An alternative approach to the construction of the European space: transport corridors as complex chains of territorial projects

Starting from an analysis of serious deficiencies in the implementation of the Mediterranean Corridor (in the context of the wider policy for the Trans-European Network for Transport - TEN-T programme), this paper attempts to learn from these deficiencies in order to extend the discussion and generalize the findings, on the conflicts between institutional and territorial levels involved in the area, towards a different concept of the corridor structure within the perspective of a new ordering of the physical space in Europe. These deficiencies demonstrate that the current EU, beyond rhetoric and notwithstanding the European Spatial Development Perspective (1999) and the subsequent “Territorial Agendas” (EC, 2007, 2011), is not capable of affirming a general idea of the public good, in either functional or spatial terms, for an entire transport corridor. Even the national government seems to be unable to take part in the complex (multilevel and transnational) aims of a corridor. So the public good of an entire transport corridor risks being neglected and the corridor itself contested. The paper supports the idea that this public good has to be based, first of all, on the different territorial components involved (cities, regions and other territorial systems) by allowing them to find their proper positioning and reason d’être as parts of a larger political and development project. Only with this constructive and bottom-up perspective, where a corridor is, to some extent, "unpacked" -but not fragmented-, and the different strategies and different contexts not ignored, but acknowledged and considered as parts of a broader perspective, would it be possible to provide a credible and durable legitimating of the entire corridor as well as a new ordering of the European space.