Maarten Allers, Dylan Jong (p)

Sabine Sedlacek

This paper analyzes the capitalization of unexpected municipal windfalls from the sale of shares in energy companies in the Netherlands. Similar work on the capitalization of the redistribution of equalizing grants for Dutch municipalities found full capitalization effects. One-off windfalls differ from the redistribution of equalizing grants in that they are incidental rather than continuous. We argue that the incidental nature of the windfalls may affect the degree to which they are capitalized. We use a combination of binary staggered difference-in-difference estimations and continuous non-staggered two-way fixed effects estimations to identify the capitalization effects in housing prices of one-off energy windfalls. Preliminary results only show a weak indication of positive capitalization effects from the windfalls.

Jessica Clément (p), Miguel Manjon, Nathalie Crutzen

Dylan Jong

This paper considers literature on socio-technical transitions to conceptualize and empirically investigate the relation between sustainable and smart city (SSC) strategies and policy implementation in a local context. Through a topic modelling analysis of policy documents for four cities, we trace policy development to reveal several key insights about the importance of strategies for SSC socio-technical transitions. We use these observations and the relevant literature to develop a set of hypotheses about the relation between strategy and policy implementation. Regression results indicate that strategies have a short-term impact on the speed and direction of SSC policy implementation.

Antonio Fuster (p), María Jesús Santa María

Jessica Clement

Resilience is a topic that has received increasing attention from researchers and policy makers since the onset of the economic crisis in 2008. It has been mainly analysed at regional or local level because the great interest to understand how different economic units have tackled the negative effects of an economic crisis. Moreover, companies located in Industrial Districts have historically played a relevant role in Spain in the recovery from successive crises of the 20th century, particularly due to their exporting and adaptation capacity. Therefore, it is to be expected to find a substantially different performance in industrial districts during the last years compared to other areas. The aim of this paper is to analyse the dynamism and adaptive capacity of the industrial districts of the Valencian Community in Spain in the period 2002-2022. The effects of the Great Recession of 2008 and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic could have modified the development paths traditionally shown by industrial districts. The main question is whether industrial districts have been able to cope with the consequences of the economic downturn better than other local production systems. In short, have industrial districts been resilient or not? In addition, the changes in the degree of specialization and diversification of economic activity in these territories are analysed. The results may be useful to contribute to introduce resilience at the core of economic policies focused on the evolution of spatial agglomerations of firms and to clarify which objectives should be achieved to improve the resilience of these areas.

Sabine Sedlacek (p), Bernd Schuh

Antonio Fuster

Governance structures in urban agglomerations seem to become important whenever city-hinterland interactions, interlinkages and interdependencies need to be coordinated due to growing conflicts which may arise between different functions within the autonomous administrative competences in the core city and the hinterland communities. Metropolitan governance is one concept that focuses on the planning of land use, infrastructure and public services and highlights the importance of the institutional perspective. In order to provide stable governance structures capable of dealing with the growing conflicts between cities and their hinterlands, well-functioning institutions are needed. There is existing empirical evidence about the importance of governance structures in metropolitan areas in terms of productivity and there are arguments that well-functioning coordination bodies help to mitigate administrative fragmentation. These empirically observed implications of city–hinterland relations on the institutional capacity of urban agglomerations disclose weaknesses within the existing governance structures which leads to the question of how metropolitan governance is defined and implemented.
The complexity of city – hinterland relations from a governance point of view is argued from the multi-level as well as a multi-stakeholder perspective. Such a multi-level governance setting includes both legitimate and non-legitimate stakeholders and the interlinked challenges and sources of conflicts (e.g. spatial, institutional) and thus demands a systemic view, which needs to encompass both the micro (stakeholder level) and the macro (framework conditions or system related conditions) level of city - hinterland relations and should ideally start from the identified problems to be solved.
This paper focuses on the relevance and the impact of specific coordination mechanisms helping to promote sustainable city – hinterland relations. From a theoretical point of view, it argues along the functional interdependencies and raises the question of whether, when, and how city governments decide deliberately for or against a coordinated and cooperative procedure. This leads to the underlying research question: How are city-hinterland relations coordinated and what are factors preventing cities to initiate and follow a cooperative procedure?
The paper focuses on existing evidence about functional interdependencies in metropolitan areas and aims at investigating cooperative procedures as a mean to coordinate city – hinterland relations. Thus, this paper conducts a systemic analysis of metropolitan governance along five key components, including enabling and constraining factors, the underlying governance models, type of cooperation, types of stakeholders, and other systemic components.