European Urban and Regional Studies

The literature discusses how successful results in a participatory planning process can be achieved in localities with qualified social capital; that is, civil organizations and relationships built up within a community. Nevertheless, despite low-profile development figures and an inadequate number of civic associations (social capital),the Provincial Development Planning Process in Şanlıurfa (Turkey) was achieved by local stakeholders, who shared their views on the problems and potentials of the province and established a vision for the future. This study aims to examine the factors which lay behind the success of the participatory planning process in Şanlıurfa despite the lack of social capital.The leadership undertaken by powerful actors in the public sector can be said to have played the main role. The Provincial Development Planning Process was initiated and coordinated by the highest planning organization in the country, the State Planning Organization. In the case of Şanlıurfa, the planning process was coordinated jointly by a strong central-level public administration (South Eastern Anatolia Regional Development Administration) and the Şanlıurfa Governorship. This article claims that a participatory planning process can be realized in settlements with immature social capital, as in Şanlıurfa, if guided intensely by powerful institutions. However,this does not weaken the significance of social capital, as the participation of stakeholders in the planning process does not guarantee a successful implementation of the plan.The tradition of collective action (mature social capital) plays a crucial role in implementation. Moreover, for `bottom-up' processes (i.e. voluntary local development projects) social capital comes to the forefront as a significant factor.

This article analyses the history of the Euroregionalist idea of a so-called Mediterranean Arc. By tracing historical debates about the economic integration of neighbouring Catalan-speaking regions in the North-western Mediterranean, I explore how economic restructuring and cultural regionalism/ nationalism can be synthesized within the `New Regionalist' politics of the economic macroregion or Euroregion. Emerging European regions are at the centre of theoretical debates about state rescaling and new regionalism. Recent scholarship now points past structurally overdetermined interpretations of regionalization — focused exclusively on economic globalization, European integration, and state institutions — towards empirically rich, cultural-economic analyses exploring how economy and culture are dialectically co-constituted and articulated relationally. I offer such a case-study of the century-old Catalan national project of integrating Valencia with Catalunya as the core of a wider macroregion, now called the Euroregion of the Mediterranean Arc. Analysing writings by prominent Valencian Catalanists over a century reveals how the economic and cultural have long been dialectically synthesized and articulated relationally in a macroregion said to be economically competitive, Catalan-speaking, and linked more to the Mediterranean and Europe than Madrid.And it suggests neither Euroregionalism nor new regionalism is particularly new in places like Valencia and the Mediterranean Arc.

This article reveals that formal labour markets in the European Union are not always quite as pure, wholesome and legitimate as might be supposed. Until now, it has been commonly assumed that the formal economy is separate and discrete from the informal economy. To contribute to the emerging literature showing that this is not always the case and that the formal economy can be permeated by informal practices, a so far little discussed employment arrangement is here brought to the fore in which formal employers pay their formal employees two wages, one declared and the other an undeclared (`envelope') wage. Reporting a 2007 survey composed of 26,659 face-to-face interviews in the 27 EU member states, the finding is that some 5 percent of all formal employees receive such undeclared wages from their formal employers which amount on average to two-fifths of their wage packet. However, this employment practice is not evenly distributed across the EU. Such quasi-formal employment is markedly more prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where the undeclared wage is more likely to be paid for regular employment hours, while in Continental Europe and Nordic countries undeclared wages are less common and are received mostly for overtime or extra work conducted. Given the prevalence in the EU of this hybrid employment practice which is neither purely formal nor informal, the article concludes by calling for greater recognition of how formal and informal employment are sometimes intimately interlocked and entwined rather than separate and discrete spheres.

Faced with global pressures and intensifying competition, `growth coalitions' in European cities respond with the construction of iconic consumption landscapes. In many cases, such efforts are questionable because they abide by unimaginative, mainstream planning concepts, resulting in an erosion of the idiosyncratic qualities of urban landscapes. The serial reproduction of cityscapes also extends to tourism development strategies, which fail to meet the increasing demand expressed by travellers for genuine and creative experiences. However, the `knowledge city' is populated with new actors producing alternative images and brands.Among these, academic and student communities are emerging as significant agents of urban regeneration. This article discusses the potential role students play as generators of landscapes of creativity, which develop as appealing spaces for cultural consumers, including `new cultural tourists'.The fluid,glocal geography of student activity may well be the epicentre of change for destinations now basing their product on an unreflexive relation between gazers and place,towards a more sustainable engagement of visitors in creative production and consumption. However, this process presents substantial challenges for policy and may be short-lived. Illustrations are provided from the case of Venice, Italy, a paradigmatic mass tourism destination where student-related activities are breathing new life into a clichéd tourism product.

As the world's `first postmodern political form', Europe provides an excellent laboratory for exploring how border regions offer new spaces of/for governance, cultural interaction, and economic development. With the backdrop of dynamic transboundary regionalization in Europe, this article has two goals: the first is to provide a critical review of some recent literature on territorial restructuring whose spatial ambit curiously omits transboundary space. Second, the article follows in the tradition of recent literature on regionalism in geography by exploring competing visions of the scales which are appropriate for organizing particular political and economic activities, in order to call for more engagement with transboundary regionalism.A case-study from Saxony (Germany) shows that the functional utilitarianism — and resulting short half life — of some European transboundary regions is a factor inhibiting the emergence of coherent regions.This notwithstanding, evidence also suggests that cross-border cooperation is becoming a key tool as localities and other territories strive to become `global'. The tangled map of current regional initiatives within the European Union (EU) reflects the temporal emergence and disappearance of cross-border regions in response to changing political priorities and shifting macro-institutional funding sources. The article shows that transboundary regions play an important role in territorial restructuring in Central Europe, but not necessarily in the way EU regional policy intends.

Green spaces, such as parks, are an essential constituent of urban quality of life. It is noteworthy, however, that some cities have been more successful in implementing a green space policy than others. This article aims to assess the complex and heterogeneous supply of urban green spaces by means of a multidimensional evaluation approach, and to compare the `green performance' of European cities in terms of the present situation, priorities in decision making and planning, and their success level as evaluated by experts in the field. The article examines urban green spaces from the viewpoint of relevant indicators, in particular `quantity and availability of urban green spaces', `changes in green spaces', `planning of urban green spaces',`financing of urban green spaces' and `level of performance', on the basis of a comparison of 24 European cities. It deploys a proper type of multi-criteria analysis for mixed quantitative and qualitative information, coined Regime Analysis.A comparison of urban green spaces in European cities by means of this multi-criteria analysis brings to light the critical elements in green space availability and sets out choice directions based on priorities in decision making and policy evaluation.The results of this Regime Analysis show that when only the indicators on the availability of urban green spaces are used to assess the green performance with a view to a ranking of European cities, the Southern European cities are in the lead. However, when the planning performance indicators are also taken into consideration, the Northern European cities appear to have higher scores.