Nunes, R., Adams, N. Cotella, G. (2009) “Policy ‘framing’ and evidence-based planning: ‘epistemic communities’ in the multi-jurisdictional environment of an enlarged Europe”, 23 rd Congress of the Association of the European Schools of Planning, Liverpool, England, July 15-18 1 Policy ‘framing’ and evidence-based planning: ‘epistemic communities’ in the multi-jurisdictional environment of an enlarged Europe Draft version – please do not quote without authors’ permission Updated April, 2010 Submitted to European Planning Studies June, 2010 RICHARD J. NUNES Department of Planning, Oxford Brookes University Ph: +44(0)1865 483 414; E-mail: rnunes@brookes.ac.uk (Corresponding Author) NEIL ADAMS London South Bank University GIANCARLO COTELLA Eu-polis, Dipartimento Interateneo Territorio (DITer), Politecnico di Torino A policy process based on regulation and expertise, on the one hand, and a more politicized context, on the other, can be either an explosive combination or a corroborating alchemy. (Radaelli 1999: 771) Abstract The following paper builds on ongoing discussions over the spatial and territorial turns in planning, as it relates to the dynamics of evidence-based planning and knowledge production in the policy process. It brings this knowledge perspective to the organizational and institutional dynamics of transformational challenges implicit in the recent enlargement of the EU. Thus it explores the development of new spatial ideas and planning approaches, and their potential to shape or ‘frame’ spatial policy through the formulation of new institutional arrangements and the de-institutionalization of others. That is, how knowledge is created, contested, mobilized and controlled across governance architectures or territorial knowledge channels. In so doing, the paper elaborates and discusses a theoretical framework through which the interplay of knowledge and policy- making can be conceptualized and analyzed.