Workshop - Cross-border spatial planning: Dialogue between research and practice
Beate Caesar (Technische Universität Kaiserslautern) spent a research secondment in the geography department of the University of Luxembourg between February and April 2019. The theme of her workshop held on 9 April 2019 at the Maison de la Grande Région in Esch-sur-Alzette (Luxembourg) was "Cross-border spatial planning: Dialogue between research and practice".
Under the direction of Beate Caesar and Estelle Evrard (University of Luxembourg), the possibilities and limits of territorial development in a cross-border context were discussed with practitioners, researchers, students and other stakeholders from public institutions. Among other things, the particularities of spatial planning culture in France, Luxembourg, Wallonia and Germany were subjected to an experimental assessment by means of a live survey – questions included, for example: to what extent do spatial planning tasks differ in the countries of the Greater Region? What influence do politics, private investors and spatial planning specialists have on the management of territorial development? This was followed by a lively debate on the relevance of spatial planning cultures to the practice of cross-border territorial development. It became clear that spatial planning is defined in very different ways in the countries of the Greater Region, complicating cross-border cooperation in this field. Legal and administrative differences were also a dominant theme. In spite of all the differences and all the challenges, the participants stressed the value and importance of cross-border cooperation in spatial planning in bringing the countries of the Greater Region closer together.
