Troubling the place of the border: on territory, community, space and place

Abstract

Decreasing congruence between territory, sovereignty and citizenship is increasingly recognised in both theory and practice. Yet while borders are transgressed and our understanding of territories may have changed, they nevertheless remain. Actors define and mobilise borders in new ways for different purposes. Drawing on the Italian concept of territorio and its incorporation of relational interactions between space and society, I show territory to be not the background of such interaction, but both its outcome and precondition. Lines run between communities and places, not around them. Mobilities of humans and non-humans (including policy ideas and practices) have consequences for spatial planning, as new types of trans-territorial public and private action networks actualise. Mobilities and action networks offer both challenges and innovation opportunities for planners to deterritorialise the idea of space as bordered containers and reterritorialise it as multiple, rhizomic networks of spatialised relationships. Citing City of Cities in Milan, I argue that we can begin to rearticulate territory-sovereignty-citizenship relations for our cities and regions.

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