Assessing the strategic needs of local territorial systems (LTSs)

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to contribute to the literature on place marketing by focusing on the concept of strategic needs, i.e. the set of strategic priorities that a place could achieve in a medium- to long-term horizon to improve its development. Design/methodology/approach The research examines the strategic needs of four local territorial systems (LTSs), i.e. clusters of municipalities that share social, economic and spatial similarities, located in a southern Italian province, through an analysis of their competitive positioning over three temporal instants. Findings For each LTS, the analysis identified a number of development goals that local policymakers could pursue and the strategies most suitable to achieve the said goals. Originality/value This paper proposes a new methodological approach to set the development goals of local areas based on the simultaneous assessment of their attractiveness and competitive capacity.

Benchmarking urban competitiveness for economic recovery: an application to Porto and Lisbon

“…Like in other recent studies (Rodríguez-Pose and Griffiths, 2021), the application in this paperdrawing on evidence from the metropolitan areas of Porto and Lisbonconfirms that population size is not a good proxy for urban competitiveness, suggesting that solely concentrating investments in the larger municipalities will not necessarily lead to higher metropolitan competitiveness. On the contrary, as also argued for other southern European contexts (Pino et al, 2018), it suggests that an approach taking into consideration different interventions for different "clubs" of municipalities (instead of one-size-fits-all investment plans) would more likely contribute to expand territorial competitiveness within metropolitan areas, valorise territorial assets and reduce the apparent spatial divides observed in this paper's analyses. From a policy and place management perspective, this would be a plea to focus on shared metropolitan strategies and common projects that valorise the competitive potential and distinctiveness of each city "club" (instead of copycatting projects and investments), widening metropolitan competitiveness potentials, notwithstanding the fact that such a type of intervention would call for strong administrative and organizing capacities, both at the municipal and metropolitan level (e.g.…”

“…between Loures and Cascais) the position of Vila Nova de Gaia and Sintra are comparable. Seen in combination, these results highlight the advantages of considering integrated territorial systems and "clubs" of municipalities when assessing competitiveness potentials and devising related policies (S aez et al, 2013;Pino et al, 2018); also, they suggest that while there are signs of spatial fragmentation and divides within both metropolitan areas, the great variability and heterogeneity in the behaviour of municipal size classes may be a symptom of the fact that there are different roads to urban competitiveness and its "levels" depend more on the city's intrinsic characteristics and place vocations than on size. Given these results, we sought to understand which dimensions are more closely associated to municipalities' competitiveness.…”

Imagen del destino desde la perspectiva del turista

“…Los destinos turísticos representan estructuras complejas (Florek, Insch y Gnoth, 2006;Gallarza et al, 2002), por lo tanto, la imagen desempeña un papel activo en la creación de valor de un territorio y demanda de la investigación la expansión de pensamientos críticos que faciliten el desarrollo de ideas estratégicas mediante la conservación y difusión del patrimonio cultural tangible, intangible y natural de un territorio (Mariutti y Tench, 2016;Pino, Guido, Peluso y Pichierri, 2018).…”

Sustainable Supply Chain in the Agri-Food Sector in South-Italy as an Eco-Sustainability Tool for Innovation and Territorial Development

“…According to Kotler et al (1993), territorial marketing represents that set of collective actions put in place with the aim of making a specific territory attractive to new economic and productive activities. This favors local entrepreneurial development, increasing their ability to attract external resources (Pike et al, 2017;Renigier-Biłozor & Biłozor, 2015;Tovma et al, 2020), and outlines a process of formulating marketing and strategy branding that is both responsible and territory specific (Pino et al, 2018). Starting from these assumptions in a context strongly linked to the creation of an agri-food territorial logistic macro system, it is important to identify the levers on which to rely.…”