Spatial Planning and Regional Development

The ICLRD has played a key role in supporting processes of strategic spatial planning and sustainable regional development. This work has included analysis of the role and potential of the National Planning Framework and it’s the predecessor, the National Spatial Strategy as strategic policy tools and their implementation at regional and local scales. The ICLRD has developed particular expertise with regard to planning for ‘functional territories’ – regional spaces or catchment areas that cross political-administrative boundaries and the cross-border dimension of planning for border region and island of Ireland as transboundary functional entities, linking the National Planning Framework and Regional Development Strategy for Northern Ireland.

In its strategic sense, the term spatial planning refers not only to formal processes of planning regulation but also to integrated strategies and frameworks which seek to coordinate the spatial dimensions of sectoral policies.

Publications and reports emerging from this work are available from the links below:

• ICLRD part of Research Team focusing on Resilient Cities
• ICLRD undertakes a socio-economic and geo-spatial analysis of Buncrana, Co. Donegal
• Creating Spaces for Cooperation
• Emergent Cross-Border Functional Geographies on the Island of Ireland: pre- and post-Brexit (Irish Geography 2019)
• Briefing Paper No. 13: Applying the Functional Territories Concept:Planning Beyond Borders
• Towards a Spatial Monitoring Framework for the Island of Ireland: a Scoping Study
• Responding to the Environmental Challenge? Spatial Planning, Cross-Border Cooperation and River Basin Management
• The Basel Metropolitan Area: Three Borders – One Metropolitan Area
• Regional Planning in the Boston Metropolitan Area
• Delineating Functional Territories Across The Island of Ireland: An Initial Scoping
• Briefing Paper No.5: Evidence-Informed Spatial Planning: A Boston Metro Perspective
• Briefing Paper No.2: Linking Spatial Planning with Public Investment–Perspectives from the Island of Ireland
• Briefing Paper No.1: Good Planning Key to Future Success

ICLRD Leads: Cormac Walsh, John Driscoll, Caroline Creamer, Karen Keaveney, Nick Finio, Jim Walsh,