Cross-Border Cooperation in Spatial Planning

Abstract

Borderlands have been neglected and suffered from the lack of attention and efforts of regional development due to specific inherent characteristics. They are considered geographically and socio-economically disadvantaged territories as barriers between citizens, cultures, and languages. The flows of people and goods have emerged new opportunities for cooperation and development to fulfill the issues regarding margins of political interests. The cooperation among the European borderlands provides a way to jointly tackle challenges and issues as part of mutually-beneficial and common development. The opportunities delivered by cross-border dynamics necessitate the implementation of integrated regional strategies in the light of spatial planning. In this chapter, the authors aim to illustrate the outcomes of this cooperation in the context of socio-economic and environmental concerns. The first step includes the establishment of a joint information analysis framework for developing comprehension of territorial cohesion as the main European cross-border cooperation objective.