How can European spatial planners assess Territorial Cohesion?
Edinburgh, Friday 21st May 2010 from 10:00 to 16:30
Comments from Patrick Salez, DG REGIO, European Commission
A) On spatial planning:
1. We need to remember that spatial planning at EU level, although everybody recognises that it contributes to various policy objectives, is still a taboo: not an EU competence, plays a very weak role in some Member States; and when sound spatial planning systems are in place, very diverse perceptions of its significance and role (differences in cultural value).
2. No definition of territorial cohesion is advantageous for its practitioners / believers but is quite an obstacle for non-believers (absence of definition used as a pretext for ignorance of its meaning).
3. As a dimension of territorial cohesion, connectivity gains in importance when compared to accessibility; see also "connexity" as developed in the ESPON EDORA project.
4. "define territory by functional relations": interesting but difficult to get a harmonised view because of:
- scale diversity (from macro-regions to TTWA/"territoires vécus");
- sectoral versus cross-cutting dimensions: functional territories are delineated by types of actions/thematics (e.g. public transport, flooding, etc) but policy responses should be comprehensive and integrated.
So a flexible approach at EU level is necessary.
5. Territorial cohesion is also about the necessary articulation between strategic spatial planning and land use/regulatory planning. This should be explored further since it is a major difficulty in some Member States.
B) On TIA:
1. Development of TIA: an old story also within the Commission: see in particular the internal report "Community policies and Spatial Planning" in 1998 and the White paper on Governance in 2001. The latter mentions the need to analyse territorial impact of policies such as transport, energy and environment in order to highlight the contradictions and conflicting effects of different policies.
2. The context: the perception, as for SEA and EIA is very often negative (EU obligation for doing it); of course, necessity of dialogue with stakeholders on the sense of TIA; an appropriate response is also to get a "proportional approach": the necessity and type of assessment should be related to the intensity of the anticipated impact.
3. Why hasn't it been before? The territorial dimension of IA, although it exists in several Member States, is absent at EU level. This is due to a clear weakness in policy coordination (which will be faced in the post-2013 period) and to the existence of powerful sectoral policies. The Lisbon Treaty and its Article 175, stipulating among others that EU policies should contribute to territorial cohesion, will be helpful to progress on this.
4. Beside the nature (binding or not) and the level (national, regional/local) of TIA, the programming scale/phase is very important: this is for example one of the differences between IA (policy and strategic initiative scale), SEA (programme scale) and EIA (project scale).
5. Findings and perspectives: we should now not only ask the question "how to assess?" but also the question "How to use the assessment?" in other terms, what methodological process to make a policy proposal more "territorially friendly"?