Skills, Conflict and Spatial Planning in Northern Ireland

The skills to manage sustainable and cohesive communities have placed a particular emphasis on collaborative and consensual methods of working. This paper suggests that in ethnically divided places, the notion of collaboration is largely conceptual and that more agonistic strategies provide a sounder basis for marginal communities to advance their claims and rights. Specifically, it draws on research conducted in Northern Ireland to suggest that situated approaches to territorial competition can place learning, the sharing of knowledge, and the transformation of conflict at the heart of the skills debate.

From the Land to Sea and Back Again? Using Terrestrial Planning to Understand the Process of Marine Spatial Planning

Over the last 5–10 years, marine spatial planning (MSP) has emerged as a new management regime for national and international waters and has already attracted a substantial body of multi-disciplinary research on its goals and policy processes. This paper argues that this literature has generally lacked deeper reflexive engagement with the emerging system of governance for our seas that has meant that many of MSP’s core concepts, assumptions and institutional arrangements have not been subject rigorous intellectual debate. In an attempt to initiate such an approach, this article explores the relationship between MSP and its land-based cousin, terrestrial spatial planning (TSP). While it is recognized that there are inherent limitations to a comparison of these two systems, it is argued that the tradition of social science debate over the purpose and processes of TSP can be used as a useful stimulus for a more rigorous reflection of such issues as they relate to MSP. The article therefore explores some of the parallels between MSP and TSP and then discusses some of the key intellectual traditions that have shaped TSP and the implications these may have for future marine planning practice. The article concludes with a number of potentially useful new avenues that may form the basis of a critical research agenda for MSP.

Marine Spatial Planning: A New Frontier? (Editorial to a special issue on Marine Spatial Planning)

Marine spatial planning is taking on greater international significance as a response to increased perceived threats to the marine environment and the need for more systematic maritime governance. It also expands the horizons of spatial planning and leads to calls for interdisciplinary research to support its development. This special issue brings together papers focusing on the need for a more active engagement of natural and social science perspectives in the formation of spatial strategies concerned with the future well-being of the seas and oceans.

Sexing up the city in the international beauty contest: the performative nature of spatial planning and the fictive spectacle of place branding

This paper responds to recent calls for more academic research and critical discussion on the relationship between spatial planning and city branding. Through the lens of Liverpool, the article analyses how key planning projects have delivered major transformations in the city's built environment and cultural landscape. More specifically, in concentrating on the performative nature of spatial planning it reveals the physical, symbolic and discursive re-imaging of Liverpool into a 'world class city'. Another aspect of the paper presents important socioeconomic datasets and offers a critical reading of the re-branding in showing how it presents an inaccurate representation of Liverpool. The evidence provided indicates that a more accurate label for Liverpool is a polarised and divided city, thereby questioning the fictive spectacle of city branding. Finally, the paper ends with some critical commentary on the role of spatial planning as an accessory to the sophistry of city branding.

A roadmap for marine spatial planning: A critical examination of the European Commission's guiding principles based on their application in the Clyde MSP Pilot Project

The European Commission has developed a set of common principles for marine spatial planning in the European Union. A critical examination of these principles in practice is undertaken through an evaluation of the Clyde Marine Spatial Planning Pilot Project. The principles are found to be lacking in specificity and somewhat inconsistent with the ecosystem based approach, which they advocate. Lessons for new marine spatial planning initiatives, relating particularly to stakeholder participation, governance, data requirements, objective setting, and skills and knowledge needs, are derived from the Clyde Pilot. © 2011.