predefined model for territorial development. Theoutputs however show that strategies that are entirely based on territorialstructures, such as the geographical distribution of major urban hubs and thepotential for integration between existing, neighbouring labour markets, will tendto reproduce existing hierarchical structures rather than challenging them oridentifying genuine alternatives to their dominance. The INTERREG communityhas already in 2000 – 2006 started to give concrete substance to what polycentricdevelopment may mean regardless of existing territorial structures, but based oncooperation networks designed to address shared spatial development issues.The factors of change capable of improving the territorial balance are to be

found in the interplay between the actors, the organization of their cooperation andthe geographical patterns of networks. The changes in policy learning processesreflects the need to build spatial development policy communities beyond theircurrent form, here illustrated by the dualism between the emergent epistemiccommunity and community of practice. The challenge also involves the creation ofmethodologies better capable of assessing the potential effects of such factors onthe territorial structures of Europe. INTERREG communities should nonethelessto a larger extent take advantage of the extensive empirical knowledgeaccumulated by ESPON in order to identify the territorial challenges to beovercome and to build the most appropriate partnerships to address them. Therewere, however, few opportunities to bridge the gap between ESPON andINTERREG in this way, as ESPON results came too late in the 2000 – 2006programming period, when most INTERREG projects had already passed thestage of strategy design. Moreover, the INTERREG community was not, at first,identified by the ESPON as a prime target for the interpretation andcommunication of its results and findings, as they were deemed to be of greaterusage for European and national policy-makers.Inversely, the ESPON programme, which operated within the same program-

ming period, could not critically assess the output of INTERREG projects dealing


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with polycentricity. Bridging the gap between the different approaches ofpolycentricity would be a task for the follow-up programme, entitled ‘ESPON2013’, launched during 2007. The new programme document however does notindicate that more attention should be given to the ‘soft’ elements of change inEuropean spatial structures. There are on the contrary insistent demands forincreased efforts to produce ‘evidence’, which is understood as indisputablequantitative facts about the European territories that can be used as a basis forformulating the so-called ‘evidence-based policy’, in itself potentially reflecting anoveroptimistic and positivistic view of spatial development as something that canbe irrefutably statistically studied without the intrusion of values or politicalpreferences. As the owners of ESPON, and the purveyors of funding to theprogramme, the European Commission and the involved countries persistentlychoose to ignore the dynamics of decision-making communities at differentterritorial scales, and their importance for efficient policy design.This situation can seem paradoxical, at a time when planning theorists

unanimously identify a ‘post-positivist domination of planning theory’ (Allmen-dinger, 2002). The rationality behind the ESPON programme’s conspicuous focuson ‘evidence’,6 and corresponding lack of attention given to the positive dynamicsbrought about by polycentricity as a vector of cooperation and innovativeterritorial initiatives, is not obvious. At least a partial possible answer lies in theinstitutional organization and context of ESPON. While INTERREG projects haveinvolved elected representatives from all levels from the local to the regional andnational, political and scientific discussions in ESPON evolve under themanagement of senior officials from participating countries and representativesof the European Commission only. Political forums such as the Council of Europe,the Committee of the Regions or the Committee on regional development of theEuropean Parliament have not had the opportunity to provide the ESPON with amandate. The only political guidance are the principles of the ESDP. Furthermore,the position of the territorial dimension in European policy making is weak, ascompared with sectoral interests, national level bargaining and the predominantfocus on improved competitiveness. By way of consequence, involvedstakeholders defensively claim that ESPON produces technical and apoliticalevidence on the territorial trends in European and the territorial dimensions ofpolicy making. This pretence of value-neutrality implies a rejection of analyseswhose theoretical basis explicitly departs from a positivistic ontology.This can explain why polycentricity as a notion with variable interpretations,

relative to each spatial planning community, is difficult to integrate in ESPON.From a policy efficiency perspective, it does however appear necessary to positionthe scientific knowledge of the European territory in relation to the diverseunderstandings of polycentricity developed in various policy contexts, asillustrated by the different INTERREG communities as well as by other initiativessuch as the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (e.g. Conference ofPeripheral Maritime Regions – CPMR, 2002) and the Vision and StrategiesAround the Baltic Sea (VASAB, 1994). Only such an approach would allowESPON to avoid the dead-end in which it is currently engaged, trying to extractsolutions from the observation of current territorial imbalances. Improvedinteraction between ESPON and the INTERREG communities would facilitate


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such a change of perspective, and make genuine mutual learning possible. It wouldalso allow the INTERREG communities to access results that could, potentially,improve their capacity to develop efficient policies within their territories.

Notes1. Strictly speaking, ESPON is part-financed by the European Union within the INTERREG III programme.

ESPON is however different from other INTERREG initiatives in terms of scope, organization andperspective. Therefore, ESPON and INTERREG will be referred to as two distinct programmes in this article.

2. The regime of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was the original case studied in thiscontext (Haas, 1992; Zito, 2001).

3. The article of Zonneveld and Stead (this issue 2007) follows a similar approach when discussing the inclusionof notion of urban – rural partnerships in both ESPON and INTERREG programmes.

4. EU member states, Bulgaria, Romania, Norway and Switzerland.5. Survey conducted as part of the ESPON 2.2.1. project on the ‘Territorial Effects of the Structural Funds’ in

spring 2006. A questionnaire was sent electronically to the approximately 800 INTERREG IIIB Lead Partners.The returned number of questionnaire was of 147.

6. For further readings, the reader may find in the special issue of the disP journal (2006, 165(2)), edited byAndreas Faludi and Bas Waterhout, a fairly pertinent state-of-the-art account of the emergence of evidence-based planning in the context of European spatial planning.

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Polycentricity in Transnational Planning Initiatives: ESDP Applied or ESDP Reinvented?

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