The European Charter of Spatial/Regional Planning that was approved at the Conference of European Planning Ministers (of the countries of the Council of Europe) in Torremolinos in 1983 introduced the term spatial planning. While the earlier planning of larger territories that had grown out of architectural planning/urban planning was rather pure territorial planning, the Charter reflected the experience that had been gathered from practice by then that the planning of a broader territory is not possible without a balanced treatment of social, economic, environmental and cultural aspects, i.e. without a synthesis of the general forecast/plan of the socio-economic development and forecast of the territorial development.
