“Shaping of territories is embedded in political claims, agendas and identities” Claire Colomb on #StatelessChallenges

News / 31.5.16

Dr Claire Colomb, associate professor in Planning and Urban Sociology at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, delivered a lecture on “Shaping the Territory in Catalonia, Scotland and Flanders: Devolution, Spatial Planning and Territorial Politics in Contested European States” at the conference “Stateless Nations and Europe: New Challenges, New Opportunities”, which took place at the Faculty of History and Geography at the University of Santiago de Compostela on 19 April 2016.

Dr Colomb presented the preliminary findings of a research project comparing the trajectories of spatial planning in Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders over the past two decades, as well their potential mobilization in contemporary territorial politics and separatist discourses. Over the past three decades, several European states with a history of centralised governance, such as France, the UK, Spain and Belgium, have implemented various waves of constitutional and administrative reforms aimed at devolving powers and competences to their constituent regions or historic nationalities. This includes competences for spatial planning (urban and regional planning), which refers to the political, regulatory and financial capacity and activity of the state to influence the spatial distribution of activities in cooperation with other actors.

Dr Colomb showed how spatial planning has changed in these 3 regions/nations since they have gained a higher degree of devolution, and additionally, to what extent spatial planning policies and practices in the three regions have engaged with cross-border and transnational issues. She explained that decentralization processes in Europe seem to have generated significant change and reforms, arguably leading to a variety of ‘spatial plannings’. In Flanders since 1993, in the UK since 1999, and in Catalonia since 2003, new ‘cultures of planning’ have emerged, which differ from the practices and cultures of the wider state and/or of neighboring regions.

According to Dr Colomb, it is important to analyse the extent to which spatial planning and territorial development issues figure – explicitly or implicitly – in the current debates on devolution in the three regions. Planning – in a broad sense – has become embedded (to a lesser or greater extent) in the political claims, identity narratives and projects of political parties and regional governments advocating for more devolution or outright independence. A closer look at the recent media, as well as political and civic society discourses surrounding the Scottish, Catalan and Flemish questions reveal that arguments related to the ‘politics of territorial solidarity’, territorial justice, spatial redistribution and the financing and planning of large-scale infrastructure have gained strength, perhaps at the expense of more ‘culturalist’ and identity-based arguments. In this context, it is surprising that geographers and spatial planning researchers have not focused very much on pro-independence claims and their relationship to spatial planning and the territory, investigating how spatial planning is mobilized or shaped by political parties with a pro-independence agenda in discourses on difference or separation.