Interview: Claude Grasland

Claude Grasland is Professor of Geography at the Université Paris Diderot and Director of the Interdisciplinary Network for European Spatial Planning (UMS RIATE). He answered our questions in October 2010 and describes his experiences of the ESPON 2013 Programme.

1. How do you describe yourself and your skills? “Geographer”, “Spatial Analyst”, “Cartographer” – or something in French that does not easily translate into English?

For sure, I am a geographer, and I am specialised in theoretical and quantitative geography. In particular, I am working on spatial analysis of social facts. That is to say, how distance, on the one hand, and territorial belonging, on the other hand, influence interactions in society. In simple terms, I am working on borders, limits and territorial divisions. An important point to make is that I do not work on cities because I consider, as Bachelard, a French philospher, would say, that “cities are an epistemological obstacle” (“les villes sont un obstacle épistémologique”). That means, for me, that they are a confused concept. Why? Just take the experiment of Georges Perec, a French writer who succeeded in proving that it was possible to write a book removing the letter ‘E’[1]. Now, take any text or book about cities, and just try to remove the word “cities”: you will be obliged to use the terms “market place”, “centre”, “metropolis”, “concentration area”. And you will be more precise and cleverer. In conclusion, I recommend not using the word “city” in any case!

2. Do you have time for a life outside ESPON?

ESPON has taken a lot of my life for the last 10 years. But my profession is to be teacher and researcher at University. The other research project that I am working on, outside ESPON, is a 7th Framework Programme project called Eurobroadmap, "Visions of Europe in the World", where I analyse the perception of Europe from outside. More generally, the project is concerned with how the world can be divided, in mental terms by mental maps, by political visions and by functional matters like flows[2]. Outside these projects, I generally say that my work time is divided into “3 halves”: half of the time for teaching, half of the time for research, and half of the time for administrative burdens. So, I am definitely working more than 40 hours per week! I still keep teaching because it is absolutely essential for me: I have been a researcher for 8 years after my PhD, and even during this period, when it was not mandatory, one third of my time was devoted to this activity. I really like teaching according to Marg Csapo’s proverb: “If you don’t know it, teach it!” In fact, I always make progress in research through teaching.

3. You were part of the Study Programme in Spatial Planning[3] that operated over 10 years ago and was the fore-runner to ESPON. How did that earlier programme influence the way ESPON was designed?

At this time, I was still a researcher and I enjoyed this period very much because it was a kind of ‘May ’68’ period for ESPON. In fact, the world of ESPON was not clearly fixed, and the so-called “Lead Partner Principle” had not been adopted. In that framework, I participated in a study on accessibility with colleagues from Germany and from Finland, and on the topic of territorial indicators of territorial cohesion, where I worked with colleagues from Belgium and the UK. These were very creative moments because, without the Lead Partner Principle, you were free to debate as long as you wanted on the subject, and nobody prevailed. For example, in the accessibility group, there were two schools: the “Northern school”, represented by Spiekermann & Wegener, was convinced that it was important to measure areal accessibility, whereas the “Southern school”, represented by researchers from Italy and from France, considered that accessibility is based on networks and “just in time” connections. With the Lead Partner Principle, only one of the two schools would have prevailed. Instead, in the final Study Programme in European Spatial Planning, we produced a report divided into two parts, each one representing the two different visions. The good news about this is that, some years after, two experts representing the two schools were working together!

4. What is your experience inside the ESPON program?

The first experience I had inside ESPON was the project 3.1 “Integrated tools for European spatial development”, directed by the BBR, where I developed spatial analysis tools. After that, I was coordinator for the first time, in the project 3.4.1 “Europe in the World”, which was a very exciting experience. It was launched by ESPON, being convinced that you could not analyse internal disparities in the EU territory without considering the neighbourhood and the world. Concerning disparities and discontinuities, you need to consider the external disparities, for example between Poland and Ukraine, to understand the internal ones. The Framework Programme project “Eurobroadmap” is a child of the ESPON 3.4.1 project. I also coordinated a very pleasant but small project, called “MAUP - Modifiable Areas Unit Problem”, ESPON 3.4.3. It treated a major statistical issue: the correlation between two variables, for example GDP and population density, is not the same when it is measured at the regional, state or local authority level. This is known in the political world under another name: gerrymandering. It comes from the US, when the Massachusetts Governor Gerry shaped the electoral area in the form of a salamander, in order to win the election. Since I am speaking to the UK Contact Point, I would like to mention the gerrymandering of Wales: geographers from the UK proposed an incredible transformation of division of NUTS 2, in order to get more Objective 1 in Cornwall and Wales. You British are specialists of gerrymandering in the UK[4]!

More seriously, when you want to analyse distributions, NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 divisions are very bad. They have been produced by a long historical process, but the result is that NUTS 3 in Germany, Belgium, or the Netherlands, are very small units, with city centres, city suburbs, and rural areas separated differently from France. So, it is not logical to put NUTS 3 from Germany and NUTS 3 from France on the same map, and one of the suggestions of this study was that, as long as you are not stuck to an official problem (funds allocation) and you just want to analyse space, it is better to mix NUTS 2 and NUTS 3.

I was also involved in the 3.2 project, “Spatial scenarios”, at the end of the first ESPON programme. Here I was responsible for measuring territorial cohesion, proposing a synthetic index for territorial cohesion. I made a review of all bad solutions, especially composite indicators. In a paper[5], I explained that, considering the 3 elements of sustainable development - social, economic and environmental - any good data existed for the social dimension at the NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 levels. In fact, the social differentiations are generally visible at the LAU1-LAU2 level. Considering the Region Ile-de-France (the Paris region), you have very good GDP on the whole, but you have areas with problems within this region. What I basically suggested was to use demographic data as proxy of missing social data. I proposed to improve the social dimension through demography.

5. You are currently leading the ESPON Database project. What is that project doing?

This project is connected with all the other ESPON projects. When a new project begins, we provide the Lead Partner with the basic data they need: land use, population density, GDP, employment, etc. Then, when they need specialised data we put them in contact with European Agencies. Normally, they are cleverer than us! But we can suggest ideas of data, in some cases. In particular, we provide maps and templates for the projects, because we would like ESPON reports to be harmonised. For example, in the ESPON programme, the border of Kosovo should be smaller than a State line and bigger than a regional line, because this is politically correct. When a project comes to the end, we get back the data they have produced and we store them in the collective ESPON Database, making it possible for others to use it. At this moment, we are kind of “cops” because our mission is to oblige Lead Partners to put explanations on each figure, what we call the metadata. We also support the ESPON Coordination Unit with maps for the Synthesis Report, posters etc.

All in all, the ESPON Database project can be considered as a mirror of ESPON. In the first ESPON programme, the Database reflected the progress of ESPON at that time: it contained regional data and economic data, what the programme was focused on. Currently, the Database has a greater variety of:

- objects: regions, but also cities, grid data and some local data

- scales: on neighbourhood for example

- themes: more data on environment or accessibility

So, ESPON Database mirrors the progress of the ESPON programme in integrating new kind of data.

6. Will it be possible for practitioners to access the ESPON Database and look up the data for their region and benchmark that region against others across the ESPON space?

We have nearly finished the first phase of the ESPON Database. We have created the Database infrastructure, which collects mainly regional data. But we are neither directly in charge of the visualisation tool (another project, HyperAtlas, produces tools for mapping) nor in charge of benchmarking (another project on indicators, on Priority 3, extracts from ESPON projects selected data, that are the most useful for benchmarking).

7. “Territorial Cohesion” remains a difficult concept for many in the UK, even for those from a spatial planning background. What does it mean to you, and is it part of a way of thinking that is rather familiar to people in France?

I would say that you should ask this question to Andreas Faludi, who has published a paper called “Territorial cohesion: Old (French) Wine in New Bottles?”[6]. According to him, this concept takes root from the French experience of spatial planning. It is true, but my opinion is that this concept also emerged from the Netherlands or the German schools of spatial planning. So, I won’t claim that is a French attribute. Nonetheless, what is for sure is that the introduction of this concept in the Treaty means that it is necessary to have a spatial planning system at the European scale, instead of having a collection of national planning systems.

8. What do you think are the main territorial cohesion challenges for France and for Europe today?

I consider that, through the addition of Territorial Cohesion in the Treaty, the European Union should focus itself on the population’s access to services of general interest. By this, I mean that everything related to accessibility, such as distances to airports, high speed trains, hospitals, schools etc. should be of major concern for the EU. In the end, the idea is that Territorial Cohesion should not only deal with transferring money from a rich region to a poorer one, but implementing policies that promote access to public services. Also, Territorial Cohesion should encompass a reflection about neighbourhood in the eastern and southern directions.

9. How do you think we could measure and map Territorial Cohesion?

The joker question! At the moment, this is work in progress which addresses major scientific and political questions at the European level. I deem there are a lot of things to do with demography. In a book published in October 2010[7], called “Shrinking regions and shrinking cities: maintaining territorial cohesion”, we have proposed an improvement of an indicator that we started developing under the ESPON programme: a comparison of the mean age of the population and the life expectancy of this population (how many years have been already spent and how many years are remaining). I think this is a clever indicator, a great deal better than the so-called “dependency rate”, ratio between non active population (less than 15 years and more than 65 years) and active population. I am absolutely against this one! For more details, see Baron & al (2010).

10. You led the ESPON 2006 Project “Europe in the World”, which was a rather unique project in that it did not just look at territorial relations within Europe but at relations with the Neighbourhood countries and beyond. What do you think are the main messages for Europe from that project?

I can repeat what I wrote with Pierre Beckouche in the conclusion of the synthesis report of this project[8]. At the time of the SPESP (1998-1999), the political document of reference was the ESDP (European Spatial Development Perspective). This one covered Eastern Europe, despite the fact that the EU was limited to 15 countries. I consider that what we have to do now, is preparing a new ENSDP called the Europe and Neighbourhood Spatial Development Perspective, a political document based on the assumption that several challenges in the next 10 years will involve Southern-Mediterranean countries (African countries) and the Eastern Neighbourhood: Middle East, Russia, Iran. This document would certainly be imperfect, as was the ESDP, but it will cover a larger area than the actual European Union.