In the time between 25th and 29th July 2022 the city of Tartu in Estonia hosted an annual congress of AESOP – Association of European Schools of Planning. The topic of the congress was »Space for Species – Redefining the spatial justice«. One of the congress tracks addressed (territorial) governance and thus attracted presenters dealing with various aspects of governance – theoretical and practical. Assistant Professor Naja Marot from the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Ljubljana represented one of the pilot activities in support of Territorial Agenda 2030, namely the pilot activity “Understanding how sector policies shape spatial (im)balances” and the work done so far on the Slovenian case study. The work is financially supported by the Slovenian Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, while the whole pilot activity is lead by the Polish Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy. The presentation was titled “Territorial Impact Assessment – a policy assessment tool for better integration of planning and sectors?”. As visible from the attached presentation, we have elaborated the weaknesses and strengths of the Territorial Impact Assessment approach and discussed the governance issues associated with the implementation of the tool in the real-time situations.
The results of the Territorial Impact Assessment performed in Slovenian-Croatian cross-border area “RA Sotla” for the Strategy of the cultural heritage 2020-2023 show that the impacts of the policy will be positive for the territory, and the most impacts will occur in the thematic field of territorial governance. The perception of cross-border impacts varies in regards to the stakeholders: the national stakeholders have identified the least impacts, the Croatian regional development agency the most impacts that would occur as spill-over effect in Croatia as well. Mostly measures in the field of “development” are recognised as territorially sensitive. Considering the method, brainstorming exercise was useful to list variety of all possible impacts, while the quantitative matrix was too complex due to the number of indicators and measures in question. Stakeholders have commented that TIA has brought useful evidence about “potential” territorial impacts of sectoral policies and provided another outlook on the sectoral policy, in this case concerning the cultural heritage.
All in all, the AESOP annual congress, for which the participants’ number was approximately 350 participants on-site, has once again proven a valuable platform for exchange of information about current trends in education and research in the field of spatial planning in Europe.
Prepared by: Naja Marot, University of Ljubljana