Reducing land take requires governance arrangements that enable municipalities to coordinate land-use decisions beyond administrative boundaries. While inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in land management is increasingly discussed as a key instrument for implementing No Net Land Take (NNLT) objectives, little is known about the governance conditions under which such cooperation emerges. This paper investigates how spatial characteristics, actor constellations, and institutional frameworks shape inter-municipal governance capacity in Germany. Drawing on the Institutional Collective Action framework, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) is applied to 64 municipal case studies. The results identify two distinct pathways towards inter-municipal governance capacity: a tension-focused configuration associated with densely populated municipalities and a development-focused configuration characterising municipalities outside city regions. Rather than identifying universally important drivers, the findings demonstrate that similar governance capacities emerge through different contextual configurations. The study advances configurational research on IMC and provides insights into the governance conditions under which municipalities may be better equipped to pursue NNLT objectives.
This article debates the implications of enlargement of the European Union (EU) in the Western Balkans. Drawing on literature on multi-level and territorial governance, the article argues that enlargement has the potential to strengthen a territorially cohesive and democratic Europe. Simultaneously, admitting new members risks importing conflicting values that contribute to a reassertion of national executive control, resulting in a “Europe of the Nations”. The debate is illustrated through the Budapest-Belgrade railway. The railway is a cross-border infrastructure project situated at the intersection of geopolitical struggles around connectivity, Chinese influence and EU enlargement. The analysis draws on 13 expert interviews conducted with actors in Hungary and Serbia between November 2024 and February 2025. The case demonstrates how infrastructure can physically connect territories while bypassing multi-level coordination and territorial development priorities. The article concludes that enlargement is most likely to support European cohesion when accompanied by transparent governance, civil-society involvement, cross-border cooperation and shared spatial visions that strengthen territorial and democratic accountability.
This study examines the transformation of Coronel, a Chilean industrial port city historically linked to coal mining, amidst the national energy transition and the phase-out of coal-based thermoelectric plants. Using GIS and satellite analyses, alongside a review of urban policy and historical context, the research traces Coronel’s development across three phases: pre-coal, during coal, and post-coal. The findings highlight the city’s evolution within complex socio-political and policy frameworks, showing how successive governance decisions generated wicked problems that contributed to its environmental degradation and subsequent classification as a ‘sacrifice zone’, framed within coal usage and its importation as bulk cargo, as Chile moves toward carbon neutrality. Coronel provides insights into addressing transformation scenarios of historic extractive sites, showcasing how extractive landscapes condition urban development. It reveals how social distress and political agendas shape energy transition dynamics and how the capitalist extractive processes of the past continue to influence current urban policies. Accordingly, the research proposes the term ‘Bulk Landscape’ to refer to industrial landscapes determined by the processes related to large-volume, dry raw materials.
Three decades after the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), discussions are once again emerging regarding the need for a shared spatial vision. Yet the political and societal context differs fundamentally from the optimism that surrounded the original ESDP in the 90s. Geopolitical tensions, climate change and broader polycrisis conditions have challenged long-term visioning and strengthened more reactive approaches to policymaking. Drawing inspiration from discussions at the World Planning Schools Congress 2026 roundtable on a new European spatial vision, this debate article asks whether planning can and should still be understood as a discipline of hope. It argues that hope should not be equated with naïve optimism but understood as a practical commitment to collective action under uncertainty. Revisiting the legacy of the ESDP and briefly discussing industrial transformation through the example of cross-border cooperation in the Kvarken region, the commentary contends that planning remains vital precisely because contemporary challenges are deeply spatial in nature. Rather than providing certainty, planning can help sustain collective agency, build shared territorial imaginaries and facilitate dialogue across sectors, scales and borders in uncertain times.
Since the beginning of a profound societal transformation in early 1990s, urban structures in Central and Eastern Europe have sheltered complex economic, social and cultural interactions, while changing themselves to accommodate new lifestyles and follow newly established planning rules. The manuscript links two key research challenges in Bulgarian cities of today – to identify the potential of open public space in the large housing estates inherited from Modernism to respond to residents’ changing needs and demands, and to enable efficient interaction in searching for a healthier urban environment. The authors discuss the process and outcomes of a pilot intervention in several housing estates in the capital city of Sofia within the frame of EU-funded URBiNAT project (Horizon 2020, 2018-2024). The co-creation of a Healthy Green Corridor, initiated by the project, was a chance to investigate diverse actors’ motivations, existing potential for jointly addressing existing needs, alongside estimated deficiencies in the public space of the study area. Success factors and obstacles to enhancing social capital are identified and conclusions are drawn about the role of European research collaboration in developing context-sensitive planning approaches to support resilience-driven development in Southeastern Europe.
