Ioannis Saratsis (p)

Since the famous Barca Report, European Cohesion Policy has introduced the idea of "place based" policies. This is a relatively new idea, in contrast to the main subject of the CP's intervention focus which is the administrative NUTS 2 regions. Place is a vague concept. It includes mountainous areas, deprived urban areas, islands, rural areas, environmentally fragile areas, functional urban regions and many other kinds of places that can be described. ESPON projects are very indicative of this complexity.
Moreover the allocation of funding is made at the NUTS 2 level customizing all European regions in 3 levels of development using mainly the GDP per capita index.
Obviously, the same method is going to be used in the forthcoming 2021-2027 programing period. For the moment, there is no way to incorporate the different kind of places that exist in a NUTS 2 Region, and thus it is difficult to reach National or European development goals.
Of course new ideas sometimes come with new instruments. Integrated Territorial Investment for example is a new instrument proposed in the current programing period in order to overcome some of the problems that occur when place specific policies must be planned and implemented. Unfortunately, new instruments are not always easy to use.
Taking as an example the Sterea Ellada Region in Greece the paper tries to highlight some of the problems that exist in implementing these new ideas. The Region (as a NUTS 2 area) wad considered to be one of the most prosperous in Greece, but on the same time one of the poorest NUTS 3 areas is part of the Region. On the other hand the biggest and most environmentally degraded industrial area of the country is located in the Region due to the neighboring Attica Region and its spread effects (both negative and positive). The paper argues that the financial allocation of the CP funds could be more efficient if it is not based only on GDP per head, and discusses some ideas on how to include different places and different needs in an otherwise strict process.

Yeong-ok Son (p), Jumong Na

With the rapid industrialization of Korea, the urban outlook has expanded and the rapid rural-to-urban population movement has created new cities and urban areas to solve the housing problems of urban residents. Therefore, vacancies occurred in residential areas of old downtown. The phenomenon of empty houses have problems such as efficiency of urban land use, public administration costs, community problems such as crime and fire, and environmental pollution. With the implementation of the "Special Act on Urban Regeneration Activation and Support" on December 5, 2013, Gwangju Metropolitan City's "Yong-dong" revitalization project was implemented, and the Urban Regeneration Support Center, Urban Regeneration Academy, and the Urban Revitalization Project and the Urban Regeneration Support Center were established. As part of the urban regeneration project, each local government enacted an empty house maintenance ordinance to utilize empty houses. Therefore, it is anticipated that management of empty houses will be actively developed through private-public partnership projects in the future.
The purpose of this study is to derive the characteristics of the system and method of empty house maintenance of the municipalities in terms of idle space. To achieve this, first, characteristics of the empty house ordinances of Gwangju Metropolitan City are analyzed, showing the following characteristics 1. Resident participation and the opening of data on the work of surveying and databaseing the idle sites 2. The development through diversification of the regeneration strategy according to the potential of the idle sites. 3. It is clear that public and private roles play a role in securing pluralism of the reproduction process. Therefore, there is a need for guidelines that should be applied to the vacant house maintenance ordinance of local governments for public-private partnership projects.
Second, this study analyzes the information characteristics of vacant houses in areas of urban decay of each local government unit and uses them as basic data to apply to the empty house maintenance situation of South Korea. To analyze the characteristics of empty house information, a GIS map reflecting empty house data of Gwangju metropolitan city was created, and a study area set up and categorized based on the state analysis of urban infrastructure.

Susana Suárez (p)

Challenges and perspectives of urban territorial development in Mexico.

Susana Suárez Paniagua

Undoubtedly, globalization is causing changes in the socio-spatial organization in both rural and urban areas throughout the planet. In the case of Mexico, metropolises or megalopolis have developed and a huge variety of cities that present different forms of socio-spatial organization, predominating a model of diffuse, dispersed and socially and territorially fragmented city, generating poorly articulated urban systems. t is clear that urban spaces do not present the same changes and these depend, in large part, on the possibility of their integration or exclusion, in the economic flows and circuits of globalization. Likewise, not all social groups can be integrated into them, this results in the widening of inequality and economic and social polarization within them.
In view of this situation, the Mexican government has been making efforts in territorial planning, urban development, infrastructure and housing. Furthermore, it has been proposed to promote a new model of orderly and sustainable urban development, for which it has been given the task of generate normative instruments aimed at controlling the expansion of urban spots, promoting the development of cities, making them more competitive, with quality of life and environmentally sustainable.
However, we find that both urban development policies and normative instruments are mainly focused on the ordering of the territory, that is, on propitiating appropriate uses of land and space, in orderly occupation of the territory, seeking care, environment, but have not fully assumed the territorial perspective of development, that is, to understand and undertake actions aimed at achieving economic, social and territorial cohesion, taking into consideration the territorial capital that territories have (natural resources, culture, territorial identity, human resources, research and development capacity, markets, activities and companies, institutions and local administrations), and especially the decisive participation of these agents and local actors in the social construction of your territories.
Hence our interest in examining the urban development policies that have been implemented in Mexico in recent years to solve major urban problems, and at the same time recognize the guidelines of the territorial approach to development, which can be considered to design and implement policies that promote true territorial urban development in Mexico. This exam constitutes the purpose of this work.

Key words: Territorial urban development, Urban planning and policy

Tzu Jung Wang (p), Hsien Hsin Cheng

The issue of housing has been concerned widely by the society in Taiwan, and it is also an issue that the government is trying to deal with. With the economic development and the level of urbanization, housing problems in different regions will also be different.
Among them, vacant houses have been a major focus of housing problems in Taiwan in recent years. According to the statistics compiled by the Construction and Planning Agency of the Ministry of the Interior, the number of low-utilized houses (commonly known as "vacant houses") in Taiwan in 2016 was more than 860,000, with vacancy rate of 10.22%. Among all the main cities in Taiwan, New Taipei City and Kaohsiung City have the highest number of vacant houses, there were more than 110,000 vacant houses in these two cities. The excessively high number of vacant houses reflects the lack of urban planning, and there are also many economic and social issues associated with it. For example, a large number of vacant houses often result in the waste of landuse.
However, facing this serious issue about vacant houses, the Taiwanese government still lacks attention on it, and there is also no clear relevant housing policy about dealing with the large number of vacant houses. Compared with Taiwan, Japan, also located in Asia, and Netherlands, well-known for its policy of social housing, are considered as the countries that have a comparative success on the housing policy. Therefore, this article will analyze and summarize the formation of different types of vacant houses in Taiwan through various statistical data and social background so as to understand the current situation of vacant houses in Taiwan. Furthermore, In order to investigate a practicable plan of housing policy in Taiwan, this article will also organize and analyze the related issues and policies on vacant houses in Japan and Netherlands, and compare them with the relevant housing policy about vacant houses in Taiwan. After synthesizing the relevant data, this article’s main purpose is to bring up some preliminary and useful suggestions on the policy construction. Hoping this will enhance the government's attention on the issue and serve as a reference base for formulating policies on vacant houses and urban planning in the future.