Coordinating the Spatial Impacts of Sectoral Policies? Practices of and Potentials for Strategic Spatial Planning in the Dublin City-region (NIRSA) Working Paper Series. No. 61

Strategic spatial planning is distinguished by a concern to provide a framework for the coordination of sectoral policies and in particular of the spatial impact of those policies. From this perspective planning policy and practice may be seen as a central element of cross-sectoral spatial governance within an increasingly complex and fragmented governance context. This paper presents an empirical case study of practices of policy coordination in spatial planning in the Dublin city-region over the period from the 1990s to the present. It identifies the policy coordination ambitions of and potentials of spatial strategies at regional and local scales of governance but also points to significant shortcomings and constraints on effective policy coordination in practice. The analysis in this paper draws on qualitative interviews conducted by the author in 2008 and 2009