Transcript Slide 1
ESPON Open Seminar 2014 “Opportunities and threats for territorial cohesion: Blue Growth and Urban Poverty” Plenary session 3: The EU Urban Agenda and cities’ role in the creation of growth and jobs TOWN in Europe Loris Servillo Three items 1. Main territorial trends 2. Opportunities and challenges 3. Experiences and examples Morphological analysis POPULATION (inh.) DENSITY (inh. / kmq) < 300 300 - 1500 > 1500 < 5000 OTHER SETTLEMENTS VST VST 5000 50000 OTHER SETTLEMENTS SMST SMST > 50000 OTHER SETTLEMENTS large SMST HDUC General picture ~8,350 urban settlements can be classified as SMSTs ~70,000 urban settlements can be classified as Very Small Towns (below the 5.000 inhabitant threshold) SMST: about 27% of EU population Very Small Towns: 19% of EU population What makes SMSTs different • On average, SMSTs (in database) are different from large cities on a range of measures: • Social (older working population, more pensioners, higher ‘nonforeign’ population) • Economic (greater proportion employment in manufacturing, more self-employment, more likely to be net exporter of labour (dormitory), less diverse in sectoral mix) • Housing issues (more second homes) • • Changes in SMSTs during the period 2001-11 are different from the change that are observed in cities over the same period • Demographic (faster growing, net migration rate higher) • Economic (slightly greater rate) However between group and between country differences: ‘All’ Small towns (N=1339) Small towns in Slovenia Small towns in NW Italy Migrationenhanced aging? Shrinking Growing Labour exporters Net migration by country Is ‘town’ as a proper category? Socio-spatial configurations with a specific regional dependency high variety of socio-economic performances EU Settlement polygons NUTS3 with prevailing settlements Issues for further thoughts concerning regions predominantly populated in small settlements - Prevalence of macro trends - less spatial inertial capacity to bounce them back macro/meso regional dependency - relationship with urban regions? National policies matter? Preliminary results Economic activity mix and population size in SMSTs Catalonia Slovenia Czech Republic Flanders networked large cities agglomerated autonomous 1,4 1,3 1,2 1,1 emp 1 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 0,9 0,8 0,7 0,6 pop 1,2 1,4 1,6 1,8 N (SMST polygons in database) Mean number of intersections between SMST polygons and: local authority units NUTS3 regions (2006) (LAU) Belgium (BE) 184 1.23 1.05 Czech Republic (CZ) 222 1.73 1.01 Spain (ES) France (FR) Italy (IT) Poland (PL) Sweden (SE) Slovenia (SI) England & Wales (UK) Total 65 881 252 42 41 43 574 2304 1.78 2.89 2.41 1.33 1.00 1.26 1.19 2.05 1.00 1.06 1.11 1.02 1.00 1.00 1.12 1.07 ! Policy message So what? ! Policy message • Do SMSTs across Europe face ‘common problems’? • Diverse? Social and economic problems for SMSTs are only ‘common’ in an abstract sense • In practice the ‘problems’ of towns are mainly framed by their national/regional context (clusters of ‘problem-sets’) • What concerns of European policy touch down on SMSTs? • Giving SMSTs a voice in regional debates • Small town does not mean small problem • Tailored measures (place-based approach?) • Supporting alternative visions of the local economy • Collective action within/among small towns • Supporting the definition of micro-regionalism processes • CLLD? THANK YOU [email protected]