Underneath the political map of Europe’s nation-states simmers another reality: a tangle of economic and logistical corridors that transcend national borders. The best known of these is the Blue Banana.
Many others aren’t as visible, and that is due to poor marketing: They lack an equally imaginative handle. Hence this modest proposal: If the European Union is serious about integration, it should get silly about names. All 12 of its major transnational economic corridors should be named after the bendy fruit. In other words, Europe should go full bananas.
The Blue Banana — the first of the bunch, so to speak — is of surprisingly recent vintage. First proposed in 1989 by French geographer Roger Brunet as an economic zone with common characteristics, this urban-industrial belt runs from Manchester in northern England to Milan in northern Italy. A French minister remarked that Brunet’s area looked a bit like a banana, an illustrator for Le Nouvel Observateur colored it blue, and hey presto, the Blue Banana was born.
That nickname did what mere economic stats can’t: It captured the imagination, thus highlighting a process that earlier maps had missed. In an increasingly borderless Europe, the logics of proximity and compatibility are creating zones of economic contiguity across multiple countries.
Source: Big Think — Read the full article on the original site ↗