- Public Facilities as Elements of Territorial Cohesion. Case Study University and Hospital Networks in Galicia    2540 kb by    Garcia Fontan, Cristina | cgarciaf@udc.es    Short Outline Public facilities need to be seen from the territory they served, their impact is bigger than the city where it is located. They were not planned under any logic more than the opportunity, and now it is time to rethink a strategic planning. Abstract In the present context of economic and urban crisis, this study proposes an analysis and a reflection about the strategic investment in planning public facilities. After years of development of big facilities and infrastructures without the planning of territorial cohesion, we propose to analyze the state of art and see the sustainability of the territory. The case study is located in Galicia, a Spanish region. The public facilities that we analyze are Higher Education (Universities) and Health facilities (Hospitals). Those facilities make up networks, systems, nodes, and the role they play for territorial, economic and social cohesion is essential. We study how they perform at territorial, local and urban scale. Universities and Hospitals are nodes that generate important tensions in the territory besides being what P. Hall identifies as sources of innovation. The key aspects of the research are the territorial identity, his position in the landscape, the sustainability, the viability and the urban assemblage of those There is chased a model different from territorial planning of big facilities. Where accessibility must be equitable and without any distinction between rural and urban population. Another important references for the research where diverse projects and Utopian theories of the 20th century, like Cedric Price, Constant and Yona Friedman. They raised some important questions that may be now is the moment to take it into account. In order to keep what we got as society, in a sustainable way, it is necessary a reflection justifying the necessity of those facilities as engines of change. Keywords territorial cohesion, regional planning, public facilities Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2012: Fast Forward: Planning in a (hyper) dynamic urban context   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper