Publishing this Book of Blogs, coupled with some technical issues around the renewal of the website of Urbanism (https://www.spatialplanningtudelft.org/) has meant a hiatus in publishing my blogs. Not that there has not been enough to comment upon. The dramatic situation in, and of, Ukraine has drawn much of my attention. There would be plenty to say, of course. Indeed, plenty is being said, and for good reasons. Being myself, I have been trying to focus on where and how we see territorialism – and its twin populism – in action. Sometimes, this is more implicit than explicit, or course. Also, understanding the present, especially where Central and Eastern Europe is concerned, requires to also understand the past – which is where my amateurish concern for history comes in.
So, expect a barrage of blogs which have accumulated over the past months, most of them with a focus on Ukraine in its wider context.
Poland Again
If only I had seen this before: I mean the end, and not just – as when I wrote ‘Reading Poland’ – the beginning of Tymothy Snyder (2003). Note that, predating ‘Bloodlands’ (Snyder 2010) this book was written in a mood reflecting, albeit guarded optimism about Russia: Vladimir Putin had been on a visit to Warsaw in 2002 and, apparently, opposition to NATO enlargement including, amongst others, Poland was not yet the hot issue it has become. In fact, there were dreams, not only of Ukraine, but also Russia joining, if not NATO, then the EU in the 2040s.
Finishing the book has given answers to the puzzle of how, given the history of their past antagonism (which Snyder describes in its gory details) Poland has become the staunch supporter of Ukraine in her present predicament. He ascribes this to attitude changes, prepared by elements of the Polish diaspora during the vaining days of the Communist regime. I mean the move, if not to bury the past, then at least to renounce all claims to restoring Poland’s, and indeed anybody else‘s pre-war borders. Which also implied rejecting claims by ethnic Poles remaining outside to be reunified with their fatherland. Not only that, Poland would never again insist its (small) ethnic minorities – Ukrainians in particular – to leave the country. Such ethnic cleansing had been the practice immediately post-war.
Furthermore, within their settled borders, all neighbours should adhere to ‘European standards’, was the message. This with a view to them (and above all Poland herself) joining the EU. Which of course in 2005 she and, as the only one of the other East European states previously involved in practices which this settlement should bring to an end, also Lithuania did. The prospect for Belarus, let alone Russia doing so has of course disappeared. At the same time, as has come to our attention forcefully, Ukraine is pursuing the European dream with a vengeance.
What more does this say about Poland now? That, like apparently other former Soviet satellites, she is insisting on being left to live up to European standards as she understands them. So, the ethno-nationalist Dmowski has won, and Piłsudski’s dream of a multi-ethnic commonwealth – one that might double for a model of the EU – has dissipated.
Snyder, Th. (2003) The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belorus 1569-1999. Yale University Press, New Haven NJ.
Snyder, Th. (2010) Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, New York, NY.
The Peace of Riga
If only I had seen this before: At Lviv, Ukrainians and Poles fighting over Austrian Galicia – Western Ukraine – are buried alongside American aviators perished while fighting the Soviets after the end of World War One. ’Europe: A History’ (Davies 1996) has portrayed our continent as a peninsula of Euroasia. An earlier work of his, ‘Red Star – White Eagle’ (Davies 1972) gives more details. Historical parallels are treacherous ground to walk, but Ukraine remains in the ‘Shatterzone’ (Barton, Weitz 2013; see also the blog ‘Ukrainian Persistence’).
Recall that, for about a year before the end of World War One, Germany and its allies occupied vast stretches of Western Russia including Ukraine outside Galicia which was Austrian. War’s end left the area and its occupants in limbo with a Poland reborn and the newly formed Soviet Union slugging it out over possession of what are no parts of Ukraine and Belorus.
Having won in what used to be Austrian Galicia against a short-lived Western Ukrainian People’s Repubic, the Poles advanced to Kiev. Soon, the Soviets evicted the Poles again. They moved west in the hope of spreading the proletatian revolution. At the Battle of Warsaw, they lost. The 1921 Peace of Riga settled on a border beyond which the Soviets made no further forays. Defeating the remaining Whites, they rather built Socialism within their own country. Having reneged on the promis of world revolution, after Lenin passed away, its remaining advocates became the objects of show trials. This while Stalin rebuilt – and modernised! – Russia in its mutation as the Soviet Union. After winning in World War II he spread, not world revolution but Russian imperialism.
But remember: real empires do not rely on Iron Curtains; they create buffer zones. Releasing, on condition of her declaring neutrality Austria from their grip – thereby signalling that German reunification, too, was in the realm of the possible – Stalin’s successors may have seen this as a realistic prospect. But Germany remained in NATO. Give-and-take forty years later, she was joined there by ex-Soviet satellites, Poland included.
Now, NATO, too, treats its external border as hard, threatening to defend each square inch of the common territory. So, with Ukraine a member, there would be less of a buffer zone separating NATO from Russia and its ally Belarus. The ‘Shatterzone’ would only become more brittle.
References:
Bartor, O., Weitz, E.D. (Eds) (2013) Shatterzone of Empires, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana.
Dennis, N. (1996) Europe: A History, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dennis, N. (1972) White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20 and ‘The Miracle on the Vistula’, Vintage Books, London.
An Ukrainian Hero?
If only I had seen this before: A glowing review of Kochanski (2022; see: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n13) on World War II resistance movements mentions the Ukrayinska Povstanska Armiya (UPA: see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army). Without getting at the bottom of it all, this made me realise that there are layers of truth (or untruth) hidden behind the war in Ukraine. Perhaps the most amazing news: the UPA was set up to oppose the Poles! Recall that after the Great War former Austrian Galicia became part of Eastern Poland. This until in 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – Hitler and Stalin – split Poland between them. The former Polish overlords in present Ukraine and Belorussia were persecuted (Gross 1988). Ukrainian nationalists participated, but the Soviets suppressed them in turn. When Hitler made war on the UdSSR in 1941, they thus hoped for German support to form what would undoubtedly have been a vassal state. But Hitler had no time for this and the UPA went underground. They controlled large swathes of the countryside, fighting against – but when opportune arose also with – the Nazi occupiers. Yes, they did murder Jews, but there were also Jews in their ranks. And they continued cleansing the country from Poles. Portrayed on a Ukrainian postage stamp, whether one of the leaders, Roman Shukhevych, did take part is a matter of dispute.
With the Soviets back, the UPA focused on them, with nobody less than Nikita Khrushchev (himself from Ukraine) responsible for suppressing their resistance. This bloody affair ended in 1949.
So, is Putin correct that his ‘special military operation’ is to cleanse Ukraine of Nazis? No, he is fighting against Ukrainian nationalists who, in their struggle against foreign occupiers – in the first instance the Poles and only then Russians – have at occasions allied themselves with the enemies of their enemies.
So, we witness a belated struggle in Ukraine for the creation of nations and national identities. Which is why, given their past antagonism, the generosity of the Poles towards Ukrainians is nothing but astounding.
Gross, J.T. (1988) Revolution From Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussian, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Kochanski, K. (2022) Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939–1945. Penguin, London.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shukhevych_stamp_2007.jpg
Ukrainian historian on alleged Nazi sympathies
If only I had seen this before: Whoever wishes to form an opinion on Putin’s avowed aim of purging Ukraine from Nazis might read Riabchuk (2010) writing at a time when the European Parliament complained against then Ukrainian President Yuchchenko naming one Stephan Bandera posthumously a ‘National Hero of Ukraine.’ The allegation was Bandera having had Nazi sympathies. But his real role has been in Ukraine’s struggle between – Riabchuk’s terms – ‘aboriginals’ and ‘settlers’ and their ‘creole’ supporters.
So, before World War II, Bandera opposed, not Russian but Polish rule in Western Ukraine at the time. Perhaps this is the reason why Polish MEPs supported the resolution above. But the 1939 Ribbentrop – Molotov Pact gave what was then Eastern Poland to a USSR proceeding to murdering captured Polish officers. If not this, then at least chasing away their former Polish masters was popular with Ukrainians. But, in 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, taking over – amongst others – Ukraine. Which is when Bandera hoped to be able to have his state, obviously under the German tutelage. If so, as other client states, it might very well have become involved in the Holocaust, but this is speculation: The Germans wanted, not another vassal state but to colonise Europe’s bread basket. So, they packed Bandera away in a concentration camp. What remained of Bandera nationalists went underground, fighting the Germans and, upon their return, once again the Soviets.
Indeed, as in Poland and in Lithuania, until about the early 1950s, there seems to have been serious resistance against Soviet – Russian – rule. So, ‘Banderites’ became the synonym for any self-conscious, non-Russified and non-Sovietized Ukrainians, writes Riabchuk. Branding any resistance as Nazis – which, as with Monsignor Jozef Tiso in Slovakia and Ante Pavelić in Croatia, Banderites might have become, had the true Nazis accepted them as allies – is just shorthand for branding them as evil. Their eternal sin is not being Nazi but being against Russian dominance.
Riabchuk, A. (2019) ‘Bandera’s controversy and Ukraine’s future’, Academy of Science of Ukraine, Nr. 1. Available at: http://www.russkiivopros.com/ruskii_vopros.php?pag=one&id=315&kat=9&csl=46
Passportisation
If only I had seen this before: Passportisation means not only Ukrainians getting Russian passports. No, there are precedents of offering nationality to citizens of countries near and far. Think of Hungary where the governing party owes its super majority to voters abroad. Romania, too, offers passports to Moldavians and Poland has insisted on being given leeway to grant access to residents living within 50 km from the border. So, already beforethe present wave of refugees, a million and a half Ukrainians have lived there before February 2022.
Now, if Putin were to be satisfied with the south and east of Ukraine, would Poland, Hungary and Romania squabble over the leftovers? (Sadakat Kadri 2022). Hungary and Romania could invoke historical grievances and in Poland an, albeit small group of nationalists wants Western Ukraine, part of Poland until 1939, back.
Christoph Mick (2022) throws more light on Polish-Ukrainian relations. He spares, neither Ukrainian nationalists murdering ethnic Poles during German occupation, nor Polish nationalists returning the favour. At the same time, neither the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, nor the subsequent Polish Republic before partition were ethno-nationalist. That was for the 19th-century to even think about. And, even when Poland was reborn, some hoped for a federation – albeit under Polish leadership – with its neighbours. But in fact Poland was a colonial power until 1939. Stalin’s hate figure – the Polish landlord – rang true to Ukrainians.
Post-1990, Poles kept their distance from Ukrainians, but Mick ends on a positive notes: ‘Historically, people in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands spoke both languages and had mixed ancestry. Today, Poles and Ukrainians are discovering … how much they actually have in common. … More Poles now like than dislike Ukrainians…’. And this was before the issue with Russia has erupted!
Kadri, S. (2022) Passportisation, London Review of Books. 3 August. Available at:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/august/passportisation?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220803blog&utm_content=20220803blog+CID_dc3d5ac355cacfedc0624ee8c34eefb4&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=Read%20more
Mick, Ch. (2022) Ukraine and Poland: why the countries fell out in the past, and are now closely allied, TheCoversation, 15 June. Available at:
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-and-poland-why-the-countries-fell-out-in-the-past-and-are-now-closely-allied-184906
Balibar on Ukrainian War
If only I had seen this before: After meeting at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in 1992-93, I followed Balibar, but when doing the Postscript to Faludi and Rocco (Faludi 2022) I could not yet have seen ‘La guerre d’indépendance des Ukrainiens et les frontières du monde’ of 20 May 2022. Had I known it, I might have been more relaxed about my dual emphasis on (a) Ukraine being a piece on a much larger chessboard and (b) its being – as all states are – an artefact. But, if so, here comes the big news: Putin brings Ukraine closer than ever before to resembling the ideal type of a nation!
Now, if and when she gets closer to the EU, what will be her stance? I mooted in that Postscript that, like other member states having joined after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she will above all wish to preserve her national identity and look more to American geopolitical power than to the EU for support.
As far as the EU itself, don’t kid yourselves, Balibar says: it is already at war with Russia! It is only that, following the Brzesinski doctrine (mentioned also in my Postscript), the US takes the lead and the EU‘s station is to follow.
Beyond this, Balibar divines, even if the EU and the US were to form a more solid block in the framework of NATO, China simply does not seem interested in forming a similar blog with Russia. Which leads Balibar to posit that, on a planetary level, political spaces are more and more interconnected. Which is why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is anything but a local affair. ‘During an epoque of advanced globalisation, all territories, all peoples, all technologies are interdependent, and the interdependencies become manifest in the flows across frontiers of friends and foes alike.‘
For good measure, Balibar throws climate change into the equation, pointing out that, within weeks, Siberia will once again be burning. So, which type of international aid will have to be offered to Russia?
He ends by saying that the war will be long and gruesome and that, while the planet needs above all peace, pacifism is no option. He seems as exasperated as I am, saying: ’When, and how are we to return to this problem, be it by consolidating, or be it by crossing which borders and by nurturing which alliances with whom? I don’t know.’
Balibar, E. (2022) ’La guerre d’indépendance des Ukrainiens et les frontières du monde’, Available at: https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2022/05/20/la-guerre-dindependance-des-ukrainiens-et-les-frontieres-du-monde/
Faludi, A. (2022) Postscript, in: Faludi, A., Rocco, R. (Eds.) (2022) Faludi Blogging: Chasing Territorialism, TU
Open Publishing, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, ISBN/EAN: 978-94-6366-577-3; DOI: https://doi.org/10.34641/mg.41.
Blog 8
Étienne Balibar Taking a Stand
If only I had seen this before: According to Étienne Balibar (2022) we are in a hybrid, world-wide war short of a World War. In this, there is nothing but to support to Ukrainians retaining their independence. To a pacifist friend, he says that to leave the war alone is a no-no. We are in it simply because it takes place here and now. And we have a stake in this new phase of the European civil war lasting since 1914.
I focus here on Balibar situating the struggle in a borderland where frontiers have gone back and forth and where the population is hybrid. So, ‘…the history of Ukraine is one if changing identities, but also of demographic upheavals caused by colonisations, deportations and mass migrations.‘ It includes the Holodomor of Ukraine’s peasants and its share of – and involvement in – the Holocaust. After all, as Timothy Snyder (2018, 108) says: ’The rich black earth of Ukraine was at the center of the two major European neoimperial projects of the twentieth century, the Soviet and then the Nazi.’ All this sediments in the memory of today’s nation, not in the form of a unique identity but in bilingualism and biculturalism. So, the strong Ukrainian patriotism is not so much of an ethnic but of a civic nature.
Whatever: the order of the day is to support a people that has been invaded, tortured, massacred and whose homes and cultural objects are being destroyed. Ukraine has the right to defend itself. At the same time, do not forget the campaign for nuclear disarmament and against the militarisation of our societies and try and maintain a world order based on national independence on the one hand and the interdependence between peoples on the other.
I myself beg to differ from Balibar on one count: Ukraine as a borderland and its people as the hybrid it is being unique. We are all of mixed ancestry inhabiting lands that have changed ownership and changed shapes. On-going nation-building in Ukraine is simply a reminder of this. And there is no end-state. Civic patriotism is dynamic, also and in particular in the way it deals with interdependence.
Balibar, E. (2022) ‘Nous sommes dans la guerre’, AOC [Analyse – Opinion – Critique], Tuesday 5 July.
Snyder, T. (2018) The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Vintage Books, New York, N.Y.
In this 1919 caricature, Ukrainians are surrounded by a Bolshevik (to the north, man with hat and red star), a Russian White Army soldier (to the east, with Russian eagle flag and a short whip), and to the west a Polish soldier, a Hungarian (in pink uniform) and two Romanian soldiers.Wikimedia Commons
Blog 9
The Red Prince
If only I had seen this before: Born in what was still the Kingdom of Hungary, I grew up in the Republic of Austria. A Monarchist Party putting itself up for elections seemed out of synch, but I am not the only one to have softened on the Habsburgs. In an earlier work, Timothy Snyder of ‘Bloodlands’ fame (Snyder 2010) brings into focus its tolerance for diversity. See also ‘The Red Prince’ (Snyder 2008) about Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg leading Ukrainian soldiers against the Tzar in World War One. Endorsed by the Emperor, the idea was to create an Austrian Crown-land Ukraine. Which was not beyond the realm of the possible: Russia quit the war in 1917, leaving vast areas to Germany and its, by then junior partner, Austria-Hungary. They were setting up rival puppet administrations. Ultimately, though, World War One was lost in the West, so they withdrew.
After a short war – I have seen the graves of the soldiers from both sides at the Lviv cemetery – a freshly minted Western Ukrainian People’s Republic lost and Austrian Eastern Galicia became Eastern Poland. The capital Lemberg became Lwów. Not without a fight, with Wilhelm leading Cossacks resisting, the east was left to the mercy of Stalin. But the quest for Ukrainian independence continued, with Wilhelm occasionally meddling. The waters were murky, especially during and immediately after the Second World War. Which was when Wilhelm lived in a Vienna eventually occupied by the former World War Two-allies. He was abducted by the Soviets at a time when I was at elementary school and the city the scene of a subdued East-West conflict. He died of tbc in a prison cell after having been found guilty ‘…of aspiring to be king of Ukraine in 1918; of leading the Free Cossacks in 1921; and of serving British and French intelligence during and after the war.’ (Page 248) All of which was true.
Bizarre or not, having by now read a fair amount about the background to the fighting that has started on 24 February, 2022, I found this book extremely informative. As with ‘Bloodlands’, it exudes understanding and even more compassion, not only for the protagonist, but for the people affected generally. The book is a great help in understanding what the conflict is about.
Snyder, T. D. (2008) The Read Prince: The Secret Lives of a Habsburg Archduke, Basic Books, New York, N.Y.
Snyder, T.D. (2010) Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, New York, N.Y.
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Blog 10
Beck and Grande on Cosmopolitanism
If only I had seen this before: I am a bit cheeky here. I must have seen ’Das kosmopolitische Europa before because there are pages of notes in my files. Rediscovering them, I tried my hand on summarising them in English only to discovered Beck and Grande themselves having written on cosmopolitanism in English. There they claim that thinking of the EU as if it were destined to become like a state is wrong. I am against this myself, so I delved into my notes on them.
What has cosmopolitanism to do with this? The term conjures up – as it happens wrongly – a world government as if the land surface of the globe were one territory and as such home to one people. But Beck and Grande mean an altogether different form of governance. After all, European governance has ‘…reached a critical threshold and … the political energy reserves … have now been exhaused…‘ The reason is, indeed, Europe having been misconstrued as a (federal) state. Cosmopolitanism as against this is for dealing with otherness and for renunciating the insistence on one’s own interests as maxims. Another one is differential integration. No, the authors are not invoking the trope of a neo-medieval Europe as in the subtitle of my book (Faludi 2018). But they could have!
What is particularly interesting is that they see the gold standard for the production of democratic legitimacy, voting, as the greatest danger to true democracy. What majoritarian democracy does, after all, is creating structural minorities. Cosmopolitanism as against this looks for strategies for dealing with otherness. The authors discuss consensual methods of conflict resolution, vesting hope in citizens – and civil society generally – rallying behind this idea. They could not have known that the recent ‘Convention on the Future of Europe’ (https://futureu.europa.eu/?locale=en) would involve, not elected representatives, but a sample of European citizens. My guess is that it will be a flop because of the opposition from the governments of member states. They think like … states!
Beck, U., Grande, E. (2004) Das kosmopolitische Europa, Suhrkamp, Berlin.
Beck, U., Grande, E. (2007) ‘Cosmopolitanism: Europe’s way out of crisis’, European Journal of Social Theory, 10(1), 67-85.
Faludi, A. (2018) The Poverty of Territorialism: Towards a Neo-medieval Europe and European Planning, Edgar Elgar, Cheltenham.
Blog 11
Ukrainian Persistence
If only I had seen this before: Being the the title of a collection of essays appearing since 2014, the recent is by Bertrand de Franqueville and Adrian Nonjon (2022) is on Memoire et sentiment national en Ukraine. Whilst I am writing this, I also hear Deutschlandfunk on giving up territory at the expense of Ukraine in exchange of an secession of hostilities.
But Putin has underwritten Ukraine in its present borders. So, restoring them is the dominant narrative. At the same time, we are in what Bartrand and Weitz describe as the ‘shatter zone’ of empires where many a national movement has made claims to – and received various degrees of recognition of – its independence. Out of this maelstrom, the former Socialist Soviet Republic Ukraine has emerged as an independent state. It includes Western Ukraine with memories of an unsuccessful struggle against Polish domination followed by vain hopes of a revival as a Nazi ally followed by a bloody, but in the end also unsuccessful guerrilla against the Soviets. Eastern Ukraine experienced the Holodrome – the famine of Ukrainian peasants engineered by Stalin – followed by immigration from Russia. Franqueville and Nonion point out that, where modern Ukraine has pursued a campaign there of ‘Leninapad’ (destruction of Lenin statutes), the locals have responded with their own historic imagery of a proletarian paradise lost. So, we witness a struggle between alternative historic narratives, all to some degree constructed.
The paper discussed here quotes Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) but could equally well have quoted Thiesse (1999) on the widespread practice of inventing narratives to bolster, frequently conflicting claims to one and the same geographic area. Truly, it is the idea of nationhood within a clearly defined territory that we should problematise, but when the sky explodes with bombs and rockets this is not a very practicable strategy.
Bartor, O., Weitz, E.D. (Eds) (2013) Shatter Zone of Empires, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana.
Franqueville, de, B, Nonjon, A. (2022) Memoire et sentiment national en Ukraine. Available at:
https://laviedesidees.fr/Memoire-et-sentiment-national-en-Ukraine.html.
Hobsbawm, E., Ranger, T. (1983) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Thiesse, A.-M. (1999) La creation des identiées nationales, Seuil, Paris.
Blog 12
The downsides of globalisation and how to deal with them
If only I had seen this before: In 2005, Leonard saw Europe eclipsing the US. In 2021 he factored China into the equation and exposed globalisation’s downsides. Critiquing territorialism (Faludi 2018, I myself had quoted Goodhart (2017) on the ‘anywheres’ reaping its benefits, but not the ‘somewheres’. When presenting that work, I shared a platform with Andrés Rodríguez-Pose speaking on Brexit as the revenge of ‘areas left behind’. (See Rodríguez-Pose 2018)
We do need to address the downsides of globalisation, Leonhard (2021) says now. This alongside with ways in which interconnetedness can be weaponised. There is for instance heightened awareness of our dependence on logistic networks. His advice may be misunderstood as cutting relations. The consequence would be more territorialism. However, his point is more subtle. Like with the advice to estranged couples, he argues for recognising their interdependences can add to enstrangement. But he continues saying that, rather than cutting, the way foreward is to manage interdependences. Drawing it all together, Leonard writes that the therapy for a connected world is to work on healthy boundaries, promote self-care and seek greater consent from the people.
Now, such boundaries need to be tailor-made. And, importantly, they need not be at the outer edge of a state’s territory. The fiction that this is so makes us think of territories as if they were like estates, each with an owner. Which is, of course, what sovereigns once have been: the owners of their realms. But replacing them with ‘the people’ meant committing the category error of thinking of the people in the singular. Clearly,this mould does not fit.
Faludi, A. (2018) The Poverty of Territorialism, Edgar Elgar, Cheltenham.
Goodhart. D. (2017) The Road to Somewhere, Hyrst & Co, London.
Leonard, M. (2021) The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict, Bantam Press, London.
Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2018) ’The revenge of the places that don’t matter (and what to do about it’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(1), 189–209.
Blog 13
Advice from ESPON
If only I had seen this before: Dealing with cross-border cooperation, a new Policy Brief (ESPON, no year) shows how to handle spatial planning in an, apparently disorderly ’neo-medieval‘ Europe where borders of all kinds criss-cross.
In Faludi (2018), I have what I call territorialism – with side-glances only at how planners figure space – in the cross-hairs. I have come to identify various meta-spatial planning theories (Faludi 2021a,b) since. So I distinguish between: space as a territory, a place, or a functional area. Territories are – more or less – fixed. Places are defined ad-hoc, depending on some action group attaching meaning to them. Functional areas are determined by supply and demand of services. No one form of planning – not even statutory planning invoking the powers of the state – can claim priority. See here the issue: Can/must one compromise on sovereign rule?
This becomes particularly evident where places – a beloved nature area, a common heritage site – and/or functional areas, river catchment areas, labour markets – criss-cross state borders, thereby making planning difficult. Here, the EU comes in with its Interreg programme. It is up against member state reluctance to give up controlling their borders.
ESPON offers a guide to map out situations case-by-case. With Geneva, Luxembourg and Lithuania the cases, the report shows how to identify conflicts and the relevant actors. This is a handbook for exploring whatever common ground for action there is. It recommends a ‘mapshot’ and an ‘institutional map’ showing the mutual relations between the actors concerned.
Surely, such situations are by no means unique to cross-border areas. Borders are criss-crossing the surface of the globe, stretching their tentacles out also to maritime space. (See my keynote at the MUD conference on spatial planning and development on land and at sea at Breda University of Applied Science on June 2, 2022: www.buas.nl/mud) So, cross-border areas are not the only ones where cooperation is the order of the day. Which is why this set of tools – and the cooperative spirit which they presume – are of more general applicability. They come in handy where, as ever so often in planning, there are many actors with overlapping areas of concern involved.
ESPON (no year) (https://www.espon.eu/topics-policy/publications/policy-brief-soft-cooperation-building-block-territorial-cohesion
Faludi, A. (2018) The Poverty of Territorialism: Towards a Neo-Medieval Europe and European Spatial Planning, Edgar Elgar, Cheltenham.
Faludi, A. (2021a) ’Populism and spatial planning meta-theory’, disP – The Planning Review, 57(4), 68–76.
Faludi A, (2021b) ‘The tension between object and process: Three spatial planning meta-theories’, The Evolving Scholar | IFoU 14th Edition, DOI: 10.24404/614079cda34ddd0008a1212d.