The Prut River is an important hydrological artery for Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Until the 1970s, the hydrotechnical arrangements were not generalized at the level of the entire riverbed, but after the floods starting in 1979, many hydrotechnical works were designed and executed, including in the hydrographic basins of the tributaries, which culminated in the construction of the Stanca-Costești Lake, for the regularization of the flow of the Prut River. While these regularizations had the expected effect, and the effects of some historical floods in 2008 and 2010 were greatly diminished, the controlled overflows during the floods and the rupture of some dams created damage. From the point of view of risk, vulnerability and risk, these structural measures have an obvious positive effect, but there is an unusual variability in the social and political context of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. In order to study this variability, we inventoried the hydrotechnical facilities with the role of protection against floods at the level of the major and minor riverbeds of the Prut River, but also the effects induced by historical floods. The analysis confirms the existence of differences in planning, which have effects in terms of vulnerability and risk. In the absence of modelling that considers data on both sides of the river basin and the riverbed, the identification of undeveloped areas is an approach that can help reduce vulnerabilities through information measures.

Location theory addresses problems of locating points in two-dimensional space, i.e., facilities whose dimensions are negligible compared to the dimensions of the space in which locations are selected (e.g., city or regional territory). As such, it directly or indirectly underpins several doctrines of regional economics, development, and planning and is fundamentally oriented toward formulating location problems and creating models to solve them.

As the optimal spatial distribution of various facilities and the organization of their functionality are becoming increasingly significant issues in planning, theorists and practitioners have developed numerous location models. However, this topic largely remains within the realm of scientific research, often excluded from the processes of creating and implementing spatial plans, which are public documents essential for defining and planning the spatial organization of service systems within specific territorial units.

As a subgroup of location models, location-allocation models are characterized by the aim to optimally locate one or (most commonly) several facilities under clearly defined objectives and constraints, while their allocation component assigns appropriate users to these facilities. Given that maximizing accessibility (minimizing total and thus average spatial or temporal distances between users and facilities) is a fundamental criterion, the p-median location-allocation model was applied to plan the development of the existing network of primary healthcare facilities in the territory of the City of Zaječar. Population projections by settlement, derived using an extrapolation method particularly suited for smaller territorial units and relatively short periods, were directly integrated into the modelling process. This method requires minimal data, typically relying on population data available from national censuses.

An analysis of three main scenarios was conducted, in line with the planning horizon of the existing spatial plan for the City of Zaječar: the baseline scenario (maintaining current capacities), the positive scenario (opening a certain number of new facilities), and the negative scenario (closing a certain number of existing facilities). The results provided spatially determined solutions optimized for maximizing accessibility to these facilities. Comparisons with spatial organizations involving randomly selected locations for opening or closing facilities demonstrated clear optimisation benefits, including time and cost savings and reduced negative environmental impacts of transportation.

In the Netherlands in 1941, under German occupation, a new centralized legal regime was instituted that mandated spatial planning on the local, regional, and national level. In the ensuing years, this legal foundation evolved in such a way that “survey before plan” became a core ingredient of spatial planning. The resulting demand for socio-spatial research across government layers was largely captured by young, new university graduates (primarily of human geography and sociology). They obtained employment in governmental and para-governmental spatial planning institutions in the post-war Netherlands. This generation institutionalized the new field of planology as the Dutch translation of spatial planning, eventually culminating in the first planology university chair in 1962. Drawing on theoretical ideas on institutional entrepreneurship and the sociology of the professions, this paper explores how and why academia and policy co-produced planology as a professional field in the Netherlands between 1945 and 1962. The paper builds on extensive historical research in archives of Dutch universities, governmental institutions and professional organisations. Practically, it thereby shows how socio-spatial research became a centrepiece of the globally heralded Dutch spatial planning tradition. On a more abstract level, the paper offers an exemplary case of the professionalization of a research tradition and the development of multi-scalar knowledge networks and interactions between academia and policy.

Reaffirming the role of geography in the field of the organisation of institutional structures is a necessary operation to return to the creation of alternative political and geographical imaginaries (Dematteis, 2021).

This seems to suggest that geographers should support criticism with an activity of synthesis and proposal that combines territorial and institutional reflection at all scales. In a certain way, it is necessary to respond to the call for civil and political responsibility urged by Massey (2004; 2008). Numerous contributions have highlighted the need to reaffirm the role of geographic discipline in the exploration and definition, especially in the context of the European continent, of grand regional narratives and visionary geographies (Loriaux 2008; Murphy 2013; McConnell et al. 2017; van Meeteren 2020; Bachmann 2022).

Building on the recent reflections of Wills (2019), Jeffrey and Dyson (2021), and Bachmann (2022), and in light of the recent developments of Italian federalist thought (Montani 2022; Majocchi 2023; Saputo 2023), which moves from the European dimension toward the global one, without neglecting local levels, this contribution aims to address the issue of relations between society, territory, and institutions through the political-institutional vision and action of federalists. However, the intention is not to develop a critical analysis of the geographical reflections conducted on the European Union and its various components and dimensions, but rather to identify and highlight the potential links between the two areas of research.

It is in this perspective that we believe we can advance the hypothesis that the ‘geographical sensibility’ of federalism in its militant form is not limited to overcoming the primacy of the nation-state but concerns the question of overcoming the processes of centralisation of states in favour of communities and territories. The aim of this paper is therefore to contribute to the understanding of how this form of federalism rests on a profound, but little investigated, ‘geographical sensibility’.