A tour of the European space economy: theorizing ‘What Happened?’

This editorial is intended to provide a brief overview of the evolution of a selection of European space economies and policies introduced to mitigate the devastating effects of at least five crises must have faced in the past decade or more. In a time of great fragility in economy, politics and society, concatenations of the five crises and more have challenged planners to come up with new solutions to long-standing urban and regional problems (otherwise ‘opportunities’). The five crises focused on here are: Green Transition; Great Financial Crisis; Euro Crisis; Migration and Refugee Asylum Crisis; COVID-19 Crisis. Occasional papers in the Special Issue that follows refer to other crisis effects such as; Ukraine resistance to its war against the Russian invasion and war; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of October 2023; Austerity policies and associated urban and regional disparities with inter-regional tensions; and the socio-economic effects of liberalization of Eastern Europe.