1st Edition
Regions and Regional Planning Experiences from France and Europe
This book addresses the making and transforming of regions and territorial organisation, which are significant activities for policy makers and planners. It focuses on the regional, intermediate scale and gathers contributions by researchers from various European universities, especially at a time when there is a renewed interest for regions, regionalisation and regional planning.
The different chapters in this edited volume deliver insightful theoretical approaches and documented empirical case studies. The recent reform that redrew and reorganized regions in France is of particular interest. Other contributions enrich the reflection about territorial reforms and changes by analysing situations in Italy, Poland, United Kingdom – notably the issue of planning city-regions or metropolitan areas. This volume provides a comparative view of the impact of territorial reforms on planning policies and explores the evolution of regional settings in Europe. It also confirms region as a fundamental scale and an essential instrument to organise and develop societies and territories.
The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal European Planning Studies.
Introduction: The bigger the better? The new ‘macro’ regions in France in the lens of territorial changes in Europe
Thomas Perrin
1. The road to ambiguity: the axiological construction of the regional tier in France
Arnaud Brennetot
2. The territorial big bang: which assessment about the territorial reform in France?
Sebastien Bourdin and André Torre
3. Conflicts, competition and cooperation between territorial self-government units after the administrative reform in 1999: Wielkopolska
Roman Matykowski and Barbara Konecka-Szydłowska
4. Merging regions in contemporary France: a policy perspective
Vincent Simoulin and Emmanuel Negrier
5. Exploring the creation of the metropolitan city-region government: the cases of England, France and Italy
Christophe Demazière
6. The making of the Bydgoszcz-Toruń partnership area as an example of a bipolar conflict
Magdalena Szmytkowska, Łukasz Kubiak, Przemysław Śleszyński and Ewa Korcelli-Olejniczak
7. The scale of the century? – the new city regionalism in England and some experiences from Liverpool
Olivier Sykes and Alexander Nurse
8. The ‘Alsace European Authority’: a new step in the ‘territorial differentiation’ in France
Olivier Vergne and Guy Baudelle
Biography
Thomas Perrin is Associate Professor in Regional Planning and Social Sciences at the School of Architecture of Montpellier (ENSAM), Research Centre TVES-Lille, France. His research and teaching deal with regions, regional planning and territorial cooperation on the one hand, and with cultural policies and cultural relations on the other hand. He has contributed to several international research projects and publications.
