Breaking the barriers of former military sites in Europe. Insights for urban regeneration

Abstract

The European Week of Regions and Cities is an annual four-day event during which cities and regions showcase their capacity to create growth and jobs, implement European Union cohesion policy, and prove the importance of the local and regional level for good European governance. This session presents the results of the disposal policies of military land in Europe since the 1980s. It shows the consequences of the tendency to privatize public land on the basis of neoliberal approaches to public policy and urban governance that privilege markets, empower self-interested economic actors, and reduce the public good to an aggregation of private interests. The aim is to identify factors in this transition from military to civilian that impede cross-border cooperation in favour of learning from countries whose disposal policies result in more local community-centered and sustainable land uses.