The Right to Not Catch Up—Transitioning European Territorial Cohesion towards Spatial Justice for Sustainability

Abstract

Recent EU environmental and spatial policies notably strive towards the development paradigm of green growth and economic competitiveness. However, operationalizing spatial policies through growth-driven GDP logics promotes an unequal race towards narrowly defined developmental ‘success’, while perpetuating social, economic and environmental inequalities. Meanwhile, the EU’s territorial cohesion approach has remained a conceptual ‘black box’, its apparent inadequacy for notably mitigating territorial disparities leading to renewed questions about territorial policy’s relevance, delivery and evaluation. In this paper, we add to calls for redesigning territorial cohesion by proposing a turn towards spatial justice for territorial sustainability. Pointing out the need to refocus on regional capabilities and alternative development trajectories, we argue that the ‘right to not catch up’ enables a more locally meaningful and globally sustainable development. Drawing from regional statistics, policy analyses and an empirical case study of three European Territorial Cooperation programs in the heterogeneous Austrian-Czech-Slovak-Hungarian border region, we illustrate how current EU spatial policy approaches evolve in regional practice and why current policy aims fall short for sustainable transformations. Through interrogating development discourses and their alternatives, we contribute to emerging new perspectives on sustainable territorial development at the European as well as at regional levels.

Accountability and Reporting for Sustainability and Public Value: Challenges in the Public Sector

“…The Cohesion Policy (CP) operates on two levels, European and national, giving life to a multidimensional system based on vertical and horizontal subsidiarity, as the way to attribute of concurrent competences which, together with the principles of decentralization and autonomy, finds flexible application through integrated strategies at multiple levels of government [77].…”

The Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI): A Critical Analysis of the Indicator Grid

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has forced an accurate reflection about the leading urbanization model's crisis [1,2] and the need to place marginal areas at the core of new territorial sustainable development paradigms [3]. This reflection has immediately resulted in growing attention towards territorial cohesion policies that, starting from 2007 with the Lisbon Treaty, are at the core of European programs to reduce disparities between and within European countries, thus promoting a more balanced and sustainable development [4,5].…”

Shrinking geographies or challenged rurality’s? Three points of reflection – commentary to Syssner

“…To conclude, and in addition to Syssners call for further understanding shrinking geographies -there is indeed much we have not studied yet -I would like to amplify Syssners appeal for a re-politisation of the topic: how we frame the problem as scientists, and whether politicians and policy-makers decide to invest in shrinking regions or whose initiatives to support, is also a political choice. We should be aware of the (negative) externalities of formulated solutions: social exclusion, uneven resource distribution or infrastructural development, the pressure to catch up with global development forces or just living with the noise clean energy produces (Demeterova et al 2020). A focus on rightsizing or smart adaptation, however is also a choice not to invest in peripheral regions, made by national level governments (Küpper et al 2018).…”