What current discourses are relevant for border areas? What opportunities for and
obstacles to integrated territorial development arise from the specific situation of
border regions? How can these be utilised or overcome in a goal-oriented way? These
questions were central to the discussions of the Border Futures working group. Border
regions like the Greater Region1 or the Trinational Metropolitan Region of the Upper
Rhine extend far beyond the immediate border area. While institutional structures of
cooperation can be perpetuated through agreements and organisations, there is a lack
of instruments which cross-border cooperation structures can deploy in response to
changing situations. Cross-border cooperation faces new challenges from increasing
cross-border interactions, processes of economic structural transformation, new
energy policies in the national sub-spaces, and demographic change. Another factor is
increasing spatial polarisation, which influences the further development and future
viability of the affected border areas, and involves metropolisation issues in urban
centres and the provision of public services in rural districts. Building on discussions of
the Border Futures working group, this volume sheds light on cross-border cooperation
in practice with recent research relevant to planning in border regions in the European
context. The insights collected here are intended to be usable in the border areas within
the territory of the Regional Working Group and should also contribute towards the
broader specialist discourse on the further development of cross-border cooperation.
Issues of sustainable cross-border governance, new spatial functions and new planning
instruments play a role here, as do the possibilities provided by the current EU structural
policy programming period for border areas.
