Across the Galicia-Northern Portugal border, recent efforts to advance cross-border spatial planning (CBSP) provide insight into its practical functioning and inherent limits. This paper examines two CBSP processes developed between 2023 and 2024 within the framework of the Rio Minho EGTC and the future Raia Seca Ger & ecirc;s/Xur & eacute;s EGTC, adopting a reflexive approach inspired by Action Research and grounded in the direct involvement of the authors in their design and implementation. The analysis focuses on how CBSP was developed, revised, and reoriented over time in these contexts. The findings show that CBSP operates primarily as an open and adaptive process in which participatory dynamics substantially reshape initial orientations, shifting the emphasis from economic and infrastructure priorities towards governance, environmental, and socio-cultural dimensions. At the same time, tensions emerge between institutionally predefined boundaries and territorially perceived spaces, while nation-state logics remain visible in service provision and in the interpretation of competences. Taken together, the cases suggest that CBSP is better understood as a governance practice oriented towards the construction of shared territorial visions than as a binding regulatory instrument.
Smaller cities are likely to follow different development trajectories than large cities. However, empirical research on their ability to generate new growth remains limited. This study investigates the renewal capacity of Finnish regional cities (between 5 000 and 50 000 inhabitants) to establish growth potentials. Evolutionary approaches of regional resilience and endogenous growth frame renewal capacity as an applicable framework of institutional arrangements and territorial capital to analyze adaptive transformation. This capacity is assessed through a set of indicators presenting economic, human and social capitals as well as targeted key-stakeholder interviews. The results of the indicator analysis identify distinct strengths that regional cities possess compared to other municipal groups (particularly large cities) including low outmigration, diversified local economic structures and strong commitment to the promotion of businesses and industry. Interviews highlighted networks within and between regional cities and neighbouring municipalities. Overall, regional cities emerge as urban units sufficiently compact to act with institutional agility yet sufficiently resourced to pursue endogenous development, offering an empirically grounded counterpoint to assumptions that developmental capacity scales monotonically with city size.
This paper examines the coexistence of population ageing and urbanization in 75 European cities. With a rising older population, urban areas are adapting to demographic shifts by developing 'Silver Cities' that support seniors through tailored policies and infrastructure. It analyses how various city characteristics - such as green spaces, cultural attractions, and pollution levels - influence residential satisfaction among both older and younger inhabitants, with seniors typically reporting higher satisfaction. The empirical analysis relies on data from the 2019 Perception Survey on the Quality of Life in European Cities, which includes 58,100 respondents across 83 cities, complemented by urban indicators. Using a multilevel model, perceptions across age groups are compared. Results reveal that elderly residents tend to favour southern cities, whereas younger residents are more satisfied with greener or capital cities. Cultural amenities are particularly relevant for older movers; however, these differences are modest, and most urban features shape satisfaction similarly across age groups. Rather than supporting a strict distinction between 'Silver' and 'Young' cities, the findings point to a more nuanced picture in which European cities can accommodate diverse age groups, while still facing context-specific challenges linked to demographic change.
The rise of populist political expression over recent decades has happened in parallel with ongoing debate about how planning should relate to civil society. To some extent both developments can be seen to grow from dissatisfaction with 'traditional', top-down modes of governance, which have continued to come under strain in the late-neoliberal, 'post-political' era. This article engages with how these trends relate to one another, through analysis of a populist newspaper produced in the UK, The Light, which is animated by conspiracist thinking and has been characterized as far-right. The complicated emergence and influence of The Light's grassroots-driven populism has interrelated implications for planning's theorization of and response to both political populism and the 'civic turn'. These implications are drawn out and discussed using the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, supplemented by Roberto Esposito's notion of institution. The paper concludes by exploring whether the upsurge in populism pushes planning to make its case anew and the ways in which an instituted planning as per Esposito might be more convincing in this regard than the communicative and agonistic paradigms that have dominated recent theoretical debate.
Urban fringe belts, heterogeneous zones accumulating at successive urban growth edges, are structurally susceptible to entrepreneurial urbanism. However, no analytical instrument has existed to measure the morphological cost of their alienation at the plot level. This paper introduces the Fringe-Belt Critical Assessment (FB-CA) framework, synthesizing Conzenian urban morphology with critical political economy to make that cost empirically visible. The framework operationalizes rent gap theory, Harvey's circuits of capital, and the spatial fix through three quantified domains of rupture: functional, physical, and historico-geographical. Applied to Mersin, Turkey, and in particular to the transformation of the & Ccedil;ukurova Cotton Factory into the Mertim Tower complex in Mersin, Turkey, and drawing on archival planning documents, cadastral records, and project drawings, the analysis reveals that alienation was institutionally engineered through four converging conditions: intra-group transfer between industrial and financial capital circuits within the same ownership group, state widening of the rent gap through legislation, absorption of opposition through procedural planning concessions, and architect-led iconic rebranding. The FB-CA framework reveals that the morphological cost of iconic rebranding under entrepreneurial urbanism is not merely theorizable but empirically measurable, structurally irreversible, and transferable as an analytical instrument wherever fringe-belt alienation is driven by equivalent conditions of capital convergence and state complicity.
Food systems planning plays a critical role in transforming food systems. Collaborative governance among diverse stakeholders is essential, with municipalities positioned as key actors due to their competencies in food-related domains. This study examines how Swedish municipalities engage in collaborative food systems planning and identifies factors that enable or constrain these efforts. Semi-structured interviews with officials from ten municipalities were analysed focusing on starting conditions, institutional design, and facilitative leadership. Findings reveal persistent barriers across three types of collaboration: within municipalities, with neighbouring municipal organizations, and with external actors. Internal collaboration often lacks cross-departmental coordination with few having a coordinating actor. The absence of local food strategies and a long-term planning perspective hinder internal collaboration. Inter-municipal collaboration occurs mainly through joint procurement, which builds networks, but is hampered by differences in ambition and resources. External collaboration tends to be short-term and driven by individual initiatives, and actors such as food sector organizations play a key role in broader collaboration. Overall, municipal collaboration remains fragmented. Key enablers include political will, resources and committed officials. Moreover, there was little evidence of a comprehensive food systems approach. Strengthening institutional structures, coordination, and cross-departmental collaboration is vital for resilient local food systems.
Over the past four decades, neoliberalism has reshaped labour markets and urban-regional planning. This study examines the urban and regional precariat - a growing class shaped by neoliberal policies and marked by precarious work. While planning studies have addressed urban injustices, little attention has been given to the precariat's interaction with space and its links to land use and satisfaction. To fill this gap, the study explores how the neoliberal city is segmented into precariat types, their use of urban and regional resources, and lifestyle integration across areas.The study examined Israel, where neoliberal reforms began in the 1980s, surveying 352 employees in central and northern regions and assessing their residential environments. Factor analysis identified four precarity types, while statistical analysis evaluated their relation to urban space use and alignment with local services and institutions.The findings reveal distinct precariat types and their varied interactions with land use in neoliberal urban space, emphasizing contrasts between economic cores and peripheral areas. The study challenges the notion of 'good urbanism', arguing that mixed land uses may reflect inequalities driven by neoliberal labour markets. It calls for urban strategies addressing precarious employment, improving service access, and ensuring affordable housing.
This article examines how planning interventions implemented in Galata after the 1950s transformed street-urban block relationships, using the spatially directive effects of the wall system as an analytical framework. While the study is conceptually informed by the historico-geographical approach, it does not present a conventional historical geography application nor a normative urban plan analysis. Instead, it adopts a cartography-based place-reading framework, conducting a comparative analysis of the 1944 Topographical and Archaeological Plan of Galata and the current 2024 digital plan. The primary analytical scale of the study is the street and urban block. The findings reveal that in the 1944 urban fabric, street-block relationships exhibited strong morphological continuity shaped by the persistent spatial influence of topography and the wall system. In contrast, transport-oriented planning decisions, road widenings and coastal rearrangements disrupted this relational structure, producing diverse morphogenetic patterns such as fragmentation, selective transformation and spatial resistance. Through the case of Galata, the study argues that urban transformation in historic port cities should be interpreted not through a singular narrative, but through spatially differentiated morphogenetic processes.
This article discusses innovative ways of governing cities in the interest of promoting the circular economy. We focus on identifying the role of resources, expertise and commitment of local construction businesses in the pursuit of urban circularity, institutional logics utilized in urban planning processes, stakeholder perspectives on innovative practices and the identification of leverage points in the innovative plot handover process in terms of the pursuit of the urban circular economy. Our empirical case is the Kissanmaa plot handover competition organized by the city of Tampere, Finland. We have identified the utilization of hierarchies, markets, networks and partnerships as a kind of successive elements in hybrid governance and their relation to leverage points, which provide added value for the promotion of urban circularity in land use and construction.
Cities and urban transportation in particular are increasingly viewed as key arenas for sustainability and climate action. However, 'sustainable' and 'carbon-neutral' measures often emphasize technological solutions, emissions reductions and economic growth, while often failing to confront the wider mobility crisis, and often exacerbating social injustices. In this article, we extend the emerging concept of "carbon-washing", applied to corporate advertisement, to the analysis of government strategies in urban climate and mobility planning. Through a case study of the electric Metro Mondego Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Coimbra, Portugal, we show how the municipal government and the public BRT corporation used sustainable mobility, urban greening and carbon emissions reduction discourses to conceal the project's significant environmental impacts on urban greenspaces, secure funding, and add new layers of legitimacy beyond the worn-out sustainability narrative. Our study thus suggests how sustainable mobility megaprojects can simultaneously advance climate narratives while reproducing car-centric urbanism, undemocratic planning, and socioecological harm. Furthermore, it documents how critical social movement voices can confront these projects and their impacts, generating alternative planning knowledge that exposes and contests carbon-washing practices and offer alternative strategies for more democratic, just and sustainable mobility interventions.
