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. This book provides a deeper understanding of space and place, territorial governance and network governance.

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?