Last Wednesday, Dr. Vincent Pijnenburg, succesfully defended his PhD thesis, about collaborative borderscaping in the Dutch-German borderland. In his thesis he focuses on cross-border spatial planning practices, In relation to Placemaking, one of the issues at stake here, is that it is exactly the relation with the ‘other’ which creates the incentive for active Placemaking. Placemaking within an existing administrative realm, with the usual rather homogeneous normative targets, procedures and conditions, is a rather boring activity (think also of the PhD thesis of Anke Strüver from 2004 about the ‘Stories of the Boring Border’), with boring results. However, the heterogeneity of the border landscape and of the different 
administrative systems meeting each other at the border create an active and innovative setting for Placemaking for cross-border planning and maybe even for spatial planning as such. It is at the borders, where also the core is made. Placemaking is almost by definition a bordering activity, irrespective of the place where it takes place. It is in these situations where we meet the eye from elsewhere and as such learn about ourselves and about our ‘system’ of spatial planning. In these interactive settings borders are not just shaped but also changed and transgressed. Vincent specifically elaborated and experimented extensively with interactive Design Ateliers for this borderscaping, providing a taste for more…
Next to this innovative aspect, his thesis is also a very comprehensive overview of everything relevant written about border-studies, cross-border cooperation, and cross-border spatial planning, and as such a seminal piece of work.
