Introduction: crisis and renewal of contemporary urban planning

Spatial planning and territorial governance in Southern Europe between economic crisis and austerity policies

“…Southern European spatial planning systems and territorial governance have been under pressure since the beginning of the global economic crisis and were blamed for their incapacity of preventingand their role in boostingreal estate and construction bubbles which, inter alia, caused or intensified the crisis in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece (Cotella et al 2016;Ponzini 2016). As a consequence, national governments have, in times of austerity pushed by European institutions, launched a set of reforms that changed Southern European spatial planning systems and territorial governance in depth, impacting over a field that had gone through significant processes of change since, at least, the 1990s.…”

“…However, even if there exists a rich literature on causes and effects of crisis and austerity in Southern Europe (see, among others, Hadjimichalis 2011; the special issue of City 18[4/5], 2014; Knieling and Othengrafen 2016; Janin Rivolin 2017), much less has been written about the impacts of austerity politics on spatial planning systems and territorial governance, with few exceptions about specific topics or geographic contexts (e.g. Ponzini, 2016;Tulumello 2016). To shed more light on the interrelations between crisis, austerity regimes, spatial planning systems and territorial governance, our contribution to this special issue revolves around two research questions.…”

Re-thinking non-core regions: planning strategies and practices beyond growth

“…However, there is an increasing strand of empirically based research claiming that a socially and spatially more even society would also produce more growth (OECD, 2014(OECD, , 2015Piketty, 2013), which adds an economic rationale to the primarily social argument for state intervention and regulation of market forces and to advocate approaches to regional policy that maintain the distributive goal. Nevertheless, problematizing particular forms and impacts of socio-spatial polarization and defining urban and regional development keeps being a social process (Pike, Rodríguez-Pose, & Tomaney, 2007) and depends on what is seen as normal, acceptable or achievable in a societal discourse.…”

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“…Tuna Tasan-Kok University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Corresponding author: m.t.tasankok@uva.nl "Critical constructivists avoid reductionism and the naïve realism that accompanies it" Joe L. Kincheloe (2005) One of the distinctive characteristics of urban planning as a discipline is its responsibility to educate practitioners who have to 'go out there and get things done'. The world of planning today is seen by scholarly literature as an exciting, but also a challenging, profession in reference to the political economic framework which is dominated by authoritarianism, neoliberalism, informality, crime, fragmentation, depoliticization, and populism (see Filion, 2011;Gunder, 2010;Kunzmann, 2016;Ponzini, 2016;Ruming, 2018;Tasan-Kok & Baeten, 2011;Thornley, 2018;Sager, 2009;Roy, 2015). Although the practitioner's role is prone to high levels of political and economic pressures in this 'dark' impression, recent studies have shown that there is a tendency among planning practitioners to push boundaries (Forester, 2013;Tasan-Kok et al, 2016;Tasan-Kok & Oranje, 2017) and even to become activists .…”