Territorial governance of non-standard geographies - Nostageo
Projects
Research on emerging non-standard functional territories: definitions, delimitations, development trends and cooperation arrangements
September 2023 – September 2025
EUR 899,843.00
Different types of functional areas may be identified across European territory, serving the purpose of having a better place-based policy design, delivery and evaluation, while being based on relevant statistical evidence. While for many of those functional areas there is vast evidence already available, as in case of functional urban areas (FUA), much less consideration has been given to emerging geographies, understood as new functional territories shaped by international flows and exposed to their transboundary impacts. As outlined in the ESPON 2030 Thematic Action Plan on ‘Governance of new geographies’, there is a strong policy demand for understanding better how, by following on the concept of functional areas, the policies may facilitate functional relationships across the space and deliver a territorial governance model fostering multi-level cooperation beyond the administrative boundaries.
The objective of this European research project is to deliver high quality research on emerging non-standard functional territories in terms of their definitions, delimitations, development trends and ongoing hard and soft cooperation arrangements. Through observations for the entire ESPON Programme area, with the support of territorially confined cases, this project shall provide policy advice on how to arrange optimal territorial governance mechanisms that would combine formal frameworks with soft spaces of governance, adequately addressing functionalities in such new geographical areas. In effect, this project shall help strengthen capacities and skills of policy stakeholders at different relevant levels in harnessing the potential of functional approach in planning and governance. The main guiding principle will be twofold:
- To study emerging non-standard geographies based on a flexible notion of ‘functional areas’ as manifestations of spatial patterns of technical, environmental, natural and/or social interrelationships and networks, without presuming geographic forms and contiguous relationships.
- To identify and study the links and appropriateness between new soft, hard and combined governance frameworks in the context of emerging challenges and problems that they are set up to respond to.
Given the fact that a lot of research and evidence already exists on functional areas, the service provider will focus on ”emerging non-standard geographies”, which in practice means areas:
- Which do not belong to more “standard-type” typologies
- Which are forming the geographical dimension of emerging and/or new territorial challenges related to, for instance, Covid-19 pandemic, transition towards carbon neutral economy, energy transition, migration, pollution or environmental elements such as water basins, green areas etc. In this context, functional territories covered by ESIF’s integrated development strategies within Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 may also be examined.
- That are characterized by the documented functional relations or networks or flows between people and/or places and that have existing governance mechanisms in place.
- That are not exclusively defined by administrative borders nor necessarily composed of contiguous spaces.
- Where data is fragmentary or a lack of pan-European overview is evident.
There is a clear need to widen the notion of functional areas with a focus on a set of topics, which are not typically aligned with administrative borders, and – instead - relate to the management of the shared resources and infrastructure (e.g. water basins, green areas, natural resources, energy production and distribution networks, transport facilities, data infrastructure, etc.) or manifest themselves in a geographically indistinct spread of pollutants, epidemics, migration flows. Better understanding of these geographies (i.e. data and network analyses, trends, their emergent characteristics, challenges and opportunities) is needed so as to come up with new inputs for establishing appropriate functional governance mechanisms.
Policy questions
The study will address the following policy questions:
- How What are the emerging categories of functional areas and how to set their boundaries in a way that they could help tailor the respective policy processes at different relevant levels of governance?
- What are the specific drivers fostering the development of specific functional areas and how they shape up the transboundary impacts of flows?
- What are the ongoing territorial governance arrangements (soft and hard, including monitoring instruments) and which stakeholders are involved in the specific cases of such emerging categories of functional areas in Europe?
- What kind of administrative, financial, monitoring or other management-related obstacles can be identified in adopting/applying policies and spatial planning practices in emerging functional territories, e.g in multi-level and cross-sectorial perspective, and which practical recommendation can be given to overcome these obstacles? What are the overall lessons learned (benefits, success stories and failures) in building and implementing territorial governance and planning models.
- How are emerging issues, for instance, pollution, natural hazards, natural resources, climate neutrality and biodiversity incorporated into new and old forms of governance structures and decision making? How is green/digital/energy infrastructure provision in or across ‘new geographies’ governed across Europe?
- How to ensure policy coherence between the countries, regions and local administrative models concerned, to plan and manage the new categories of functional territories, in terms of cooperation capacities, alignments of strategies and policies, and stakeholder engagement schemes?
- What kind of data, indicators and methodologies are needed to define and monitor the development of the new categories of functional areas and setting up optimal territorial governance models for such new categories of functional areas? Which approaches should be adopted in order to collect, store, share and analyse such data?
Expected results
The main outputs of the service will be:
- A list of relevant emerging non-standard geographies accompanied with data and metadata on spatial boundaries.
- Identified and assessed spill overs and transboundary impacts of the flows acting as conduits for emerging non-standard geographies in the respective categories.
- Stock-taking of available data at the respective territorial scales.
- A set of indicators to measure development trends or capture some specific territorial patterns in the new categories of functional territories.
- Structured data/analysis and strategic mapping on the governance structures in the identified emerging non-standard geographies.
- Detailed case studies showcasing the application of the abovementioned analyses while ensuring policy uptake of the project among selected range of policy makers and other stakeholders.
- Advice (guidelines) on better policy coherence between the countries, regions and local administrative units concerned to plan and manage the new categories of functional territories. In addition, provision of policy recommendations, good-practice examples on soft and hard policy mechanisms in order to reach better governance and more effective development of emerging functional territories.
- Guidance on capacity measures to enhance the stakeholders’ ability to design and implement relevant territorial governance mechanisms.
- Data and interactive maps and graphs which will be showcased in the ESPON Portal
More information
Contractor: Spatial Foresight GmbH (Luxembourg)
Joint Partners: TU Wien (AT), Nordregio (SE), Politecnico di Torino (IT), ÖIR GmbH (AT), TCP International (DE), Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (HU), UHI Perth (UK), Wageningen Environmental Research (NL)
Contact:
- Zintis Hermansons (Research and Policy Manager) [email protected],
- Caroline Clause ( Financial and Budget Manager) [email protected]