Description
The shared border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland presents unique challenges and opportunities for integrated cross-border spatial planning, encompassing land use, infrastructure, and environmental management. Adopting a ‘soft’ approach and employing fuzzy boundaries, strategic spatial frameworks in both jurisdictions embraced principles of polycentricity, territorial governance and functional inter-dependencies aimed to achieve a better balance of social, economic and physical development across their respective jurisdictions, supported by more effective spatial planning. Shaped by the wider strategic EU ambition to create territories without internal frontiers amongst its member states, the publication of the Framework for Cooperation – Spatial Strategies of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in June 2013 paved the way for nurturing attempts to foster and further enhance appropriate cross-border/all-island spatial governance arrangements and relationships across planning and development cultures. It has been viewed as an expression of “spatial public diplomacy” that creates “an enabling environment for joint spatial planning (Peel and Lloyd, 2015, p.2224). However, the macro landscape is now different, following Brexit and a new national planning framework in Ireland. With this backdrop, the paper examines current cross-border spatial planning dynamics. Through policy analysis and interviews, the research debates the degree of alignment and divergence between the current spatial strategies of the island of Ireland and the extent of the impact the Framework for Co-operation has had on strategic spatial planning, policy coordination and cross-border working on the island of Ireland.| Period | 12 Sept 2025 |
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| Event title | UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference 2025: Looking forward: (re-)imagining planning futures. |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Belfast, United KingdomShow on map |