Shaping the territory in Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders

15 November 2013

Shaping the territory in Scotland, Catalonia and Flanders. Analysing contemporary debates on devolution and/or independence from a spatial planning and territorial cohesion lens.

Several member states of the European Union have, in recent months, been faced with a strengthening of claims for territorial independence, or for more devolution, from one of their constituent regional units with a strong regional/national identity. Scotland in the United Kingdom, Catalonia in Spain, and Flanders in Belgium are the most notable examples. Such claims are not new and have a long political history. What seems to be new is their intensification in a context of economic crisis of the nation-state and of the EU, leading particular regions to contest the current model of fiscal redistribution in place at the national level and demand that structural changes be implemented in order to gain the 'true' means to steer and finance their own development. A close look at the media and political discourses surrounding the Scottish, Catalan, and Flemish questions in recent months reveal that arguments related to the 'politics of territorial solidarity' (Béland and Lecours, 2008), to territorial justice, spatial redistribution and the financing and planning of large-scale infrastructural developments have gained strength, perhaps at the expense of more 'culturalist' and identity-based arguments.

This public seminar brings together geographers and spatial and regional planners - whose disciplines and practices are centered on notions of territorial justice, spatial redistribution, and infrastructural planning - in dialogue with political scientists, public policy and international relations experts specialized in the study of intra-state conflicts, devolution and federalism. The aim is to analyse the current debates on the devolution and potential independence of Scotland, Catalonia, and Flanders from a spatial planning, regional policy, and territorial cohesion perspective.
The following questions will be addressed:

• How has the 'spatial planning culture' of these three regions/nations changed since they gained a high degree of devolution? What differences have emerged in comparison with the planning culture of the wider state of which these regions/nations are a constituent unit?
• What competing visions and models of spatial justice, territorial solidarity, and territorial redistribution are at stake in the current discourses of pro-independence, federalist, and more centralist/unionist advocates in the three countries/regions? Which 'legitimate' scales of inter-territorial solidarity are advocated?
• How have spatial planning and territorial development issues gained ground as important arguments in the current political debates (e.g. rail infrastructure planning, energy planning)? How is spatial planning mobilized in the political agendas of various parties in those territories?
• What kind of spatial planning and regional policy implications would the future scenarios currently debated by politicians have for the regions/nations concerned?
• How do these current debates fit within the discourse on a 'Europe of the Region', the debates on the future of EU Cohesion Policy and on the notion of 'territorial cohesion'?

The seminar is organized by

• Dr. Claire Colomb (UCL Bartlett School of Planning), a spatial planner and urban sociologist working on urban and regional policies in Europe, European spatial planning, transboundary cooperation, and the transformation of spatial planning cultures in Europe.
• Dr. Kristin Bakke (UCL School of Public Policy), a political scientist working on intra-state conflicts, decentralization, and the dynamics of self-determination movements.
• Prof. John Tomaney (UCL Bartlett School of Planning), a geographer specializing in local and regional development, regional policy and devolution.

The seminar is funded by the UCL European Institute and the UCL Bartlett School of Planning. For further information, please contact Dr. Claire Colomb at the Bartlett School of Planning (c.colomb@ucl.ac.uk).

Provisional programme