The study presents the results obtained at the end of the first year of a biennial research programme - currently ongoing - focused on two principal objectives: a) the description of the processes activated by particularly large European projects, highlighting the strategies and the instruments for evaluating feasibility that have been employed; b) the beginning of a comparative analyses of these processes, with the aim of delineating the tendencies in European processes. The significance of the study is derived from the fact that over the course of the last twenty years it is possible to observe relevant innovations in the governance of large strategic projects that are pushed along by a profoundly modified social, economical and political context. The national projects are located in seven different European nations; of these, nine are urban projects, two are dislocated in metropolitan areas and three affect entire regions. The study is accompanied by a monographic note illustrating a series of techniques that allow local groups to participate in the decisions inherent to the processes of spatial transformation.