Global crisis, spatial justice and the planning systems: a European comparison

Inadequate regulation of spatial development is at the origin of the current global crisis and increases, in years of crisis, the unequal distribution of global wealth. The importance of the related risks draws attention to the systems of spatial governance and planning, through which States regulate the spatial development. In Europe, the countries most affected by the crisis have spatial planning systems that are traditionally based on the preventive assignation of rights for land use and development through the plan. The systems of the States that are less affected by the crisis have established rather that new rights for land use and for spatial development are assigned only after the public control of development projects and their distributional effects. More generally, the fact that the former model is still widely prevalent in the world may help to explain the global scale and the duration of the crisis. Despite the evidence that some models can operate better than others, the improvement of spatial planning systems is however limited by their complex nature of “institutional technologies”. In such a context, planners are especially responsible for the increase of public awareness concerning the role of spatial governance in economic and social life.