Greening Europe? Environmental issues in spatial planning policies and instruments

摘要

Spatial development is evolving as a new, though informal, field of political action of the European Union (EU), conceptualised by a variety of framework documents and instruments. Whereas observing the implementation of environmental principles is firmly established in other political fields, the 'greening' of European spatial development policy is yet to be analysed. The European Spatial Developments Perspective (ESDP) and its application process as well as the 'Framework for Action on Sustainable Urban Development' are key elements of our research work, while the main focus of the study is the process of applying environmental principles. The outcome of the study shows that, at least nominally, environmental factors do play a major role in all of the spatial policy instruments investigated. However, they are not yet given sufficient emphasis, something which is also the case for the ESDP itself and that part of its implementation process related to the Community initiative, INTERREG.