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Territorial Coordination or Territorial Governance?Marko Peterlin MSc aa Institute for Spatial Policies (IPoP) , Ljubljana , SloveniaPublished online: 02 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Marko Peterlin MSc (2010) Territorial Coordination or Territorial Governance?, disP - The Planning Review,46:183, 69-79, DOI: 10.1080/02513625.2010.10557113

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disP 183 · 4/2010 69

Marko Peterlin, MSc, is the Di-rector of the Institute for SpatialPolicies (IPoP) in Ljubljana,Slovenia. His experience includescooperation in a number ofEuropean territorial cooperationprojects and applied researchprojects in Slovenia. He alsopromotes participative planningapproaches and networkingamong NGOs dealing with spatialand urban development inSlovenia.

Territorial Coordination or TerritorialGovernance?The Case of the Alpine–Adriatic Area

Marko Peterlin

Abstract: This paper argues that in order toachieve better coordination in dealing with spa-tial development across borders, the current fo-cus on territorial governance and organizationalstructures in the Alpine–Adriatic area might notbe the right answer to the present situation.Currently, the focus in the area is shifting to theformal aspects of cooperation but, the paper ar-gues, territorial coordination should be pursuedinstead, focusing on functional aspects and in-formal processes of mutual learning and adap-tations of goals between the actors involved. Tosupport this position, the paper elaborates andemphasizes a distinction between territorial co-ordination and territorial governance, where co-ordination is seen as a product of decentralizedcontrol over resources, processes and activities,while governance refers to a deliberate tran-scending of governmental borders while retain-ing some degree of centralized control. The pa-per then reviews recent policy developments inrelation to the coordination of spatial develop-ment in Europe and presents a historic overviewof cooperation in the area, including recent de-velopments that point to growing tensions be-tween the regions each time the formal aspectsof cooperation come to the foreground. The pa-per also suggests that appropriate tools for terri-torial coordination are needed, including work-ing groups for tackling specific transnationaland cross-border planning problems and area-wide platforms for exchanging information andknowledge, which would allow the continuityand transparency needed for the constructionof collective knowledge in the area.

Introduction

Aligning spatial development in cross-borderareas is not an abstract planning problem.Quitethe contrary: millions of people in cross-borderareas in Europe are affected by lack of coor-dinated spatial development in their everydaylives. People cross national borders for work,leisure or shopping on a daily basis and com-muting across borders is increasing. As the ES-

PONMetroborder project has documented, theaverage annual growth of cross-border com-muting, for instance, in the cross-border func-tional urban area (FUA) of Geneva, reached9.0% between 2000 and 2006 (ESPON 2010).The Alpine–Adriatic area, which is the case

study for this paper, is no exception. New cross-border FUAs such as Gorizia–Nova Gorica,Trieste–Koper or Graz–Maribor seem to beappearing. Unfortunately, the extent of thephenomena is not known due to a lack of reli-able data about the actual flows across nationalborders. Paradoxically, as borders controlswere abandoned, opening the way to increasedcross-border commuting, the amount of use-ful data about it decreased, which is anotherconsequence of a lack of coordination in tack-ling spatial development issues across borders.What is known is that almost all cross-bor-der commuting is based on personal car travel,public transport systems being limited to na-tional borders because of a lack of coordinationacross borders, except for the very scarce in-ternational public transport. The lack of cross-border coordination in dealing with spatialdevelopment in this way becomes not only anuisance for individual commuters, but also anissue of sustainable development. It is causingboth direct and indirect costs, such as the ex-ternal costs of transport, which is much higherfor personal car travel than for public transport(Lep et al. 2004) and the costs related to urbansprawl, triggered by personal car travel. More-over, these costs are far from negligible as it isestimated that the external costs of transportalone are between 6–9% of the total GDP inSlovenia (Lep et al. 2004).This is part of the rationale behind the ef-

forts for a more coordinated spatial develop-ment in the Alpine–Adriatic area. This paper ar-gues that in order to achieve better coordinationin dealing with spatial development across bor-ders the current focus on territorial governanceand organizational structures in the Alpine–Adriatic area might not be the right answer forthe present situation because it is shifts atten-tion to the wrong questions. Territorial coordi-nation should be pursued instead, focusing on

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70 disP 183 · 4/2010 functional issues and informal processes of mu-tual learning and adaptations of goals betweenthe actors involved. To support this position, thepaper elaborates and emphasizes a distinctionbetween territorial coordination and territorialgovernance. Coordination is seen as a productof a decentralized control of resources, pro-cesses and activities.Whereas governance refersto a deliberate transcendence of the bordersof government, while retaining some degree ofcentralized control, as governmental structurescoordinate and give directions to collaborativepublic-private efforts. The paper then reviewsrecent policy development in relation to the co-ordination of spatial development in Europe,and makes a historic overview of the coopera-tion in the area, including its recent develop-ment as well.

Definition of the Alpine–Adriatic Area

Before proceeding, a clarification is needed onwhat is meant by theAlpine–Adriatic area in thispaper. Although the origins of the name dateback almost half a century (Valentin 2006), ithas never been a clearly defined concept. It re-fers to the area in the eastern part of the Alps,touching theMediterranean in the south and thePannonian Plain in the east, in which the Ger-manic, Romanic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric lan-guage groups and cultures meet. More formally,it has always at least encompassed the Italianregion of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the Austrian re-gion of Carinthia and the country of Slovenia,but it has often also included the Italian regionof Veneto, the Austrian region of Styria and the

western parts of Croatia. In addition, it has alsosometimes included the western parts of Hun-gary, the rest of Croatia, the Austrian regions ofSalzburg, Burgenland and Upper Austria, theItalian regions of Trentino–Alto Adige and Lom-bardy as well as Bavaria in Germany. For a longtime, the Alps–Adriatic Working Communitywas useful for the definition of its extent, de-spite the fact that the membership of theWork-ing Community has been changing since it wasformally established in 1978 (AAWC 2010). Thishas changed in the last decade for the reasonsthat will be discussed later in the paper.

The Concepts of Coordinationand Governance

Coordination in relation to government andthe delivery of public services is in fact closelyrelated to the concept of governance. As Pe-ters (1998) notes, coordination remains a cru-cial question for governance and continues tobe cited frequently as a major requirement forgood governance. Nevertheless, for the pur-poses of this paper, the difference between co-ordination and governance is elaborated andemphasized as follows.There are many ways in which the concept

of coordination is used, depending mostly onthe context in which it appears. In the politicalsciences, organizational sciences, policy analy-sis and planning, coordination typically refersto “the need to ensure that the various organi-zations, public and private, charged with de-livering public policy work together and donot produce either redundancy or gaps in ser-

Fig.1: Map of the Alps–AdriaticWorking Community in 2010.(Source: Marn, T. after AAWC2010)

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disP 183 · 4/2010 71vices” (Peters 1998). In this sense, coordina-tion is mostly concerned with government andthe public sector. Various approaches towardscoordination can be identified in this context,through hierarchy, the market or networks, fora few examples, each having its own strengthsand weaknesses.Coordination in this sense is also at the heart

of the process for the harmonization of spatialplanning systems in Europe, as stressed by Fab-bro andHaselsberger (2009). They see planningas a problem of coordination:• between the different functions on differentplanning levels• between strategic plans and local implemen-tation• between strategic integrative plans and sector-specific plansThey also stress that problems of coordina-

tion are even more complex in transnationalcontexts such as the Alpine–Adriatic area, inwhich typical coordination problems arisingwithin each single system merge with the diffi-culties arising from the interactions between thedifferent institutional and legislative systems.A similar position has also been expressed

in the report dealing with coordination betweenterritorial and urban development within theEU territorial cohesion policy context (Kreit-mayer McKenzie, Bogataj 2008). This specifickind of coordination (between territorial andurban development) is seen as a multi-layeredissue addressing policy and governance, as wellas the planning process and instruments forimplementation. In this view, an integrated ap-proach to development, including integratedspatial and urban development policies, shouldcomprise four kinds of coordination:• vertical coordination between different policy-making levels• horizontal coordination between differentpolicy areas• territorial coordination between different ar-eas and types of territories• coordination between stakeholders from pub-lic, private and non-governmental sectorsSimilar to the concept of coordination, the

concept of governance is also not always veryclear (Peters, Pierre 1998). In the ESPON Proj-ect 1.1.1 (ESPON 2005), the concept of gover-nance is explained in opposition to the con-cept of government, which is dominated by statepower organized through the formal and hierar-chical public sector agencies and bureaucraticprocedures. Governance, on the other hand, re-fers to the emergence of overlapping and com-plex relationships. In its descriptive sense, gov-

ernance directs attention to the proliferation ofagencies, interests, service delivery and regula-tory systems (Healey et al. 2002).Nevertheless, as Peters and Pierre (1998)

stress, when comparing governance to the con-cept of new public management, governance isconcerned with government’s capacity to act byforging strategic inter-organizational coalitionswith actors in the external environment. It isabout maintaining public-sector resources un-der some degree of political control.Governancerefers to something that deliberately transcendsthe borders of government and where govern-mental structures coordinate and give directionsto collaborative public-private efforts.Unlike governance, coordination can also be

considered in a more abstract sense, withoutthe relationship to government and the pub-lic sector. Coordination theory is a rather newresearch area developed to bring together dis-ciplines such as organizational science, man-agement science, economics, computer scienceand psychology into the study of coordinationin complex systems. In this theory, coordina-tion is defined as “the act of managing inter-dependencies between activities performed toachieve a goal” (Malone, Crowston 1990). Theword coordination is used to include terms suchas cooperation, collaboration and conflict, aslong as they involve managing interdependen-cies among activities.In an overview of the aspects of coordination

in relation to decision-making, Alexiou (2007),building on the ideas of Ackoff (1974), Rittel(1984), Woltjer (2000) and others, stresses theidea of the distribution of resources, tasks andresponsibilities as well as knowledge as a keyto understanding coordination in societal deci-sion-making. The point that there is no centralsource of complete information and knowledge,and hence no central control over the processor the outcome of decision-making is stressed.This further implies that collective agreementcannot be modeled in advance but should beconsidered to emerge through a continuousprocess of interaction, adaptation and learning.In this view, coordination is seen as a productof decentralized control over resources, pro-cesses and activities, and is explicitly linked witha constructive process of collective knowledge.Adaptation and learning are key mechanismsfor the construction of this knowledge. In rela-tion to planning, coordination can be identifiedwith a process of individual and collective goalidentification, pursuit and adaptation. As theseare directly linked with problem identificationand reformulation, the notion of a co-evolution

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of problem and solution is also strongly em-phasized.This understanding of coordination as a fully

decentralized process is in contrast to the notionof governance expressed above by Peters andPierre (1998), in which governmental structurescoordinate and give direction to collaborativepublic-private efforts, and in which informationand knowledge, and hence decision-making,are not decentralized. This distinction is usedfurther on in this paper to support the positionof making more efforts towards a more coordi-nated spatial development in the area, focusingon the functional aspects of territorial coopera-tion instead of the formal ones.

Territorial Governanceand Territorial Coordination

This distinction can be extended to the terri-torial aspect as well. In the view of Davoudi etal. (2008), the main definitions of territory thatallow us to deal with the issues highlighted inthe international debate on governance are theterritory as a “social and political construction”and the territory as “territorial capital” (a con-cept similar to “endogenous potential”). Fromthe point of view of the territory as a “social andpolitical construction”, territorial governance iswhat makes it possible for territories, at differ-ent levels (from the EU to the local level), to be-have and act as “collective actors”. Governancein this sense is the capacity of public and privateactors to build an organizational consensus in-volving different actors in order to define com-mon objectives and tasks, to agree on the con-tribution by each partner to attain the objectivespreviously defined, and to agree on a commonvision for the future of their territory (Davoudiet al., 2008). Territorial governance in this senseemphasizes organizational consensus, involving

early on a common organizational structure,common objectives and tasks and a common vi-sion for the future.In other viewpoints, coordination is seen as a

product of decentralized control over resources,processes and activities, and does not necessarilyinvolve any of the above-mentioned definitions.Agreement on common goals, for instance, isthe product of coordination, not a precondition.This paper uses the concept of “territorial coor-dination” that is based on the understanding ofcoordination as a product of decentralized con-trol over resources, processes and activities, andthe analogy to territorial governance. It adds aterritorial dimension to coordination, acknowl-edging the fact that actors involved in coordina-tion processes are territorially differentiated.

Territorial Coordinationin Recent EU Policy Documents

Coordination has become also a rather centralissue in spatial development in Europe and therelated policy debate.Although the term territo-rial coordination has recently been used by theEuropean Commission only in reference to co-ordination of territorial aspects of policies (EC2010), there has generally been a wide increaseof interest in the issue of coordination in EUpolicies dealing with territorial matters in thepast decade. This new interest is linked with theemergence of the concept of territorial cohesionand the related policy agenda set by the Minis-ters responsible for spatial development in Rot-terdam in 2004. One of the key messages thenwas the need for a coherent approach to the de-velopment of the EU territory, emphasizing thatterritorial cohesion“is both amulti-sector and amulti-level concept that can be implemented atregional/national, transnational and Europeanlevels” (Dutch EU Council Presidency, 2004).

Territorial governance Territorial coordination

Type of cooperation Formal Informal

Control over information,resources, processes

Centralized Decentralized

Agreement on commonobjectives and tasks

Precondition Possible result

Organizational structure Yes No

Tools Visions, inter-organizationalagreements

Working groups,area-wide platforms

Territorial coverage Defined in advance Only loosely defined

Tab.1: Summary of the maindifferences between the conceptsof territorial governance andterritorial coordination.

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disP 183 · 4/2010 73Of all the different aspects of coordinationmentioned, e.g., in the report dealing with co-ordination between territorial and urban devel-opment (Kreitmayer McKenzie, Bogataj 2008),coordination between different policy sectorshas been addressed most often and most ex-tensively. The need for taking account of theterritorial impact of various policy sectors hasalready been addressed at length in the Euro-pean Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP;EC 1999). The whole second chapter of PartA deals with the spatial impact of EC policies.Later on, the ESPON 2006 program took up theagenda, devoting the second of its five priori-ties to studies researching the impact of sectorpolicies on spatial development, using the term“territorial impact” instead of “spatial impact”used in the ESDP. ESPON 2006 also put a lotof emphasis on the development of methodsfor assessing the territorial impact of differentEU policies.The issue of coordination between different

policy areas was also briefly addressed in Para-graph no. 34 of the Territorial Agenda of the EU(German EU Council Presidency 2007a), whichrecommends that the ESPON 2013 program, inclose cooperation with the European Commis-sion, undertake a more in-depth analysis of theeffects of EU policies on territorial cohesion inorder to reveal cause-and-effect relationshipsand develop operational indicators. The FirstAction Program for the implementation of theTerritorial Agenda of the EU then took up theagenda, initiating an action devoted to the con-cept of a Territorial Impact Assessment (Portu-guese EU Council Presidency 2007a). This issueis now being developed in cooperation with theESPON 2013 program.Specific efforts at the EU level have also been

devoted to coordination between different pol-icy-making levels, more specifically, betweenterritorial and urban development policies. Ter-ritorial and urban development are often con-sidered“two sides of the same coin” (PortugueseEU Council Presidency 2007a) and the comple-mentarities between them are widely acknowl-edged. However, as these diverse policies arecarried out by different authorities at differentadministrative levels, they can interact with eachother, but do not always work in the same direc-tion. The need for integrating policies dealingwith territorial and urban development wasmostnotably emphasized in the conclusions of the In-formal Ministerial Meeting on Urban Develop-ment and Territorial Cohesion in Leipzig in May2007, where the Ministers expressed “their firmconviction that an integrated urban and spa-

tial planning and development policy is needed”(German EU Council Presidency 2007b).Later on, the issue of coordination between

policy-making levels was again taken up in theimplementation of the Territorial Agenda by theFirst Action Program, which initiated an actionon providing proposals for better coordinationof territorial and urban development in light ofboth documents: Action 1.1. In the conclusionsof the Informal Ministerial Meeting on Territo-rial Cohesion and Regional Policy in Ponta Del-gada, Azores, in November 2007, the Ministersresponsible for territorial cohesion again reaf-firmed the importance of cooperating with theministers responsible for urban development,with the aim to better integrate spatial and ur-ban development, to improve social, economic,cultural and environmental conditions in theEuropean Union and in the Member States(Portuguese EU Council Presidency 2007b).A similar message was also forwarded in Feb-

ruary 2008 by the European Parliament in itsresolution on the follow-up of the TerritorialAgenda and the Leipzig Charter. The resolutionexplicitly stresses the importance of improvingcoordination between the Territorial Agenda andthe Leipzig Charter and welcomes the initiativeto prepare and promote measures “seeking toenhance coordination between spatial and ur-ban development with a view to further inter-linking between the objectives of the TerritorialAgenda and the Leipzig Charter” (EP 2008a).The European Parliament’s Report on gover-nance and partnership at national and regionallevels and as a basis for projects in the sphere ofregional policy (EP 2008b) also emphasizes that“both better coordination of the relevant pub-lic policies, at all the administrative levels con-cerned, and effective governance are essential ifthe sustainable development of territories is tobe moved forward”.It has to be noted that all the above-men-

tioned documents do not use the concept of co-ordination in the same way.Most often, it is usedin a policy context, in which it appears to be partof the efforts for good governance in the sensedescribed by Peters and Pierre (1998), thus, be-ing concerned with coordination within the pub-lic sector and with the ambitions of governmen-tal structures to coordinate and give directionto collaborative public-private efforts. Stressingour distinction between territorial coordinationand territorial governance, these policy docu-ments add to the efforts for territorial gover-nance within the EU framework and only indi-rectly relate to territorial coordination as a fullydecentralized process.

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74 disP 183 · 4/2010 Territorial Coordinationin a Transnational Context

In the case of the Alpine–Adriatic area, thecomplexity of the transnational setting makesall the dimensions of coordination extremelyrelevant. If the focus is on the aspects of co-ordination, as dealt with in the report on ter-ritorial-urban coordination (Kreitmayer McK-enzie, Bogataj 2008), then the first issue is thevarious levels of policy-making. The compe-tences for spatial development are distributedfrom the level of municipalities to the nationaland, especially with the adoption of the LisbonTreaty, even the European level. Second, differ-ent policy areas, such as transport or environ-ment, have very strong consequences for spatialdevelopment throughout the Alpine–Adriaticarea. Third, not only is the area characterizedby different administrative and political units,there are also very diverse types of territories,such as mountain regions or coastal regions.And finally, there is a myriad of diverse stake-holders involved, influencing spatial develop-ment across the area.Taking diverse institutional frameworks and

“governance cultures” of the regions of the Al-pine–Adriatic area into account, any kind ofterritorial governance can only be thought ofas an open set of possible policy options. In thewords of Fabbro and Haselsberger (2009), thiswould be called a “soft harmonization strat-egy”. As most of the competences and the regu-latory instruments in the field of spatial plan-ning are at the national level, which often treatsany possible devolution of competence totransnational governance structures with greatsuspicion, this aspect should be taken into ac-count very seriously. This does not mean thatany kind of “harder harmonization strategy” isnot possible at all, but that “soft harmonizationstrategies”, which could work without the sup-port of the common organizational structure,agreement on common objectives and tasksor a common vision for the future, could be afirst step in the process, eventually paving theway for “hard harmonization strategies”. In theview of this author, this would mean pursuingterritorial coordination rather than territorialgovernance.The reasons for seriously considering this

strategy may be a bit clearer if the history of co-operation in the Alpine–Adriatic area is takeninto account. The following section describeshow trouble arises each time the formal aspects,such as common organizational structures, be-come the central issue of cooperation.

History of Cooperationin the Alpine–Adriatic Area

Territorial cooperation and the ambition for amore coordinated spatial development are notrecent issues in the Alpine–Adriatic area. Carin-thia, Slovenia and Friuli-Venezia Giulia startedto cooperate under the name Alps-Adriatic inthe 1960s. The first cultural contacts after thebitter experience of World War II were estab-lished in 1948. The cultural exchange becamestronger over the years, and soon sports fol-lowed culture. Only later did the economy andpolitics become interested in an Alps-Adriaticcooperation (Valentin 2006). In the mid-1960s,intense diplomatic contacts between the headsof the regional governments of Friuli-VeneziaGiulia in Italy, Carinthia in Austria and Slovenia,which was then still part of Yugoslavia, startedto develop. In 1965, this resulted in WorkingGroups for culture, science, transport, tourism,water management as well as spatial planningand landscape protection being set up. In 1967,Carinthia, Slovenia and Friuli-Venezia Giuliaalso decided upon an extensive program of cul-tural exchange. In 1969, when Croatia was alsoincluded in the cooperation, the initiative be-came known as the “Quadrigon”1.After theWorking Community of the Alpine

Regions was formed in 1972, mostly involvingthe regions in the western part of the Alps, thisserved as a trigger for the Austrian region ofStyria to take the initiative in the eastern part ofthe Alps, building on the well-developed coop-eration between the regions of the Quadrigon.What followed was a rivalry between Carinthiaand Styria for the lead role in the formalizationof the cooperation. This was only temporarilysettled when the Italian region of Veneto de-cided to take on the role of the coordinator ofthe initiative (Valentin 2006). After a series offormal meetings between 1975 and 1978, theWorking Community of the Eastern Alpine Re-gions, which soon became known as the Alps–Adriatic Working Community (AAWC), wasformally founded at the meeting in Venice inNovember of 1978. It has to be rememberedthat the quarrels between the regions in the areabegan when the question of the formalizationof cooperation (the question of “organizationalconsensus”) came to the forefront.It is interesting to note here that spatial plan-

ning soon became a central issue of the cross-border cooperation between Friuli-VeneziaGiulia, Carinthia and Slovenia (Peterlin, Kreit-mayer McKenzie 2007). After the inclusion ofCroatia in the cooperation and several years of

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disP 183 · 4/2010 75preliminary work, the Working Group on Spa-tial Planning presented the “First Common Re-port on Spatial Planning” of the four regions inMay 1975. Later on, when the AAWC was es-tablished in 1978, an initial result of the coop-eration was again the “First Common Report onSpatial Planning of the Alps-Adriatic WorkingCommunity”, which appeared in 1982 (AAWC2010). It was later followed by a number of lessambitious reports focusing on different themesof cooperation and trying to bridge the differ-ences in planning practices, procedures, meth-odologies, terminology, etc.Paradoxically, with the availability of EU

funding for cooperation activities within thearea, the importance of theAAWC slowly startedto fade. Soon after the first INTERREG initiativewas launched by the European Commission,speculation started that EU funding will sooneror later be tied to the Euroregions, meaning in-stitutionalized groups of regions within largertransnational cooperation areas. This was a trig-ger to revive the sleeping rivalries between theregions for the lead role in the area. During thefirst decade of the 21st century, several compet-ing ideas for the so-called Euroregions in thearea thus started to dominate the scene.

Recent Cooperationin the Alpine–Adriatic Area

Within a timeframe of only a few years, the VillaManin initiative and two INTERREG IIIB CAD-SES projects, CONSPACE and Matriosca, werestarted with the ambition to set the foundationsof the new Euroregion, each being lead by adifferent region. For various reasons, they allseemed to more or less ignore the fact that theAAWC even existed. The Villa Manin initiativewas lead by Friuli-Venezia Giulia, with a formerhead of the regional government Ricardo Illy asits key proponent. In October 2005, the headsof the regional governments of Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Carinthia, as well as Sloveniaand two Croatian counties, Istra and Primorsko-Goranska, signed a Declaration of Intent to es-tablish a Euroregion inVilla Manin a Passarianodi Codroipo in Friuli. This was later followed bya cooperation protocol, signed in January 2007but only by Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto andCarinthia, and by the establishment of a work-ing group that should prepare the formation ofthe European Grouping of Territorial Coopera-tion (EGTC) in June 2007, when the two Croa-tian counties also joined the protocol. Sloveniadecided not to join the initiative in 2007, prefer-

ring the wider cooperation that included Styriaand two Hungarian counties (Zanon 2007).Starting in 2003, the project CONSPACE2,

part of the INTERREG IIIB CADSES program,was carried out in parallel within an area that isreferred to as the “Future region”. The partici-pating regions here were the Austrian regionsof Carinthia and Styria, the Italian regions ofthe Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Slovenia,Croatia, and the South Transdanubian region inHungary (CONSPACE 2006). The project waslead by the region of Carinthia, which was bythen already serving as the Secretariat of theAAWC. Its focus was mainly on spatial develop-ment, having the ambition to become a macro-regional version of the ESDP (EC 1999), explic-itly mentioning the intention to implement iton a transnational level with a common trans-national development perspective (CONSPACE,2006) as the result. In the light of this ambition,it is even less reasonable to ignore the existingframework of the AAWC. Regardless of that, italso suffered from the same weaknesses thatwere observed by Zonneveld (2005) in referringto other transnational spatial visions in Europe,including the ESDP. Although it contains a pol-icy framework with an intended impact stretch-ing far beyond the domain of spatial planning,the document was basically written by spatialplanners acting alone.In 2005, the project MATRIOSCA3, with a

similar ambition, was also initiated within theINTERREG IIIB CADSES program, this timelead by the Austrian region of Styria. Its part-ners were regions of Carinthia and Burgenlandin Austria, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto inItaly, Slovenia, as well as five Hungarian coun-ties and two Croatian counties. Its main po-litical document, the Joint Strategy Document(JSD), not only diminishes the importance of the

Fig.2: Map of regions participatingin the CONSPACE project.(Source: CONSPACE 2006)

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AAWC4, it also aims to establish a new name forthe cooperation area, the Alpe-Adria-Pannonia(AAP)5, which overlaps in great part with theAAWC. In addition, it virtually ignores the exis-tence and the results of the CONSPACE project,although most of the partners were participantsin both projects.A look at the last decade shows how the em-

phasis of cooperation shifted from the func-tional aspects, which were the basis for coop-eration until mid-1970s and again during the1980s and early 1990s, towards formal aspects.The impression is that the efficiency of coordi-nation efforts diminished during the same pe-riod. It also shows how practical transnationalplanning problems are either getting nowhereor are making progress on the basis of uni-lateral decisions at the national level. At best,there is bilateral cooperation of the regions in-volved, causing lowered trust between the re-gions and even hidden tensions. These includetransport projects, such as the high-speed railconnection between Italy and Central and East-ern Europe as well as between Italy and theBalkans, coordination of development betweenadjacent northern Adriatic ports, or coordina-tion between airports in the area in order toimprove accessibility to global networks. Theyalso include projects in energy infrastructure,such as possible LNG terminals in the northernAdriatic area and possible gas pipelines fromRussia or the Middle East. As mentioned in theintroduction, commuting across borders is car-based as there is virtually no functional cross-border public transport in the area. In addition,adjacent urban centers, such as Gorizia–NovaGorica or Maribor–Graz, are missing variousopportunities for complementary development,etc. In such a context, the approach to coordina-

tion of spatial development in the areamay haveto be reconsidered.

Territorial Coordination rather thanTerritorial Governance

This paper has already argued that in orderto achieve better coordination in dealing withspatial development across borders in the Al-pine–Adriatic area, it may be sensible to pur-sue territorial coordination in the area withoutthe immediate drive for territorial governance.More precisely, what does this mean? Territo-rial governance as used in this paper, referringto Davoudi et al. (2008), emphasizes organi-zational consensus, involving a common orga-nizational structure early in the process, com-mon objectives and tasks, and a common visionfor the future. In contrast, territorial coordina-tion is seen as a product of decentralized con-trol over resources, processes and activities, anddoes not necessarily involve any of the above. Asmentioned before, agreement on common goalsis, in this case, the product of coordination andnot a precondition.As stressed by Alexiou (2007), such a view of

coordination is explicitly linked with a construc-tive process of collective knowledge. Adaptationand learning are key mechanisms for the con-struction of this knowledge. In relation to plan-ning, Alexiou also concluded that coordinationis directly linked with problem identificationand reformulation, and the notion of a co-evo-lution of both problem and solution is stronglyemphasized. In relation to the territorial as-pect of coordination as discussed in this paper,it is important that the construction of collec-tive knowledge is tied to a specific area.What is

Fig.3: Map of regions participatingin the MATRIOSCA project.(Source: MATRIOSCA 2010)

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disP 183 · 4/2010 77needed in the Alpine–Adriatic area is therefore:• A refocus on the common planning problemsand challenges. As mentioned before, there isan abundance of planning problems that needto be tackled.• The processes of adaptation and learning needto be facilitated, as they are the mechanisms forthe construction of collective knowledge. Com-mon area-wide platforms are needed for this.This means that functional aspects should

again come to the foreground in the Alpine–Adriatic area. These include not only the spe-cific transnational and cross-border planningproblems mentioned above, but also more ge-neric planning problems, such as cross-borderfunctional regions, management of cross-bor-der protected areas, development of efficientsustainable transport networks connecting theurban system in the area, energy infrastruc-tures, etc. Working groups and various kindsof partnerships are adequate tools for tacklingspecific planning problems in the area. In manycases, these already exist as a part of bilateralcooperation between regions. These may be-come the backbone for an improved coordina-tion of spatial development, but it is importantto note that they should have clear and ratherconcrete objectives, consistent with the com-petences and responsibilities of the stakehold-ers involved. If we follow the recommendationsfrom the report on territorial-urban coordina-tion (Kreitmayer McKenzie, Bogataj 2008), thedifferent roles of different stakeholders shouldbe recognized and the participation of key- –and weak – stakeholders should be specificallyencouraged. The precondition for the success-ful functioning of working groups and partner-ships is also a fully participative approach fromthe earliest stages onwards, securing, in particu-lar, wide ownership and public acceptance.This is also where the cooperation in the Al-

pine–Adriatic area has so far been very weak.Although cooperation within the AAWC hasbeen functioning through the Working Groupsfor decades, the participation in the WorkingGroups was mostly limited to higher-level offi-cials from public administrations of the partici-pating regions. Involvement of the wider publicand other interested stakeholders has alwaysbeen very low. This is why ownership of the out-come was rather narrow and the success of thecooperation was thus very sensitive to changingpolitical priorities, as has been seen before. Itis, therefore, very important that the specificplanning problems are widely discussed in allthe regions involved and that the informal andformal participative planning practices are fully

employed in relation to each specific planningproblem.At least as important as working groups and

partnerships for addressing common planningproblems are thus also adequate area-wide plat-forms for exchanging information and knowl-edge as well as sharing experiences. A link be-tween working groups and such platforms iscrucial here, as it allows for adaptation andlearning. The progress of each working groupcould be followed and publicly debated in theframework of such platforms. They could takea form of a Web portal or of a periodic forum,taking place every half a year, for instance. Theplatforms could be formed and managed by in-dependent public or private organizations andthere could be several of them. In any case,as these platforms are territorially based, theyshould cover the whole tentative Alpine–Adri-atic area as early as possible. These platforms fa-cilitate the exchange of information and knowl-edge as well as sharing experiences, but theyalso ensure transparency and continuity, so theycan also facilitate processes of learning andchange.Another important aspect of coordination is

financing. Coordination takes time and moneyand although EU funding is available for thesetypes of coordination activities, it should notrepresent a starting point for establishing anyof the tools for coordination. On the contrary,the will to contribute to the financing of theseactivities typically meansmuch stronger dedica-tion of the partners for their cause and is there-fore highly beneficial. This, of course, does notmean that any external funding opportunitieshave to be rejected if they arise, but they shouldbe handled with care.

Conclusions

At the first sight, the proposed approach fo-cusing on territorial coordination instead of onterritorial governance seems to propose a stepbackwards with regard to the current situation intheAlpine–Adriatic area,but wehave argued thatit is quite the contrary. Currently, there is a pecu-liar paradox present in the area: although therehave been various efforts for a new common or-ganizational structure (besides the existing oneof the AAWC!), an agreement on common tasksand a common vision (e.g., Matriosca and CON-SPACE INTERREG IIIB CADSES projects), theyseem to pass by one another almost without no-ticing each other. Furthermore, they seem to bealmost completely detached from the concrete

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78 disP 183 · 4/2010 transnational and cross-border planning prob-lems in the area. The reason for this may lie inthe fact that focusing on the form of coopera-tion, in particular, the organizational structure,seems to bring the rivalries between regions tothe foreground instead of common problems,challenges and possible complementarities. Ef-fective coordination, aimed at delivering pub-lic services without redundancy or gaps, as de-fined by Peters (1998), or, more abstractly, atmanaging interdependencies between activitiesperformed to achieve a goal (Malone, Crowston1990), is thus a step farther, not nearer.Instead, the paper argues that territorial co-

ordination should be pursued in the Alpine–Adriatic area by focusing on functional issuesand informal processes of mutual learning andadaptations of goals between the actors involved.In this view, coordination is seen as a product ofdecentralized control over resources, processesand activities, and does not typically involve or-ganizational consensus, common organizationalstructure, common objectives and tasks and acommon vision for the future. Agreement oncommon goals is, in this case, the product ofcoordination, not a precondition.For facilitating territorial coordination of

this kind, various working groups and differentkinds of partnerships for tackling specific plan-ning problems in the area are needed – in manycases these already exist as a part of bilateralcooperation between regions. At the same time,adequate area-wide platforms for exchanginginformation and knowledge as well as sharingexperiences are needed, linking the above-men-tioned working groups and facilitating learning.A fully participative approach should be pur-sued in the functioning of working groups fromthe earliest stages onwards, in particular, secur-ing wide ownership and public acceptance.

Notes

1 The term Quadrigon was officially abandoned in1983 (Valentin 2006).

2 Short for Common Strategy Network for SpatialDevelopment and Implementation (CONSPACE2006).

3 MATRIOSCA stands for Management Toolsand Relations for Interregional Organisation toStrengthen Cooperation in Adria-Alpe-Pannonia.

4 More precisely, it briefly notes that updating andstrengthening this existing structure was “oneof the options to be considered” within the MA-TRIOSCA project.

5 Sometimes AAP also refers to Adria-Alpe-Pan-nonia.

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