Toward a Network of Regions: The United States of Europe

Starting from the changing role of governments in planning (physical, environmental, economie etc), this paper calls attention to the drastic structural changes taking place in the regional scène after the transition towards market orientation and global competitiveness. The main focus is on European developments. In addition to economie forces, two phenomena will be highlighted, viz. the transition towards a network economy and the profound technological changes taking place at the regional and urban level. Particular attention will be devoted to European spatial dynamics in a networked society. Various new geographical configurations and maps of Europe will be shown, foliowed by some exploratory remarks on future trends. The paper will conclude with some policy conclusions. 1. The Changing Nature of Regional Planning It does not need much argumentation that the role and substance of urban and regional planning have increasingly come under severe pressure. The indigenous features of planning as a discipline with a distinct normative character are rapidly changing, mainly as a response to profound changes in the context and environment of planning in many countries of our world. This is clearly witnessed by the following quotation (see Bolan 1991, p.7): "Planning today f aces a challenging new puzzle. On the one hand, the experiments of Communist central planning have failed. The bloc of Central and Eastern European countries are rejecting central command planning and seeking to decentralize governance and move to free market economies. On the surface at least, there appears to be a distinctive failure of collective planning. On the other hand, the past two decades have seen Japan, other Pacific rim nations, and Western Europe become major industrial states with the help ofstrong public and private planning mechanisms". It is noteworthy that the massive changes taking place in East Europe nowadays provoke major revisions for the scope and range of planning at all levels, ranging from local to supra-national. An important role in the discussion on role changes in planning was played by Fukuyama (1989, 1992). From his 1989 article 'The End of History? ' we quote the following concluding statements (p.18): 'The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historica! significance. For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, the f act that there is not a single large state in 'vhich it is a going concern undermines completely its pretensions to being in the vanguard of human history. And the death of this ideology means the growing "Common Marketization" of international relations, and the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states. The end of history will be a very sad time. The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one's lifefor a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that calledforth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economie calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands. In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history". The above citations illustrate a clear message: we are moving towards a new planning culture and style. in which even the question is raised whether there is a case for planning at all. The increased market orientation of almost all countries questions the position of the public sector in almost all countries: deregulation, decentralisation and privatisation have become the key words in a new planning orientation which can be summarized by the generic term devolution (see also Van Gent and Nijkamp 1991). The devolution process which implies a delegation of social and economie responsibilities to lower-order public institutions or to private (or semi-private) market parties serves of course economie objectives, such as reduction of public budget deficits, increase of competitiveness of regions or cities, or more flexibility at the local level. Economie restructuring accompanied by technological progress has become a focal point of policy attention (both private and public) in many countries. However, the drastic socio-economic and socio-political changes which have flooded many countries in the past years have provoked many debates on the geographical political mapping of such changes. Especially in Europe we observe a trend toward a 'Europe of the