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Within EU cohesion policy, a place-based approach is expected to promote a strategic shift towards more place-sensitive, cross-sectoral and socially inclusive development. These expectations are underlined in the new Territorial Agenda 2030, which highlights that a place-based approach is key to territorial cohesion and to overall efforts towards a just Europe. Drawing on findings from the Horizon 2020 project RELOCAL – Resituating the local in cohesion and territorial development – this special issue explores the relations between place-based development and spatial justice. It addresses the complex challenges of place-based interventions, such as the critical role of the national policy environment in explaining variegated outcomes, enabling place-based agency in peripheralised regions, and assessing impacts. In this editorial, we provide an introductory discussion of the relations between place-based development and spatial justice, as well as brief introductions to the nine papers. We argue that there are a number of distinctive locally and nationally anchored mechanisms and inhibitors at play, which academics, and particularly planning professionals and policy-makers, need to be aware of in working towards a just Europe. Hence, place-based interventions are a valuable contribution to the territorial cohesion approach of the EU, but in the quest for spatial justice they cannot replace a redistributive territorial cohesion policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, major planning agendas in Europe steer the future of territorial organization towards an urban polycentric perspective. The accessibility to services of general interest (SGI), a significant source of spatial inequality in Europe, is one of the key challenges to address. However, instruments needed to support the implementation and monitoring of territorial policy measures regarding the distribution of, and accessibility to SGI are still under-developed. Studies generally relate to the (intra)regional and not the national scale. When they do so, they lose local specificity as they often consider the existence/availability of services at a given scale and not the actual capacity to reach their (often just estimated) location through the transport network. In the context of the revision of Portugal's National Plan for Territorial Planning Policies, this paper presents a comprehensive multi-criteria location-based approach for measuring the factual accessibility to a representative range of SGI at the national Portuguese scale. Results are evaluated considering the dichotomy between centrality and periphery, high and low density, and the regional disparities found. High accessibility values do not necessarily mean greater territorial cohesion. Contributions to the development of national planning policies that respond to cohesion challenges are also debated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the majority of the European housing stock falls towards the bottom of the energy efficiency rating scale on the EU Energy Performance Certificate. If governments and businesses are to successfully address ambitious CO2 reduction targets, then it will be imperative that energy-efficient measures and policies focus on existing housing. In order to understand what kind of retrofit is needed to achieve an “A” energy performance rating in social housing, the paper reports the findings of an on-going research project in the UK. The paper draws on a case study from the Technology Strategy Board's “Retrofit for the Future” competition entry in Cambridge. The upgrade strategy improved the home's energy performance rating to A, aimed to radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions (17 kg m−2 year−1) and provided affordable warmth for the tenants. In order to get an impression of the actual energy consumption in the case study, energy use behaviour of the household was observed. Based on the barriers identified in the case study, the feasibility of the current UK policy strategies (e.g. Smart Meters and Feed-in-Tariffs) to facilitate the acceptance of energy measures in social housing is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyse the appropriateness of monitoring approaches for the observation of inner-city reurbanization processes. Reurbanization is conceptualized here as a process of long-term stabilization of inner-city areas by both a readiness of present residents to stay and an influx of new residents. It has been recently re-set on the top of the European urban research agenda since non-growth has proved to be a major path of future development for many European cities. Recent research evidence across Europe underscores the fact that reurbanization depends much on local settings of institutional, socio-economic and infrastructural factors. To foster a clearer understanding of the nature and dynamics of local reurbanization, to assess its extent and progress and, what is more, to help practitioners to shape sustainable policy initiatives appropriate to the respective context, reurbanization needs to be observed over the long term. The complex character of reurbanization sets new challenges for monitoring approaches and indicator-based tools. Due to the genuine relation of the present debate on reurbanization to the phenomenon of non-growth or the return of the compact city, the focus in this paper is set on demographic development trends and their impact on inner-city change. In this vein, our paper presents a monitoring design and a respective newly developed indicator set for reurbanization which focuses more on the initial recognition of reurbanization than on its long-term stability. Methodically, chances and limits of the integration of household-related indicators and qualitative knowledge on reurbanization into monitoring tools are highlighted. Empirical and statistical evidence is taken from a recently completed EU FP 5 research project and from municipal surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) represents one of the most advanced pieces of water policy developed during the last decades. Since its introduction in 2000, several technical and political issues arose regarding this Directive and its implementation, and have to be managed by European Member States at the national level, but in strict collaboration with local authorities and stakeholders. Whilst several studies have analysed the WFD from a technical point of view, a few are available that assess and compare the quality of public participation processes in river basin management at the European level. The present paper shows the outcomes of an own-developed questionnaire sent to European water and environmental authorities during 2015, which highlights the variable situation in terms of stakeholders' involvement and methods adopted to interact with them, and also points out the scarce results that the consultation has obtained in terms of innovative measures to fulfil the requirements of the WFD. In light of the present situation, a better consideration of public consultation and associated methodologies is necessary for future management cycles, as well as a better coordination between Member States sharing river basins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of the interaction between corporate cultures and regional cultures in seven different regions. First, we develop the hypothesis that under certain conditions, the interaction between corporate cultures and regional cultures becomes a virtuous circle, in which corporate performance and regional performance reinforce each other. Based on the literature on corporate and regional (innovation) cultures, nine different fields are identified in which the interaction between corporate culture and regional culture takes place and potentially contributes to the “virtuous circle”. The interaction of regional and corporate actors in the seven regions is then analysed for each of these fields of potential tension and synergy, resulting in a comparative overview of the regions, detailing where virtuous circles appear to be present and where the interaction appears to be absent or even counterproductive. Subsequently, the analysis zooms in on the cases where interaction between corporate and regional actors resulted in virtuous consequences, in order to identify actions of companies and regional actors that contributed to the “virtuous circle”. It is concluded that successful regions are regions that are handling the potential tensions in a balanced way. This requires mutual orientation in the actions of companies and regional actors and the development of change competencies on both sides. The results underline that the circle of interaction between corporate and regional cultures must be an open circle, so that external events can be used as an opportunity to trigger change and to set the “virtuous circle” in motion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which regional culture informs the organizational culture of incumbent firms in specific regions and vice versa. To achieve this, we draw on a repertoire of conceptual and theoretical instruments, few of which have featured in the analysis of regional evolution hitherto. For example, the ideas of innovation systems of paradigm and regime are deployed as regional paradigms and regimes to access the dynamics of regional evolution. The concept of “spacing” is used to reveal the ways actors shape given places by meanings or symbols. Subsequently, the methodology of “cultural framing” is used to position key regional narratives and their meaning for regional evolution. This approach is then tested in a stylized manner against the main focal regions of the CURE project before being used in more detail to compare and contrast two of the more distinctive regional and corporate settings, Westphalia and Wales. In conclusion, we show the path inter-dependences and new path creations of both cast a new light on regional evolution in general and that of these regions in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article stems from the discrepancy between the lack of attention paid to industrial land policy by academics and the predominant thought among elected representatives and development agencies, i.e. that industrial land policy plays a key role in the creation of growth and new jobs. The article begins with a reflection on the literature, which stresses the need to develop knowledge on industrial land policies. To help fill this research gap, we have developed an exploratory piece of research on the theme of their 'spatial' and 'economic effectiveness', on the basis of statistical analyses dedicated to seven countries. As regards 'spatial effectiveness', the results underline significant national differentials in terms of land consumption on the one hand, while highlighting the economic sprawl that affects France and Belgium on the other hand. As regards 'economic effectiveness', our results show that the impact of the development of economic estates on growth depends largely on regional contexts. In particular, the 'intermediate regions' in western Germany stand out as belonging to a specific context where land policies seem particularly effective from an economic standpoint. By contrast, the 'economic effectiveness' of industrial land policies requires readjustments in the Netherlands as well as in most 'predominantly rural regions, close to a city'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation strategies for smart specialization have become the new framework for organizing innovation support in European regions and states. This article examines how policy-makers conceive monitoring in the context of the current European territorial and innovation policy. In this setting, monitoring activities have to move beyond an audit-oriented logic in order to integrate a range of strategic functions such as producing the information needed to manage evidence-based policy decisions effectively and keep stakeholders informed and engaged in the policy cycle. To analyse this transition, we first conceptualize the logic of intervention of smart specialization. In a second step, we present the findings from a survey of policy-makers on their perceptions of this intervention logic and monitoring. We find that strategy monitoring is an exercise that must go beyond a narrow audit focus. Regional policy-makers involve stakeholders to interpret monitoring results for strategy revision and they adopt a priority-specific intervention logic, albeit with problems of implementing this logic in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the creative and cultural policies that are developed on a European cross-border scale. It provides a comparative case study of the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion, located on the French–Spanish eastern border and the Greater Region between Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium and France. The analysis is based on the concept of cultural development, which is related to Euroregions to emphasize the uses of culture, identity and creative resources in strategies of territorial attractiveness and institutional capacity-building. The analysis then shows how the dynamics of cultural development concretely impact Euroregional policies: implications, or even strengthening, of arts and creativity in cross-cutting policies—tourism and sustainable development, promotion of cultural diversity and the human dimension of development. Furthermore, these dynamics underline the contribution of cultural policy to the construction of territoriality, and subsequently the contribution of Euroregions to the territorial and cultural construction of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Europe, cross-border cooperation in spatial planning has intensified in recent years. Organizations with varying institutional characteristics have emerged in urban areas that cross a national border. They deal with problems stemming from the cross-border situation. The institutional and spatial aspects of organizations on the sub-national level in nine European cross-border metropolitan regions are compared in this article. The analytical concept of metropolitan governance applied here takes into account the simultaneous existence of different cross-border organizations as well as their spatial and functional relationships. Subsequently, this article assesses the impact of governance on spatial planning in two cases, Basel and Lille, where institutional changes occurred on the sub-national level between 2000 and 2010. The way organizational and spatial attributes of new forms of cross-border metropolitan governance influence the coordination of spatial policies is discussed here. The comparison of organizational characteristics and capacity to coordinate reveals important differences. Furthermore, comparing spatial scales shows how new cross-border perimeters are drawn along existing national territories. Organizations' competences and interests are decisive for the coordination and implementation of spatial policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If regional policies are to make a difference, they must address the underlying issues that propel growth in successful regions and hamper development in others. This implies that in the wake of structural changes like the ongoing change from an industrial towards a knowledge-economy paradigm, policies for regional economic development must be reconsidered. This article reviews the development of new forms of regional policy in the context of the governance challenges created by the emergence of new knowledge dynamics. Having outlined a conceptual framework and reviewed the literature on the transformation of regional policy in Europe, the article explores current policy patterns in European regions, combining the results of a survey of the policies regional development bodies in European regions, and the findings about the impact of public policies on the basis of an extensive series of in-depth case studies of economic change processes in firms and regions. It is concluded that although important changes have taken place with regard to adopting policies to emerging processes in the knowledge economy, further adjustments may be called for in order for localities to fully benefit from new knowledge dynamics in an increasingly global era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explain how specific regional innovation systems (RISs) play relative important role in the knowledge network within European regions. EC encourages the interactions between regions and develop toward a cohesion balance. The whole Europe can be taken as a knowledge network that consists of different RISs possessing diversified resources. The existences of hierarchical relationships between different regions seem to lead us to explain whether the path toward higher-order position can be done by RISs to shape the regional competence in specific technological fields. We establish the datasets on the basis of patent data (from EPO) and REGIO database. Regional-level dataset, including 129 regions, helps to explore how different RIS develop their technological paths, and whether locational economic factors, technological conditions, and local innovativeness help RISs toward high-order position in the network. In addition, we also explore the role of the interaction of local factors for RISs in developing network position in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even a decade after the concept of polycentric development became popular and increasingly widespread in Europe as a normative policy stance allegedly leading to cohesion and competitiveness, its empirical basis is still rather weak. This is partly due to a lack of conceptual clearness, which makes its measurement difficult. This research briefing synthesises the results of two recent ESPON projects that aim to create a quantitative measurement of the extent of polycentricity of national urban systems, as well as the links they find between polycentricity and economic and social objectives. Both approaches have their limits and have been, and can be criticized from various perspectives. Some suggestions on how to proceed with this research agenda are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution explores the framing of the concept of Regional Innovation Systems (RISs) within European economic policies. Regional innovation systems are analytically and empirically assessed within the policy context of the Lisbon strategy, with special reference to regional dimensions in the European Research Area. From both theoretical and empirical analysis it is concluded that RIS is not a one-dimensional concept. Although we adhere to RIS arguments as important determinants in economic development, the analyses presented in this article point out that the role of regional innovative capabilities must not be overemphasized. Economic development is in first instance dependent on national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]