Institutions, discourse and practices: towards a multidimensional understanding of EU territorial governance

After progressive emergence in the discussion on European spatial planning, the concept of ‘EU territorial governance’ is nowadays adopted by planners and decision-makers to indicate the occurrence of a multifaceted and largely undefined process of interactions among spatial planning and development activities at various levels, guided in the EU institutional framework. The present paper aims at improving the overall understanding of EU territorial governance, in the awareness of its implications both for the role of spatial planning in Europe and for the progress of EU integration. Current acknowledgements and theoretical approaches are therefore positioned and compared through a comprehensive relational framework, built on supposed ‘dimensions’ and respective interactions characterising territorial governance. In so doing, specific ‘channels’ conveying domestic change and the EU progress in joint territorial governance activities are identified, highlighting the role of EU territorial governance as a meaningful catalyst of Europeanization.