Updating NorVision ~ Towards a New Spatial Agenda for the North Sea Region

McCue, J (2005) Updating NorVision ~ Towards a New Spatial Agenda for the North Sea Region. In: "Adaptive Management and Local Specificity in ICZM" - CoastNet conference, 22 Sep 2005, Edinburgh, scotland.

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Summary

The 7 countries around the North Sea (the North Sea Region: hereafter NSR) are working together in the INTERREG IIIB North Sea Programme to solve shared problems related to spatial development. Project partnerships get EU funds to work on problems such as protecting the environment, improving transport, encouraging innovation, developing more competitive cities and towns, creating new opportunities for rural areas and dealing with the risk of natural disasters. Working together allows partners to share knowledge, money and opportunities for improving the quality of life for everyone in the North Sea Region. The Programme strategy is founded on four basic principles; namely transnationality implying that local, regional and national actors in different countries should work together on solving joint problems, spatial development that is concerned with where development happens, cross-sectorality that implies the involvement of the relevant sectors at different levels (local, regional and national) and sustainability aiming at integrating economic, social and environmental concerns within a project. Between 1998 and 2001, a spatial vision for the North Sea Region was developed, based on the principles of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). NorVision, as it was called, is a key advisory document, which has strongly influenced territorial cooperation in the North Sea Region. It describes the existing state of spatial development and suggests directions for future. Projects that have been developed under INTERREG IIIB NSR put many of them into practice. In recent years, the NSR has witnessed the emergence of several urgent and important policy and business processes and phenomena with an impact on the spatial planning possibilities and outlook for this region. Examples are the expansion of the EU, the increased sensitivity for risks of maritime transport and the growing interest in Short Sea Shipping. In view of these policy and business developments the Programme Monitoring Committee of the NSR felt the desire to update the key advisory document NorVision. Moreover, reality has moved ahead as well and several projects have become implemented since NorVision came out, enabling an evaluation of the strategies and actions proposed by that document. Also regarding the planning and policy context of a spatial outlook for the NSR, additional points of reference and frameworks have emerged. Next to the European Spatial Development Perspective, as a main corner stone, one can point notably at the Lisbon/Gothenburg strategy, the EU White Paper on Transport Policy, the implementation of the Water Framework Directive, EU legislation on air and water quality, the revised guidelines for Trans-European Networks, the Green Paper on Ports and the European Maritime Strategy including concepts like the Motorways of the Sea as well as new spatial concepts of territorial cohesion and territorial co-operation (see e.g. the outcomes from the EU informal ministerial meeting on territorial cohesion in Rotterdam, 29th of November 2004). In addition, the NSR as an Interreg territory itself also underwent a change. Currently, it is larger than it was when the NorVision document was elaborated and it now includes Flanders. This also calls for an updated view on how to bring about spatial coordination throughout (and beyond) the region with a corresponding geographical scope.

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