Phil Allmendinger is Professor of Land Economy and Head of Department, University of Cambridge, UK.

Graham Haughton is Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Manchester, UK.

Jöerg Knieling is Professor for Urban Planning and Regional Development at HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany.

Frank Othengrafen is Assistant Professor for Regional Planning and Research at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany.

I. A Conceptual Framework for Soft Spaces 1. Soft spaces, planning and emerging practices of territorial governance II. Soft Spaces in France, Germany, The Netherlands and England 2. Merseybelt (Manchester-Liverpool) 3. Governance Arrangements in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region: Between Hard and Soft Institutional Spaces 4. The Sillon Lorrain (Nancy, Metz, Epinal, Thionville) 5.Evolving regional spaces: shifting levels in the southern part of the Randstad 6. Ashford and Cambridge - two Growth Areas, three soft spaces III. Cross-Border Soft Spaces 7. Soft Spaces across the Fehmarn Belt: Cross-border Regionalism in Practice 8. Cross-border soft spaces of the Upper Rhine. Overlapping initiatives from the Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Orthenau to the Trinational Metropolitan Region of the Upper Rhine 9. Creating a Space for Cooperation: Soft Spaces, Spatial Planning and Cross-Border Cooperation on the Island of Ireland IV. Conclusions and Outlook 10. Conclusion: What difference do soft spaces make?

The past thirty years have seen a proliferation of new forms of territorial governance that have come to co-exist with, and complement, formal territorial spaces of government. These governance experiments have resulted in the creation of soft spaces, new geographies with blurred boundaries that eschew existing political-territorial boundaries of elected tiers of government. The emergence of new, non-statutory or informal spaces can be found at multiple levels across Europe, in a variety of circumstances, and with diverse aims and rationales.
This book moves beyond theory to examine the practice of soft spaces. It employs an empirical approach to better understand the various practices and rationalities of soft spaces and how they manifest themselves in different planning contexts. By looking at the effects of new forms of spatial governance and the role of spatial planning in North-western Europe, this book analyses discursive changes in planning policies in selected metropolitan areas and cross-border regions. The result is an exploration of how these processes influence the emergence of soft spaces, governance arrangements and the role of statutory planning in different contexts.
This book provides a deeper understanding of space and place, territorial governance and network governance.