Governance – Power – Cooperation

The ESPON project “Metroborder” includes an investigation and the further development of the approach of a Cross-Border Polycentric Metropolitan Region (CBPMR) within the Greater Region and the Upper Rhine (Rhin Supérieur). The study refers to the “understanding of metropolises as nodes in a globalizing world” (p. 43). Aspects of the functional integration and governance structures in the case study regions are analyzed. Strategic options and specific approaches to the further development of CBPMRs are presented.

The Regionale Raumordnungsplan Region Trier (ROP) (regional spatial development plan for the region Trier) gives concrete form to the Landesentwicklungsprogramm Rheinland-Pfalz (LEP IV) (Rhineland-Palatinate Regional Development Program) for the Trier region. The ROP Trier 1985, with a partial update in 1995, contains the general planning objectives of the region. A reconfiguration is planned. The design for the reconfiguration originated in the year 2014.

This volume brings together contributions from the symposium "Cross-border Representations" (held September 16 and 17, 2010 at Mulhouse University Institute of Technology, University of Upper Alsace, UHA). It contains analysis of the practices, identities, forms of governance, and policy in cross-border territories such as the Greater Region, the PAMINA area, the border regions between France and Geneva, France and Spain, and other French border territories including Brazil and Africa. With twenty contributions, the book offers insights from politicians, historians, geographers, researchers in the field of information science, sociologists, and linguists.

The state development program is a cross-departmental and intersectoral spatial framework that underpins the development of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The State Development Program (LEP IV) is titled “Recognizing Challenges – Acting Sustainably – Shaping the Future.” The program, which came into force in 2008, deals with issues such as public services and the development of spaces. In particular, it deals with the challenges of demographic change and globalization.

This text focusses on the daily practices, perceptions, and ideas constructed around and in regard to border areas, and the institutions installed on this scale. In order to harness the breadth and complexity of representations associated with the border, three types of so-called "entries" are proposed: an entry via practices, an entry via discourse, and an entry via artifacts.

In this scientific study, the authors take a comparative approach to the analysis of border areas in the French territory. The methodological and technical concerns implicated in such analysis are discussed. The third part of the study focusses on the advantages of taking a medium-scale approach. The study draws on a large number of maps and graphic representations. Finally, the authors put forward a typology of border areas.

There is an extensive growth in the number of international borders. At the same time goods, people and ideas are more mobile than ever before. A Companion to Border Studies brings together viewpoints on these developments by preeminent border scholars from the fields of anthropology, geography, history, development studies, political science and sociology. Case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, are presented. A comprehensive analysis of key characteristics of frontiers and borders, including topics such as security, cross-border cooperation, and controls, population displacements and migration, transnationalism and hybridity is provided.