A Preliminary Critique of the Best and Good Practices Approach in European Spatial Planning and Policy-making

Abstract

Good practices" are found everywhere, particularly in European policies. They are usually taken for granted as familiar events in daily life. For actors involved in policy-making, it seems quite natural to produce, disseminate and use repertoires of good practices. This article discusses this phenomenon, arguing that "good practices" are one of the main tools in Europeanization processes, particularly for the European idea of "good governance". Analyses of the Interact, Interreg and Urbact programmes of production of good practice repertoires lead to an examination of a number of characteristics of "good practice": as a kind of regulation through sense-making processes, as a standardization tool in order to compare and measure performances in different situations, as an object of self-reflection and constitution of communities of practices, as a strategic representation and as an advocacy device. Good and Best Practices: An IntroductionThe practice of recognition, use and diffusion of "good practices" is extremely widespread and successful. Handbooks, catalogues, repertoires of good practices have been built for many domains, in both public and private sectors. No single policy field appears to have been untouched by the process: welfare policy, urban regeneration, spatial planning, local economic development, environmental policy, urban sustainability, community planning, regional planning, etc. Such practices are common at all government levels and spatial scales (see, e.g. the good practice policy of institutions such as the World Bank, UN-Habitat or the Global Environment Facility), and the European Union (EU) seems particularly interested in the production and use of "good practices" as a policy

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