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The advent of spectrally flexible (a.k.a. elastic) optical networking is widely identified as the next generation optical network solution that permits varying bandwidth demands to be dynamically assigned over flexible spectral containers, targeting optimum use of the available network resources. Additionally, the adoption of the space dimension is identified as a promising solution for the capacity expansion of future networks, while novel spatial-spectral switching solutions show that the flexible networking concept can be further expanded over both the spatial and spectral dimensions. This article provides an overview of the latest developments and possible approaches with respect to flexible optical networking and the emerging benefits that spatially flexible networking approaches can offer. The focus is on the network planning and resource optimization functions, the main network operations related to fragmentation …