Promoting cross-border cooperation through cross-border central places: strategic town-twinning on the Bavarian-Czech border reconsidered

Since the early 1990s, several adjacent pairs of communes on the Bavarian borders with the Czech Republic and Austria have been identified as Cross-Border Central Places (CBCP). So far, the significance of CBCP as an innovative amendment of central place theory and long-established example of cross-border spatial planning remains virtually unstudied. This article analyses different versions of the Bavarian federal development plan and introduces CBCP as a planning instrument originally aimed at the realization of functional complementarities. By studying the concept's various redefinitions over the last two decades, I review CBCP as a strategic facilitator of cross-border cooperation at a local level. Empirical results from a focus group with mayors from all Bavarian and Czech municipalities representing a CBCP are provided. They indicate that the instrument's practical significance is limited by a rather domestic implementation, lacking local resources and an insufficient coordination across different scales of interaction.