grenzüberschreitende Kooperation

In border areas, there is a special need for cross-border coordination between the stakeholders of spatial development and spatial planning with regard to spatially relevant challenges and future oriented development processes. The process of creating and implementing cross-border spatial development concepts requires intensive communication and cooperation across borders. However, these can make an important contribution to a coordinated cross-border spatial development and thus bundle resources as well as efficiently direct them to coordinated measures and projects. In addition to this added value of cross-border cooperation, however, there are also numerous points of friction and obstacles, which are caused, among other things, by different planning traditions and cultures, administrative systems and responsibilities, or also concern a lack of knowledge about planning instruments in the cross-border context. In cross-border spatial planning and development practice, these obstacles and the existing spatial challenges can also be countered by sub-spatial or subject-specific cooperation institutionalized and organized at different spatial levels. In this thematic issue, strategies and concepts from cross-border spatial development are presented and highlighted, which deal with different topics of spatial development, reflect a spectrum of cross-border forms of cooperation and organization and discuss the added value.

Over the course of the 20th and 21st century, different forms of cross-border cooperation have emerged and developed within the so-called Greater Region. The France Strategy of the Saarland – announced in 2014 – adds upon these existing efforts, aiming in particular to foster functional multilingualism, and cross-border cooperation in the economic, research, and cultural sphere. In this endeavour, both public and private actors are to be included into the process(es) of implementation. The announcement of the Strategy was met with notable response from the French neighbouring territories. In this context, municipalities serve a double role – on the one hand, they act as a ‚mouthpiece‘ for local interests and needs ‚on the ground‘, on the other hand, they themselves engage in and support cross-border cooperation, and serve as intermediaries for regional guidelines. Based upon quantitative and qualitative research with a focus on the local level, the following policy paper presents central recommendations for action regarding the further direction and implementation of the France Strategy, and more generally cross-border cooperation within the cross-border region of the Saarland and the French département Moselle. The recommendations are divided into five areas, touching upon activities related to the fostering of multilingualism, the support and accompaniment of activities, the fostering of netweks, as well as the further institutionalization of cross-border cooperation within the (trinational) border region.

This Territorial Science Echo highlights essential facets of governance that may prove relevant for the future development of the Greater Region. In particular, it shows how thematic cooperation and conflicts contribute to the establishment of governance structures. The paper deals with the topics of governance in general, participation and housing as well as the external relations of the Greater Region, formulates essential challenges and recommendations, and is thus to be understood as a suggestion in the professional discourse for the further design of the spatial development concept of the Greater Region.

The paper presents a practice-sociological approach to the description and analysis of cross-border cooperation. For this purpose, the development of cooperation research, its characteristic orientations as well as the fundamentals of practical theoretical thinking will be outlined. Based on this, the heuristic figure of thought of cross-border practice formation is developed, which breaks with the premises of conventional cooperation research. It will be further differentiated on the basis of four challenges of cross-border cooperation, in order to arrive at an alternative perspective on cross-border cooperation. The following is an outlook, which deals with the research-specific features of the approach presented, with a view to a future practice-sociological and multidisciplinary cooperation research.