Efforts of reform in countries suffering from the crisis

The content of this chapter is placed in the years of the crisis, when efforts began to undertake initiatives in the field of urban and regional planning, in line with the dictates of the international consortium supervising the process of the bailout agreements. The drafting of new spatial planning legislation was the centrepiece of these initiatives, but there were also parallel ones of immediate interest for territorial management, such as administrative reorganization, private investment incentives, economic liberalization, cadastral records of real estate, and management of public land properties. In Greece, a committee was formed to prepare a spatial planning reform and a bargaining process followed between the Greek authorities and the creditors’ Troika. Events in the countries affected by the crisis demonstrate the extent to which conditions prior to the crisis interacted with the crisis itself. In the survey of these events presented in this chapter, the changes in planning systems are identified for Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Spain and Italy. Various phenomena are underlined, e.g., the diffusion of novel ideas, the shift to environmental concerns, the adaptation of planning to emergency situations, the power interplay between central and local governments, but also the survival of traditional practices of illegality. The sections devoted to these countries are imbued with the style of academic analysis, in full contrast with the bureaucratic style used by officials dealing with the Greek crisis. Changes occurring in Greece are left mainly for the next chapter, but observations are inserted in the text to draw attention to similarities. Short summaries are placed in recess at the end of all sections to assist the reader.