Regional planning: an arena of interests, institutions and relations

This special issue approaches regional planning as a contested arena of strategic planning. With this view, we transcend the idea that is purely matter scale and approach complexity from three perspectives: interests, institutions relations. The perspective ‘interests’ reveals various underlying motivations connected to ‘institutions’ addresses encounter formal informal rules, norms discourses shaping governance practices. ‘relations’ uncovers complex constellations actors processes associated with planning, involving administrative scales, territorial entities sectoral policies.