Keywords

• The article critically deals with the notion of spatial planning
• as it has become a new concept in the Anglophone community of urban and regional planners. The term
• as far as it may be observed
• currently sounds exclusively academic
• in use among scholars of the planning community in Europe
• dealing with territorial
• respectively spatial development. What is spatial planning? This kind of â€
• œ
• chameleon termâ€
• 
• allows everybody to use it as a wrapping paper for any mode of planning
• at any tier of planning and decision-making
• and under any socio-economic territorial context. The author goes through different European planning traditions and policies to better focus on the different meanings this concept has been charged with and he also makes a point looking at the current planning experience in China
• where a brand new space for spatial planning practice is now opening wide. In such a global perspective he highlights potentials and limits of spatial planning
• as a concept not just in use among academics
• but that should also get more relevant among politicians and
• most important
• among citizens