Conference Proceedings of the 1^st ESPON Scientific Conference

This report presents the proceedings of the 1st ESPON Scientific Conference on European Territorial Research, held at 13-14 October 2005 in Luxembourg. The conference was organised by ESPON in cooperation with the University of Luxembourg, the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP), the European Council of Town Planners (ECTP), the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), EUGEO, and the Regional Studies Association (RSA).

At the time of the conference ESPON moved towards the final phase of its first programming period and the first final results and more mature midterm results have been available. Thus it was an appropriate moment to call for a critical discussion on the results and to invite researchers from within and outside ESPON to discuss the state of the art in European territorial research. For this purpose ESPON has organised the conference in close cooperation with leading European research organisations and looked for a balance between presentations and participants from inside and outside ESPON. The conference was a meeting platform for different groupings of the European research community in territorial development, such as regional economy, geography, landscape architecture and spatial planning.