As part LISER’s Visiting Scholars Programme, Professor Sergio Peña, Urban and Environmental Studies Dep., El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, came for a 9 week visit to work in collaboration with Dr. Frédéric Durand on the following project: “Cross-border Metropolitan Regions, Planning and Governance: The European Union and North American Experience”. 

Research Project

Cross-border metropolitan regions have become important nodes in the spatial hierarchical reconfiguration that globalization has induced around the world. The European Union (EU) and North America, particularly the U.S.-Mexico Border, are two regions where this phenomenon has become a reality or naturalised as part of the landscape of borders. Therefore, it is important to undertake research comparing different experience of planning and governance in order to advance the knowledge of cross-border studies.

The main research questions we are trying to respond are: How global integration processes have shaped governance and spatial planning at the cross-border regional level in the European Union and North America (specifically US-Mexico border)?

We argue that cross-border regions are key scenarios and laboratories where abstract notions of space take concrete forms as far as institutions, processes and spatial practice. We focus primarily in planning institutions, processes and spatial practices in order to highlight differences and similarities. The topic of mobility has been chosen to narrow the analysis and make possible the comparison between two macro regions. The main hypothesis of the paper is that there is some level of convergence on planning and governance frameworks in the two regions.