Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
between different European countries, continues to be a major concern in Euro-
pean spatial development initiatives. Differences in the organisation of planning
systems also become obvious here: whereas some countries such as Germany,
the Netherlands or Denmark regularly publish national spatial planning reports
based on sophisticated spatial information systems, other countries such as the
UK are much less well equipped for the task. Consequently, only issues for which
data were available for all fifteen member states could be represented, and this
resulted in a lowest common denominator approach for the synthesis at EU level.
Partly related to this is the problem of 'hybridisation' of functions assigned to the
cartographic outcomes. The scenarios were meant to depict spatial trends affect-
ing the territory in the year 2015. However, lack of experience with such an exer-
cise and lack of relevant data meant that in some instances merely an analysis of
the current situation was depicted.
Furthermore, the ESDP process overall was characterised by uncertainty
over the relationship between the work on this spatial strategy and EU regional
policy, and this was already apparent during the preparation of the trend scenarios.
In the 'red' trend scenario, for example, aspects of competitiveness and economic
development in the urban system were omitted 'because it was decided that first
the relationship between an economic typology and the eligibility criteria of the
Structural Funds' (BfLR, 1995a: 4, own translation) should be clarified.
THE SPANISH AND ITALIAN PRESIDENCIES (1995/1996)
The efforts under the Spanish and Italian presidencies concentrated on spatial
analysis and at developing a geo-referenced database, rather than progressing the
work on policy scenarios. This came partly in response to the concern expressed
by several member states, including the Netherlands and the UK, about the
qualitative nature of the French trend scenarios, which they considered not 'scient-
ific' enough. Similar to the French exercise, the Spanish and Italian presidencies
suggested an outline for each member state to describe the spatial structure in
their country. Even though the national contributions varied greatly, due to reasons
of different interpretations and lack of data, the Italian presidency digitised the indi-
vidual illustrations and produced a series of six GIS-based maps (cf. Figure 5.1).
The change in direction and the delays caused by undertaking similar exercises on
the collection of spatial information for the national territories have been interpreted
as an expression of the fears by Mediterranean countries, in particular Spain, that
the ESDP could be used to determine the allocations of Structural Funds in the
2000-2006 programming period (Rusca, 1998).
The Italian presidency's initiative to transfer the national contributions on to a
GIS meant that all the underlying problems (related to different definitions, non-
comparable data and information, etc.) were also transferred. Furthermore, the
