This brief collection of quotes has been extracted from the abstracts submitted. In each case only appears the first author.
Two indispensable items need to be taken into account in order to rebuild and reinterpret the spatial planning in countries with an important river network: The role of the river in the transport network and its territorial consolidation. Second, the role of the city as a control and territorial organisational tool in the urbanisation phenomenon. Diana Alvarez
"Deregionalisation", "delocalisation", "ubiquity" and so on are labels which identify processes of a progressive loss of the sense of place, to the advantage of an economy of flows -primarily financial- which often is without roots, without local ties, indifferent to places and to communities and which is, to a certain extent, also ecologically, socially and politically "irresponsible". Sandro Fabbro
Places are not only physical elements to be measured and evaluated in terms of distance, cost, or physical impedance, but are also, perhaps above all, founding elements of civilisation, then the spatial-temporal destructuring imposed by the economy, which travels at the speed of light, does not necessarily have to present places and regions as useless, but should force a rethinking of values and basic cultural, economic and political functions. Sandro Fabbro
It is up to "urbanistic" culture to seek positive solutions which would permit management of the conflict emerging between the "economy" and the "culture" of places, on one hand, and the interests of an "economy" and a "culture" of networks, on the other. Sandro Fabbro
It is strategic for modern regions to provide networks, then the way in which these are organised and rooted in the region in relation to places is even more strategic. Sandro Fabbro
Urban sprawl is a common problem encountered in Europe. It induces high level of car use and, usually, congestion on roads giving access to city centres. Sylvie Gayda
Whereas the car-network has decentralised our cities, and the train-station is used to foster concentration, airports clearly trigger the "poly-centralization" of metropolitan areas. Mathis Güller
Even though access to information, infrastructures and knowledge has been recognised as a basic human right, it is not equally distributed over the territory. Philippe Mathis
Disaffiliation should be understood not as exclusion from the social body, but as a marginalisation of a group by means of mechanisms that the state does not master and has to fight against. Philippe Mathis
The aim of town and country planning is to guarantee equal access to health, education, culture and information services, whatever the area where the people live. Philippe Mathis
Airports developed in the past focusing on the airside and neglected to build a good neighbourhood relationship with the authorities representing the territory they are located in. Ignasi Ragas
The concept ‘urban network’ can be considered a vehicle to strengthen the international territorial competitiveness of polycentric urban regions. The development of an interconnected urban network of complementary centres is instrumental in this. It is hypothesised that urban centres with complementary assets at close proximity, i.e. approximately within the upper range of daily activity patterns, profit from pooled local markets and can therefore provide broader packages of higher-quality attributes to businesses, skilled professionals, households, and tourists than each centre separately can. Arie Romein
The proneness by local stakeholders, in particular municipal governments, to co-operate and co-ordinate their policies within a larger regional perspective is often restricted. Competition and duplication of assets rather than a culture of co-operation are commonplace. This confines the feasibility to accomplish increasing complementarity of urban centres on the regional scale. Arie Romein
The feasibility of co-operation and co-ordination by regional stakeholders within a denominated urban network can be examined by analysing the dynamics of the spatial scope of mobility patterns. If no general tendency of enlargement of this scope from local levels to the regional level can be observed, implementation of the concept of ‘urban network’ will be far from easy. Arie Romein
Increasingly towns and municipalities are confronted with tasks that will not be resolved by themselves. These challenges are based on very complex problems which surpass the municipalities administrative and spatial influence. Nicole Schaefer
But, How much co-operation is necessary? How flexible should co-operation be and what could the organisational structure of a network between cities looks like? Nicole Schaefer
Do networks only work between equal partners with very similar problems and expectations as well as between a central city and its environs, or are networks also a suitable solution for cities in a polycentric and heterogeneous region? Nicole Schaefer
In the future municipalities must share their responsibilities and tasks within a region and across regional borders if they strive to be successful amongst international competition. Nicole Schaefer
The system theory point out the essential character of networks in the use of territory; Albert Serratosa
The recent territorial changes have not occurred in just a few large places. Rather, the society and the territory have been permeated by a minute, continuous and dispersed process of modification. Paradoxically, the dispersion of houses and factories in recent times has led to a densification of a pre-existent dispersed settlement. In recent years a process of polarization by introverted settlements, reconfiguring the territory as a mosaic and introducing a blend characterized by a more marked grain. Maria Tosi
The present structure of urbanised areas seems to be an anachronistic pattern involved in chaotic expansion. Tadeusz Zipser
Facts reveal major social and spatial disparities concerning access to the information transmitted through ICT. Those disparities seem to call into question the capacity of the network to achieve social cohesion. Philippe Mathis