Spatial planning systems in Europe: multiple trajectories

Planning systems are in a state of perpetual reform. There is a constant struggle over the form and operation of planning as interests vie to shape the distribution of costs and benefits of planning in their favour, and governments adapt instruments and policies to address new challenges and opportunities. Reforms have tended to widen the scope of plans, to introduce more flexibility and cross-boundary working and to engage with more stakeholders (Reimer et al., 2014; Nadin et al., 2021b). Underlying these changes are the effects of increasingly neo-liberal politics and the weakening of the welfare state, more influence of the market and less attention to public sector-led solutions in urban development and transformation (Waterhout et al., 2013; Olesen, 2014). The objective has been to simplify planning and reduce what is often described as the unnecessary burden of regulation on market actors. Nevertheless, planning is ‘an increasingly pervasive and indispensable activity’ (Phelps, 2021, p. 1), and there is increasing advocacy for planning as a key tool in achieving more sustainable and resilient development (OECD, 2017; D’hondt et al., 2020; WHO, 2020; Berisha et al., 2023). As always, there are opposing forces shaping the reform of spatial planning. From the turn of the century, there has been more turbulence in the conditions that influence the form of spatial planning in Europe. For the transition and small countries joining the EU since 2004 the changes are extraordinary (Maier, 2012; Stead & Nadin, 2011). Others have faced the brunt of the financial crisis of 2007–08 with forced austerity policies and liberalisation of regulation. The Ukraine war has accelerated the need for an energy transition in which planning can play a critical role (Asarpota & Nadin, 2020). The potential consequences of human-induced climate change have been brought home by extreme weather events, droughts and wildfires. The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced calls for planning to attend again to its roots in public health (Grant et al., 2022). And there is an undercurrent of global megatrends: demographic change through ageing and migration; increasing social polarisation and inequity; social and economic effects of rapid digitalisation degradation of biodiversity and critical environmental assets; a crisis in housing affordability; and above all, weaking democratic safeguards in government through populist politics brought about by gross unfairness between the winners and the losers. In this context of multiple crises, we should expect governments to be paying attention to how they can reform spatial planning so that it contributes to lowering socioeconomic and spatial inequalities and does not create them (Martin et al., 2022). This collection of papers offers a range of reflections on the reform of spatial planning systems in Europe drawing on the ESPON COMPASS project on Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning Systems in Europe (Nadin et al., 2018). The project was commissioned by ESPON, the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion. ESPON COMPASS had two main objectives; first to compare and explain changes in spatial planning systems in 32 European countries from 2000 to 2016; PLANNING PRACTICE & RESEARCH 2023, VOL. 38, NO. 5, 625–638 https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2023.2258568