Can regional identities create a more sustainable alternative to the increasingly standardised environments in which we live? Is bottom-up rather than top-down planning possible? Why is the development of housing in the countryside so controversial in Britain, but accepted in Norway and Sweden? What does the Dutch way of managing landscapes demonstrate? How is the EU promoting a new relationship between cities and countryside, and moulding the identity of new D uro-regions D ? This book tackles these questions by looking at the contested identities of areas facing industrial and agricultural...

The central concern of this book is place identity and its representation and manipulation through planning. Place identity is of growing concern internationally, both in planning practice and in academic work. The issue is important to practitioners because of the impacts of globalisation on places. The book involves comparisons between Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Scotland, focusing strongly on the question of how different spatial planning systems and practices are currently conceiving and acting on issues of place identity.

This book provides agenuinely international introduction to regional and local economic development policies and practice, their contexts and the theoretical issues and debates that underpin them."