Penumbral borders and planning paradoxes: Relational thinking and the question of borders in spatial planning

Abstract

The 1990s witnessed a rapid rise of relational thinking in economic, urban and cultural geography. This trend accentuated the importance of networks and connections, and challenged the conceptualizations of region in which borders are taken for granted. Relational views have become particularly prominent in the context of strategic planning, especially in the European Union. Drawing on an analysis of 18 strategic regional plans prepared by Finnish Regional Councils and interviews of the planners responsible for compiling them, this article scrutinizes and problematizes the commensurability of open and bounded notions of regions both conceptually and in terms of concrete strategic regional planning. We argue that the rise of the relational approach in planning is a fitting example of policy transfer, and the embracing this thinking causes a ‘planning paradox’: in strategic planning, planners need to think increasingly in terms of open, porous borders despite the fact that in concrete planning activities, politics, and governance the region continues to exist largely in the form of bounded and territorial political units. We then extend the idea of the planning paradox onto the question of borders and argue that borders in planning could be better understood as ‘penumbral’ borders rather than porous, since they are not solely either ‘hard’ boundary lines or ‘fuzzy borderscapes’, but typically manifest themselves only in certain practices. More generally, our observations suggest that the relational character and possible ‘boundedness’ of regions is inevitably a phenomenon that is multilayered and complex as well as context- and practice-bound.