even before the most recent round of planning reforms put in place by the french government that now require better coordination of planning local governments in this region took advantage of earlier legislation that allowed the formation of intercommunal organisations to facilitate cooperative activities including land use planning managing the loire estuary and local streams and wetlands cannot be done on a commune by commune basis and this common issue provided an early impetus for collaboration similarly historical competition between nantes and saintnazaire over shipyards and port facilities evolved into cooperation when both places were forced to come together in order to build a more efficient port complex that could compete with other port cities in europe thus the governance and regulation of land use are as much a political project as they are a reaction to social economic conditions and urbanrural morphologies the preceding discussions of the area s spatial planning objectives illuminate several major challenges and opportunities these are discussed in turn