Cross border regional planning: insights from Cascadia

Francesco Cappellano,Kathrine Richardson,Laurie Trautman

doi:10.1080/13563475.2020.1779672

Abstract

ABSTRACT This analysis focuses on different levels of Cross-Border Regional Planning (CBRP) processes in the Cascadia borderland. The region is home to the business-led initiative ‘Cascadia Innovation Corridor’ (CIC), designed to foster cross-border economic integration. The CIC strives to build a global innovation ecosystem in Cascadia, including a new high-speed train to connect Seattle and Vancouver. This paper focuses on the scope of the CIC as a CBRP case. The authors evaluate engagement of city governments and coherency between different planning scales to determine whether the CIC has been addressing the major challenges that may prevent tighter economicintegration in Cascadia. The analysis deploys secondary data as well as primary data collected through surveys and interviews. The results shed light on a discrepancy between supra-regional ‘soft planning’ and the urban planning level. The authors offer an evidence-based proposal to broaden the scope of the CIC from a CBRP standpoint.

Highlights

This paper defines the concept of Cross Border Regional Planning (CBRP) to convey a wide sample of actions, policies and strategies including land-use management, public infrastructure planning or projects in cross-border regions
This article uses the case study of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor to explore the concept of Cross Border Regional Planning (CBRP), taking into account the coordination between multiple scales of planning
The Cascadia Innovation Corridor’ (CIC) case study elaborates the important role of actors at the local level and the value of strengthening the interplay between spatial planning and economic growth in border regions

Summary

Introduction

This paper defines the concept of Cross Border Regional Planning (CBRP) to convey a wide sample of actions, policies and strategies including land-use management, public infrastructure planning or projects in cross-border regions. The heterogeneous variety of border regions hampers clear and rigid classification. We aim to give a close look to practices at a small geographical scope that are often neglected in broader cross-border cooperation narratives. Scholars have been conceptualizing planning in border regions in terms of stakeholder engagement and governance alliances, which are arguably effective to steer a development strategy for those territories. The authors here present a unique CBRP framework in order to better cast the discussion in a regional dimension, shifting from a transnational and integrative approach toward a more local cooperative approach (Bradbury 2016; Falkheimer 2016). By adopting a regional dimension, CBRP can better grasp the informality and the flexibility of cross-border governance structures (Noferini et al 2019)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion