Franziska Sielker

The Relevance of the European Union’s Spatial Policies for Planning Practices in Europe

Lecture by Franziska Sielker, Professor of Urban and Regional Research at the Institute for Architecture, TU Vienna, Austria and Affiliated Professor of Planning and Housing at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge.

Before joining TU Vienna, Professor Sielker was Assistant Professor of Planning and Housing at the University of Cambridge (2018-2021) and Interim Professor for International Planning Studies (2018-2019) at TU Dortmund at the Faculty of Spatial Planning. She took her PhD for her work on “Macro-regional integration in the EU” at the FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg at the Institute of Geography. She is a member of the Cambridge CARES Singapore. Her work is organised alongside three research streams: (1) regional development and divergences in Europe as well as EU Regional, Cohesion and Sector Policies; (2) international investments in infrastructure such as in the case of the Belt and Road Initiative; and (3) urban and housing policies, with a focus digitalisation practices in planning and digital twins. Professor Sielker is an editor of European EU Cohesion Policy and European Spatial Governance – an introduction to territorial, economic and social challenges.

This lecture will be presented virtually. Please access the lecture using this Zoom webinar link.

The European Union’s activities, strategies, funding tools and the aquis communautaire include numerous spatially relevant policies. In this talk, Professor Sielker aims to first present an overview of the diversity of activities of the EU that have direct impact on planning practices in the EUs member states, before diving into more concrete examples. She will then present examples from different policy fields and highlight the interdependencies between the EUs legal corpus and the different local as well as national planning and governmental systems. The first example will indicate highlight the use of legal tools through the example of Maritime Spatial Planning. Second, she will present the examples of the EUs Cohesion and Transport policies, where spatial development in the EU is substantially influenced by the distribution of funds at the EU level. Third, Professor Sielker will discuss the role of additional governance tools, such EU macro-regions in European cooperation. In order to comprehend the interdependencies between activities at the EU level and decisions on the local level ultimately, the interplay between these three different type of interventions crucial.