Handbook of territorial & local development strategies Chapter 1 - Strategic Dimension

Introduction 

Developing territorial and local development strategies able to ensure societal relevance and a clear future perspective is not an easy task. Experience has proven that integrated territorial strategies provide a good starting point. In the case of the European Union (EU) cohesion policy, they are required when investments are made in the form of territorial tools as per Articles 28 and 29 of the Common Provision Regulation (CPR)[1]. Nevertheless, they are also important for wise investments in territorial development outside the context of the EU cohesion policy.

Overall, strategies can help deliver a coordinated response to often complex, interlinked and cross-sectoral regional and local challenges, development needs and potentials, addressing the economic, social and environmental dimension of sustainable and resilient development. This is mirrored in the Territorial Agenda 2030 (TA2030)[2], which underlines the importance of strategic spatial planning for achieving territorial cohesion.

A strategic approach entails a ‘transformative and integrative, (preferably) public sector-led socio-spatial process through which a vision, coherent actions and means for implementation are produced that shape and frame what a place is and might become’ (Albrechts, 2006, pp. 1491). Hence, it tackles societally relevant objectives in a time-bound frame, based on a social pact and actions that pool actors’ efforts and resources. The strategy-making process should therefore provide a learning environment within a place, and the testing-ground for developing and verifying possible ideas. A strategic approach should also look for commitment to its delivery from the very beginning.

A reinforced approach to strategic thinking pushes for a more comprehensive understanding of development. The ambition is to respond to emerging demands for well-being and quality of life, topics that have increasingly come to the fore especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. This ambition is well illustrated in the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI), where it is clearly stated that ‘it is people’s quality of life that sits at the heart of the plan’ (Barca, Casavola and Lucatelli, 2014), with the twofold objective of improving communities’ well-being and social inclusion, and increasing job opportunities and territorial capital uptake. In the same spirit, the new Slovenian National Spatial Development Strategy tackles quality of life as a concrete territorial development goal in both cities and rural areas (ESPON, 2021a).

Going a step forward, there is a need to focus on the reinterpretation of development opportunities, as well as associated constraints, in the context of contemporary society towards a smarter, knowledge-based, greener economy, creating quality employment and social progress. The long-term vision for the EU’s rural areas (EC, 2021) highlights this crucial step, as it can be of fundamental importance for reversing ongoing trends and contributing to opening up new pathways for non-urban territories.

Summing up, the main characteristics of a strategic dimension include thinking beyond the silos of individual sectors, players and governance levels; a transformative character opening-up new pathways; societal relevance; a focus on existing and emerging demands, challenges and potential; a clear future perspective; flexibility in adjusting to changing circumstances; and a reflective learning dimension.

All this amounts to a fundamental shift in relation to the traditional approach to policy-making. It requires major efforts to avoid policy path-dependency and to pragmatically link to global trends that have emerged in the international debate and the activities of supranational organisations. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN), the Territorial Agenda 2030, the EU Green Deal, the new orientations for the worldwide rural agenda by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the longterm vision for the EU’s rural areas – are the most prominent among a large portfolio of policy discourses and agendas. All together, they constitute the overarching policy directions for conceiving strategic actions based on local specificities.

Here below, we highlight a number of significant challenges for policy-makers on how to develop a strategic approach for territorial and local development strategies.

Strategic capacity is about the ability to integrate thematic areas, to mobilise resources and people for a common cause (strategic objective) and to navigate through the process while dealing with uncertainties. In many cases time pressure and already stretched human resources – especially in small regions and municipalities – make this a considerable challenge. First, it is not about implementing standard solutions. Second, managing authorities and local actors have a high level of flexibility in designing and implementing strategies. This underlines the importance of building strategic capacity for both local actors and managing authorities, as lack of expertise may also occur at the level of managing authorities. [3]

Developing a strategy which is transformative, future-oriented and inclusive requires strategic orientation to handle the complexity of issues and bring together multiple players and policies with a purpose. This pushes for a change in mind-set and willingness to experiment with novel tools, methods and practices.

Another challenge refers to the fact that a strategy is never a stand-alone document but always embedded in a web of existing policies and agendas of various sectors at higher levels of governance. Linking to the objectives put forward by national, EU or global policy agendas is not always easy. Nevertheless, global agendas can help local actors towards a strategic reinterpretation of local and regional development opportunities. Given an increasing and urgent energy and environmental crisis, it is particularly important to explore how strategies can contribute to a global green transition and fully grasp its opportunities on a local level.

Besides policies and agendas at higher levels of governance, there may be coexisting territorial or local development strategies, often using different territorial tools, that completely or partially operate in the same area. From a strategic point of view, the challenge here is to ensure that overall policy action is coherent (to strengthen directionality) and coordinated (to increase impact).

Challenge 1 : How to support strategic capacity ?

In many cases, regions and municipalities (especially smaller ones) must punch above their own weight when engaging with transformative multi-sector strategies (CoR et al., 2022a).

Concerns about local strategic capacity, mainly expressed by managing authorities, have to do with the lack of focus in identifying development needs and problems, insufficient justification of objectives and their intervention logic and the scope for better thematic integration (Van der Zwet et al., 2017). This applies particularly to complex territorial strategies in countries with less experience in integrated approaches, with high cohesion policy budgets, or where the introduction of territorial tools has prompted policy experimentation.

As a matter of fact, strategic capacity largely depends on the maturity of institutional environments and appears rather unevenly spread across Europe. Even in seemingly optimal circumstances (i.e. high levels of capacity and experience) integration can pose significant challenges. Coupled with low budget allocation, this may lead to ‘giving up’ on integration.

Capacity building measures can help improve policy management, strategic and operational planning, and evaluation. Moreover, working on capacity building across different levels of government ensures that knowledge is passed downwards and upwards, and that shared learning is fully embedded in the policy framework.

Focusing on Community-led Local Development (CLLD) and Integrated Territorial Investment (ITI), there are considerable differences in the targeted offer for capacity building:

• CLLD strategies can rely on the extensive methodological support developed within the LEADER approach in past programming periods, well represented by the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD). Also, the LEADER method embeds a clear focus on cooperation, which helps dissemination and exchange. For example, LEADER/CLLD strategy documents are made available in appealing and easy to understand formats (e.g. booklets, leaflets, project brochures, visuals). Even if in original language, this simple type of easy-access resources nurtures a culture of learning.
• ITI strategies were only introduced in the 2014–2020 programming period, and have no dedicated platform for policy learning and support. Thematic objective (TO) 11 ‘Efficient public administration’ was available to support capacity building also for ITI strategies. However, only a few strategies have benefited from this, among others the Spanish AZUL macro-regional strategy and the Danube Delta strategy in Romania. This could signal that strategy-specific investments in capacity building are seen as useful only when high complexity is envisaged, while for most of the cases other forms of technical assistance (e.g. external experts) are preferred.

Challenge 2 : How to enhance strategic orientation through policy innovation ? 

Territorial and local development strategies are meant to be transformative strategies, i.e. able to identify new pathways and deliver change, which mark the essence of a strategic dimension.

In order to successfully cope with increasing environmental, social and economic complexities as well as high uncertainty, territorial and local development strategies must count on the contribution and commitment of a large number of actors and organisations – both within and outside the geographical remit of the strategy. Consequently, their strategic orientation largely builds on the capacity to create a sense of collective direction underpinning the large set of actions (financial, organisational, behavioural, etc.) needed to achieve a desired policy objective. This means that policy-makers must be ready to test more collaborative efforts and policy innovation, i.e. ‘novel processes, tools and practices used for policy design and development that result in better problem solving of complex issues’ (Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, 2018).

Policy innovations can also help to link the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions: what the strategy is about and how it is designed, implemented and revised. Experimentation, learning and reflective practice can enhance and help maintain the strategic orientation of policy action from design to delivery. This includes:

• reflection-in-action to feed informed decision-making and allow adaptation over time; and
• reflection-on-action, which requires stepping back and reflecting on the process so far (e.g. through policy evaluations or stock-taking of policy impacts).

Challenge 3 : How to link strategies to EU and global agendas and deliver the green transition ? 

Territorial and local developments often deal with the consequences or local impacts of global developments such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, environmental hazards, etc. Mitigating risks and increasing resilience to developments beyond their own sphere of influence is a major challenge for regional and local strategies. While primarily addressing regional and local development needs, strategies need to reduce potential local impacts of future risks; but they also aim at making a difference with regards to the factors causing the risks at a global level, for example by reducing pollution, waste or soil sealing.

Challenge 4 : How to foster coordination between overlapping strategies ? 

Regulations allow for different territorial development strategies to coexist in the same territory. In best case scenarios, the different strategies can develop synergies and mutually reinforce each other. However, synergies between strategies might be underexploited. In worst case scenarios, strategies might thwart each other’s impacts.

There are also countries where municipalities cannot be part of more than one strategy. However, when this rule exists, it usually applies to strategies under the same territorial delivery mechanism (TDM). For instance, in Slovenia non-urban CLLD strategies do not overlap between each other but do overlap with SUD strategies.

The overlapping of strategies can be driven by different managing authorities or different rules for the management of EU funds, leading to strategies likely to work in parallel. Overlapping ITI and CLLD strategies can also be explained by existing LEADER Local Action Groups (LAGs) already in place when programming new strategies supported by the EU cohesion policy.

Recommendations

• Apply a pragmatic approach to strategy-making.
  • Take local and territorial development needs and emerging demands as a starting point for discussing the focus of a strategy, and select and prioritise important development issues and problems.
  • Make the strategic development ideas and principles visible, outlining realistic decisions and commitments for implementation.
  • Be pragmatic and realistic, understand strategies as living documents that evolve and change over time.
• Invest in building strategic capacity.
  • Keep informed about opportunities for capacity building and peer-to-peer learning for managing authorities and local bodies on how to support the strategic dimension of territorial and local strategies, including those offered at EU level like the TAIEX-REGIO PEER2PEER tool.
  • Be inspired by good-practice examples, which are offered in particular at EU level, and the range of options that could suit different institutional contexts, objectives and budget allocations.
  • Make use of technical assistance, targeting both local strategy owners and managing authorities.
  • Managing authorities can offer capacity building for local and regional authorities working on territorial and local strategies.
  • Managing authorities or national authorities can offer peer-to-peer learning initiatives for local and regional authorities engaged in territorial and local strategies.
• Test policy innovations since traditional approaches struggle with today’s challenges and in delivering impact.
  • Follow a mission-oriented approach when defining the focus and objectives of a strategy.
  • Allow for diverse visions of desirable futures and stimulate proactive thinking by means of spatial imaginary.
  • Explore the possibilities of co-creation tools and techniques, including living labs, to allow for more experimentation and find new approaches to the full valorisation of development potentials.
  • Provide a learning environment and testing-ground for developing and verifying different strategic options. Encourage new ideas and experiments; allow them to fail as long as there are mechanisms to learn from the failure.
• Use the EU Green Deal as a roadmap for change.
  • Take into account higher level policy objectives and see whether it is possible to demonstrate how the territorial or local strategy contributes to them.
  • Plan the transition with the support and guidance of players that are more likely to be affected by the change.
  • Make use of external resources and scientific knowledge. Engage with local universities on clear missions for sustainability.
  • Assess how the territorial and local needs addressed by the strategy are linked to larger EU and global policy agendas, in particular related to the green transition. Access to funding can be conditioned by a more effective demonstration of how the territories’ proposed plans or projects are aligned with these agendas.
• Foster complementarities and synergies between overlapping strategies.
  • When preparing a new strategy check for territorially overlapping strategies and how they affect the objectives of the new strategy.
  • Combine regulatory requirements for themes, funds and spatial eligibility with collaborative mechanisms so as to ensure coordination between strategies.
  • Promote coordination between overlapping strategies along the design and implementation of a strategy, especially when selecting projects within each strategy.