This working paper highlights the thematic field of “energy” and presents the challenges which occur in terms of territorial development for the Greater Region. It discusses the energy transition concept and focuses on energy systems and vectors, specifically the development of wind energy and the production of energy from biomass with regard to the development of fossil energy in Germany and France.
This working paper highlights the thematic field “mobility and transports” and presents the challenges which occur in terms of territorial development for the Greater Region. It specifically focuses on the territorial distribution of cross-border worker movements and on the reliance on cars within the Greater Region, as well as on the influence of European policies on the way challenges inherent to cross-border transport are addressed.
The working paper pertains to the thematic field “demography and migration” and highlights the challenges for territorial development in the Greater Region. Particular emphasis is placed on cross-border residential mobility at borders with the Grand Duchy, on population ageing and on the guarantee of general interest services in rural regions.
The thematic document highlights various aspects of cross-border spatial development based on the following central themes: spatial planning instruments, promotion of cross-border cooperation, health care, transport infrastructures and services, territorial integration through the combination of transport modes and creation of European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation. The contributions pertain to different cross-border spaces in Europe.
In this article, Soja covers the research fields of regional and urban studies, which increasingly tend to blend together. He makes a case for an approach consisting in considering these two research fields together, as empirical research also increasingly allows for the simultaneous observation of these categories which used to be considered separately. Soja highlights gaps and needs with regard to research; he reports eight important thematic fields for critical and comparative regional research: 1) new regionalism, 2) the regenerating power of towns and regions, 3) regional urbanisation, 4) the end of the metropolis, 5) broadened regional urbanisation, 6) multi-scalar regionalisation, 7) regional governance and planning and 8) regional democracy.
Oliver Kramsch and Chiara Brambilla, researchers in the field of borders, use Walter Mignolo’s epistemologic perspective to develop a new viewpoint on Euro-African border spaces in their article. The analysis of a report by the West African Borders and Integration (WABI) initiative reveals a new perspective on the EU, its border spaces and cross-border relations, which eclipses colonial reports and is used as a model by WABI. It contains new dynamics in the reciprocal historic construction of borders, which make it necessary to broaden Mignolo’s concept on exteriority and on the way to think borders over. The authors conclude that Eurocentrism and Occidentalism are not solely located in Western Europe, but are appropriated and interpreted specifically on a local level beyond European borders. Conversely, the way borders and exteriority are considered is not solely found outside the West. The authors have therefore drawn up their article as a method to think borders over, allowing for reclassification of Euro-African relations and border construction.
Chiara Brambilla considers globalised capitalism as a fundamentally geographical project, insofar as it is based on the relation between State, territory and capital, which are themselves closely connected to geographical concepts such as borders and landscapes. The resulting unevenly developed landscape constitutes the basis of modern capitalism. For Chiara Brambilla, it is necessary to offer new concepts for rather classical and static key geographical concepts such as “landscapes” and “borders” in order to produce an alternative (geo)political vision of capitalism. This is how she came up with the borderscape concept, which refers to the processual character of border landscapes, and uses it by drawing on Mezzadra and Neilson (2013) in order to produce a geographical opposition to capitalism.
Since the spatial turn, space has most often been conceived from a relational standpoint, and the border concept has been abandoned as it did not seem compatible with this relation-oriented perspective on space. However, borders still often play an important role for the empirical studies of spaces. Therefore, the authors conceptualise borders in a manner likely to be integrated to a relation-based spatial theory. They conceive the border itself as a link between at least two spaces which it brings together. While it is true that specific differentiations are significant to the construction of spaces, borders can bring a spatial dimension to this difference and create territorial spatial constitutions. The authors demonstrate this mechanism using the empirical example of border constructions on the Balkan route during the migration movements of 2015.
Development of the cross-border cooperation presented in the regional scheme of economic development of innovation and internationalisation (SRDEII) of the Grand Est region pursues ambitious goals that strengthen the specific geographic location of this region.
Even though the cross-border development seems to have been achieved, the goals pursued for economic development in the Grand Est region are facing great challenges: Stronger transparency of the programmes of cooperation, better mediation of local competences, reduction of the language barrier between the residents, etc.
This article analyses cross-border employment and secondment of employees within the greater region, SaarLorLux. It questions the practices that have developed from these forms of mobility within this cross-border space at the contact point of 4 European countries (France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium). It shows that these two forms of employment mobility demonstrate the right to mobility within Europe, which is one of the most important results of European integration. In order to support this, the author has performed various activities on site, e.g. in the scope of interviews with economic and social actors in the greater region.
