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B. Haselsberger:
"Improving Trans-national Cooperation´s Through Planning Culture Interactions. Raumplanung and Urbanistica: A Austro-Italian Confrontation";
Talk: ACSP-AESOP 4th Joint Congress, Chicago, Illinois, USA; 2008-07-06 - 2008-07-11; in: "Bridging the Divide: Celebrating the City. Book of Abstracts", (2008).

Planning systems and planning cultures vary considerably across Europe. This is quite obvious; however it is not enough merely to recognise this differentiation. In fact, as forms of harmonisation (in particular among different planning systems) are strongly required within Europe to manage cross-border and trans-national development processes more effectively (ESPON, 2006), the way to get along with emerging difficulties, while analysing and comparing different planning systems, must be appreciated too.
Moreover, it should be acknowledged that planning cultures and consequently planning systems are to some extent a reflection of a society´s fundamental values as well as their norms (Nadin & Stead, 2007). Due to Europe´s multilingualism, the process of mutual understanding and building up of reciprocal confrontation becomes further complicated. As Mazza (2004) has noted, even the term "spatial planning", originally introduced by the Dutch (Ruimtelijke ordening), cannot be translated easily into any other language, and even among British authors it is not frequently used.
In this perspective national planning systems are not always entirely transparent; they are sometimes even hardly understandable and, therefore, also interaction aims often appear unrealistic. To better understand a different planning culture, one has to draw attention to its socially rooted meanings and how societal norms (regarding the regulation of space) have influenced its development. This specific knowledge must be considered a basic pre-requisite to pursue trans-national interaction as well as co-operation activities.
In our contribution, we explore and compare the Austrian and the Italian planning cultures. We begin with a general introduction of the terms "Raumplanung" and "Urbanistica", which are the terms used in the two countries with regard to territorial planning. Our main emphasis is on a clear and transparent appraisal of the Austrian and Italian multi-level planning systems, as well as their outcomes and planning procedures. The final comparison will shed light on the main differences and similarities of these two planning cultures. We conclude with considerations and suggestions on how to use this important knowledge to build up forward looking trans-national territorial co-operation´s between Austria and Italy.

References:
COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (1997) The EU compendium of spatial planning systems and policies. Regional development studies 28. Luxembourg: CEC.
ESPON (2006), Farinós Dasí, J. (Eds) Project 2.3.2. Governance of Territorial and Urban Policies from EU to Local Level. ESPON Coordination Unit: Luxembourg.
MAZZA, L. (2004) Piano, Progetti, Strategie. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
NADIN, V., STEAD, D. (2007) European models of society, planning systems and planning cultures, Paper presented at the AESOP Conference, Naples, July 2007.

http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/upp/congress/BookofAcceptedAbstracts.pdf