What current discourses are relevant für border areas? What opportunities for and hindrances to integrated territorial development are created by the specific situation of border regions? How can these be utilised to overcome in a targeted fashion? These questions were central to the discussions of the working group "Border Futures". Border regions like the Greater Region or the Tri-national Metropolitan Region ot the Upper Rhine extend far beyond the immediate area of the border. While instiutional structures of cooperation can be stabilised with agreements and organisations, there is a lack of instruments with which cross-border cooperation can react to changes in its parameters. Cross-border cooperation faces new challenges from increasing cross-border interactions, processes of economic structural transformation, new energy policies in the national spaces, and demographic change.

This volume sheds light on the theme of practice-related CBC with recent research relevant to planning in border regions in the European context. The findings are intended to be applied to the border areas and should also contribute towards broader specialis discourse on the further development of CBC.

(Shortened and slightly modified abstract)