Handbook of territorial & local development strategies Chapter 2 - Territorial Focus

Introduction 

Challenges and opportunities addressed by territorial and local development strategies across non-urban areas in Europe differ greatly according to places ́ environmental, socio-economic, geographical and institutional characteristics. Each challenge and opportunity addressed also has its own geography (TA 2030, 2020), and it often does not match the geographical jurisdiction of decision making. Examples of this include risks linked to flooding or regional transport flows. In both cases, decisions taken in neighbouring areas are essential for addressing the issue at hand. Other examples concern the provision of education and training services, particularly in rural areas, which can require new forms of co-operation and resource sharing between schools located in different places.

In short, a key aspect for policy makers responsible for territorial and local development strategies is to identify a consistent territory for policy action, defining the spatial scale and the specific area that are more suitable for achieving the objectives set in the policy agenda.

As such, defining an appropriate territorial focus for a strategy is essential, also because if it does not fit the challenges and opportunities to be addressed, the successful implementation of the strategy will be jeopardised.

The definition of a territorial focus, however, is not always straightforward. Often it involves both bottom-up and top-down processes and is a long iterative process informed by (a) discussions about the objectives of the strategy, (b) evidence-based analysis of the current situation, and (c) the composition of the partnership responsible for the strategy, including the involvement of the local community. It also raises questions concerning the critical mass, i.e. how big or small the area covered should be in order to best address the objective of the strategy and how broad or limited the partnership for the strategy should be.

Moreover, the variety of administrative traditions in Europe – ranging from strongly centralised Member States to decentralised Member States, the size of local and intermediate authorities and their attitude towards cooperation – are additional features that influence the choice of the territorial focus.

EU Regulations give freedom to shape the area of territorial and local development strategies, and consequently any non-urban territories below the programme level can be eligible, ranging from areas with geographical specificities like mountainous areas, islands, coastal areas and sparsely populated areas to rural areas and regions, broadly defined.

More specifically, EU Regulations encourage territorial integration beyond administrative boundaries towards efficient forms of service delivery, public goods management or public administration functions. Territorial integration is then a process that aims to shape a consistent territorial entity for strategy making (Doucet, Böhme and Zaucha, 2014). It can take place at various geographical and spatial levels, like in the case of a joint territorial strategy developed by a group of adjacent municipalities, a macro-regional strategy or a cooperation initiative between a network of small towns and villages, among many possible examples. Territorial integration is often based on the idea of bringing together several territorial administrative units that are functionally linked into so called functional areas. A functional area describes a space that encompasses coherently interdependences among places (OECD, 2020), whether applied to a region, sub-region, or to small areas.

This chapter identifies three main challenges in the territorial focus definition and offers pathways and examples to confront them.

The first challenge focuses on strategies addressing a functional area. In some cases, a single local authority is not able to address strategic objectives that go beyond its limited administrative boundaries and power. In some others, regions are often too broad to manage strategies based on social and spatial coherence. Given that a functional area does not usually align with an administrative entity, the choice of the territorial focus and the definition of the appropriate strategy area are not trivial operations. This is because such a choice includes both a technical dimension (selection of data, methods, expertise, etc.) and a policy dimension (depending, among others, on the strategy objectives, the interests at stake and the cooperation mechanisms).

A second challenge is represented by strategies dealing with rural-urban linkages. This is a common feature especially in territories with low or medium degrees of urbanisation and with networks of small and medium-sized cities (HESPI and EUKN, 2015). High levels of interdependency between rural and urban areas often require strengthening the governing of rural-urban linkages for mutual benefits, and an appropriate territorial focus is essential for such aim.

In an ever more integrated Europe, territorial and local development strategies do not necessarily stop at national borders. In many border regions, successful strategies need to be designed beyond national borders and ensure adherence with territorial and local development strategies in neighbouring countries. In some cases this leads to cross-border strategies. Such strategies represent a specific – but increasingly relevant – case of misalignment between territorial functionalities and administrative boundaries, where current challenges are exacerbated by different language, legal, planning and governance systems.

Challenge 1 : How to apply a functional area approach ?

There is no blueprint of how to best delineate or define a strategy’s geographical coverage.

Territorial and local development strategies can have very different territorial scopes, sizes and ways to define them – each of them fitting their own needs. Territorial and local development strategies in non-urban areas can, for example, cover a whole territorial administrative unit (e.g. a town in a rural region), administrative regions or functional territories that go beyond administrative borders.

Already in the 2014–2020 programming period, territorial and local development strategies defined their territorial focus and in most cases this operation did not follow the administrative borders, but took a more functional approach.

Challenge 2 : How to strengthen rural-urban linkages in strategy making ?

Functional relations between rural and urban areas have changed substantially in recent decades. Improvements in transport and communications technologies, as well as changes in land use, are only some of the many factors that blur the line between rural and urban.

Today, both cities and rural areas include urban and rural elements, even if present in different proportions and characterised by different densities, settlement patterns and economic activities (OECD, 2013). While on the one hand differences between urban and rural areas are getting increasingly fuzzy, on the other hand development prospects are often extremely different. While many rural areas face demographic and economic decline, main urban areas are attractive growth poles with substantial administrative and financial capacities. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed this only marginally (CoR et al., 2021).

The interdependencies between rural and urban areas have increased and grown stronger. This is a global phenomenon, but it is even more evident for the European context, which is characterised by a polycentric structure of large and medium-sized cities and towns and villages (HESPI and EUKN, 2015). Therefore, it is necessary to better understand related dynamics, e.g. demographic flows, labour market flows, public service provision, mobility, environmental and cultural services, leisure assets.

On a policy side, a clear understanding of this intertwining favours more strategic uses of available resources, and can be extremely relevant for the definition of the territorial focus in order to better exploit potential complementarities.

The reinforcement of rural-urban linkages and the creation of strong, mutually supportive cooperation between rural and urban areas, are key to realising smart, circular and inclusive development (TA, 2030). Rural-urban linkages are key for most territorial or local strategies in non-urban areas. In some cases, their development is highly influenced by urban areas in close proximity and thus the strategy needs to relate to this. In other cases, the territory of the strategy can comprise both rural and urban areas.

Challenge 3 : How to develop cross-border territorial and local development strategies 

In an ever more integrated EU, increasingly functional areas span across national borders. This is the case for areas shaped by the geography of places (e.g. river basins, mountain ranges, etc.), but also for areas with historic, cultural, and socio-economic features that go beyond national boundaries. Additionally, labour market dynamics can also give rise to functional geographies that cross national borders (Eurostat, 2020

). Territorial strategies for functional areas spanning across national borders meet a range of additional challenges.

The importance of enduring cross-border cooperation is well expressed by the Territorial Agenda 2030, which advocates for ‘action to embed stable cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation in macro-regional, national, regional and local development strategies’ and to ‘support the development of new strategic documents, where needed, and the promotion of co-development, involving citizens across borders’.

As a matter of fact, the development of cross-border strategies remains rather experimental. This experimental feature does not refer only to the territorial focus, but it also encompasses other dimensions of an integrated approach, which makes them very interesting cases.

Even if they have functional relations, cross-border functional areas must cope with administrative, institutional, legislative, cultural and linguistic boundaries, which make it difficult to co-design and implement joint programmes and projects. For example, running a transport service covering a functional area across national – but even regional – borders would be subject to different legislative frameworks and challenged by organisational bottlenecks. The same discourse goes for education and health services, which together with transport are essential services.

When addressing strategy design and implementation, challenges are even bigger. For instance, socio-economic data are usually collected at country level, so that functional interdependencies are mainly understood in relation to urban centres within national borders, putting them under a rural-urban narrative instead of a cross-border one. Moreover, non-urban cross-border areas often lack the institutional thickness and critical mass needed to convey interests around broader strategic visions. Finally, provided that joint territorial visions are developed, a further challenge is how to translate them into concrete objectives and measures.

Territorial cooperation programmes can serve as a first steppingstone to address these challenges. Furthermore, experience from existing cross-border CLLD strategies showcase possible solutions and workarounds. Last but not least, European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) offer possibilities for establishing stable governance structures.

Recommendations

• Apply a functional area approach to match strategy objectives with the spatial scale appropriate to deliver them in an effective way.
  • Take into account the objectives of the strategy, evidence-based analysis of the current situation and the partnership setting, including its governance and cooperation capacities.
  • Allow the definition of the territorial focus of a strategy to take time. Even when building on a previous strategy, the territorial focus should be considered and not taken for given.
  • Consider common assets as well as development issues to shape the territorial focus.
• The definition of the strategy boundaries can neither be made (top-down) by the upper-level authority, nor be left (bottom-up) to the local authorities.
  • A right balance would be that the upper-level authority produces a set of context-based indicators that are in line with its strategic guidelines, and the local authorities organise themselves coherently.
• Delimitate the strategy area by combining data-driven and partnership-driven approaches.
  • When policy aims at linking development needs with territorial potentials, the definition of homogenous areas for policy action usually requires a multi-criteria approach.
  • Use spatial data on flows and interdependencies to identify suitable proposals. Make use of the partnership’s tacit knowledge on spatial flows, interdependencies and governance coalitions.
  • In many cases, managing authorities can facilitate the partnership’s definition of the territorial focus, for example playing the role of mediators or data providers. Data and spatial analysis can be made available by supralocal bodies as upper administrative levels or research organisations, including universities.
  • Where there is no pre-existing partnership, managing authorities can support the development of new forms of association, (i.e. rural-urban, across municipalities, cross-border).
• Promote rural-urban linkages to better exploit potential complementarities and identify possible synergies.
  • Explore rural-urban linkages in all types of spatial arrangements.
  • Assess rural-urban linkages within the strategy area and between the strategy area and neighbouring urban areas. This concerns all kinds of interlinkages in terms of economic, social, environmental and institutional flows and interdependencies – including various service provisions.
  • Look at the strategy themes from two viewpoints (i.e. rural and urban) and investigate opportunities without predefined spatial bias.
• Establish rural-urban partnerships.
  • This can be achieved through both single-purpose and multiple-purpose partnerships. The choice between the two depends on the number of issues at stake but also on the capacity of the partners. Single-purpose partnerships can be a realistic choice to start with.
  • It is important to ensure a level playing field between rural and urban partners. Managing authorities can support smaller partners through capacity building efforts.
  • In the operational programmes, managing authorities should prioritise strategies that reflect functional integration between urban and rural areas, paying specific attention to (a) economic development, (b) service provision, and/or (c) natural and cultural asset management.
• Allow territorial strategies to extend beyond national borders.
  • Assess whether the functional area of the topics addressed in a strategy is affected by developments beyond the nearest national border and stretches into the neighbouring country. If a functional area extends across a national border, consider the development of a cross-border territorial strategy.
  • Thematic collaborations can support the coordination of cross-sectoral strategies, ensuring strategic orientation especially in the implementation phase.
  • Be realistic and allow the set-up of coordination arrangements that blend national and cross-border structures.
  • Managing authorities can promote the cross-border dimension also in regional operational programmes. Setting up a dialogue between bordering managing authorities should be done already in the programming phase.
  • Managing authorities can provide mechanisms to ensure the possibility for EGTCs to not only be the sole beneficiaries of single projects but also of territorial development strategies.