Nordic echoes of European spatial planning : discursive integration in practice

Abstract

The emergence of European spatial planning is an example of European integration proceeding by means of networking and formulating policy discourses. Recent developments in the Nordic countries, i.e. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, are good examples for this. Changes in the national spatial planning systems and policies indicate that discursive European integration can be successful, the condition being that there are strong policy communities at European and national level and that there are direct links between them. In general, establishing new European policy fields is part of the process of European integration. In so doing, creating policy networks is an alternative to the establishment of formal European competencies. Often, policy networks formulate discourses, thereby promoting their ideas. Thus, successful network governance at European level leads to discursive European integration. This work analyses the success of the discursive approach, using spatial planning in the five Nordic countries, where spatial planning was a completely new concept, as an example.