Dagmara Kociuba (p)

Charlotte Hoole

The implementation of new territorial instruments of the EU Cohesion Policy for 2014-2020, in particular Integrated Territorial Investments (ITIs), has obliged countries and regions to develop an institutional framework and management rules in new areas of intervention - functional urban areas (FUAs), which was not tied to the existing administrative divisions. This has been a particular challenge for countries that have no experience or tradition of implementing such solutions. One of them was Poland, a beneficiary of more than 30% of the ITIs funds. The purpose of the paper is to present the path to the integration of territorial governance in functional urban areas in Poland. Based on the experience of implementing ITIs in 2014-2020, a detailed analysis was conducted on the issues of devolution of competences, creation of coalitions of actors involved, integration of inter-municipal cooperation in horizontal and vertical dimensions, and introduction of multi-level governance rules. This laid the basis for developing of models of territorial governance in FUAs. The study provides new insights for research on the introduction of new approaches to building formal and legal frameworks, cooperation principles and management structures in FUAs, especially with regard to the changing geographical scale of policy intervention areas, and the role of leadership in this process. The results can be used for contextual comparative research.

Jack Newman, Charlotte Hoole (p)

Juan A. Piedra Peña

Effective local and regional governance is important for tackling economic inequality between regions. However, a common problem is that the effectiveness of governance institutions also has an unequal spatial distribution. The relationship between regional distributions of productive and governance capacity is therefore crucial for a state’s ability to revitalise lagging regions. In the UK, a new decentralisation agenda has been launched by the recently elected Labour government. The plans offer a more consistent framework for devolution in England, but they also further embed the policy of rewarding those places that already have the most advanced governance arrangements. In our analysis of ‘productive capacity’ and ‘governance capacity’ across England’s strategic authorities, we identify a ‘devolution periphery’, located primarily in the east and west, which is lagging in both economically and administratively. The latest policy developments in the UK suggest that England’s ‘devolution periphery’ is likely to fall further behind in the coming years. To interpret these findings, we assess spatial inequality and the history of spatial rebalancing in France, Germany, and Italy, identifying key risks and success factors. While the UK tends to perform particularly poorly against these success factors, there is a consistent tension across all these countries between spatial rebalancing and asymmetric decentralisation.

Juan A. Piedra Peña (p), Marie Breuillé, Julie Le Gallo

Laura Fregolent

This paper analyzes whether efficiency gains coming from agglomeration effects in larger municipalities can benefit their smaller neighbors through 'borrowed size' and 'borrowed functions' mechanisms and explores the role of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in these mechanisms. Based on a dataset of French municipalities over the period 2016-2018, we make use of stochastic frontier analysis to estimate a measure of municipal spending efficiency and investigate the effect that borrowing size/functions have on it. Regarding borrowed size, our findings show that smaller municipalities benefit from the perks of agglomeration of their bigger neighbors regardless of IMC, as expected. However, bigger municipalities within an IMC group are those that benefit the most from borrowing functions from their smaller neighbors. These results follow recent literature for developed economies that find that larger cities are the ones that profit from their relationship with surrounding ones, as many of their functions rely on the support provided by neighboring areas. Our finding also suggest that these bigger municipalities seem to be casting an agglomeration shadow over smaller ones. This study provides important policy implication at the moment of designing tailored policies that exploit agglomeration effects through borrowed size and functions mechanisms. By locating closer to bigger markets, smaller municipalities benefit from higher efficiency; however, these benefits can be offset if bigger municipalities take advantage by overusing (or relocating) functions in these locations.

Laura Fregolent (p), Stefania Tonin, Gianfranco Pozzer

Dagmara Kociuba

In the face of rapid changes in urban and territorial systems, spatial governance policies have initiated various territorial re-scaling processes for over a decade to redefine the strategic distribution of financial and instrumental resources. Paradigmatic examples of this are the recent European instruments for the recovery and resilience of economic and social systems, which, while promoting a necessary inter-scalar comparison between forms of territorialization and de-territorialization, do not make explicit the interactions between missions, often adopting a top-down approach that tends to limit the institutional component.
Considering the spatial dimensions of the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (right away Pnrr) as an outcome of an intertwining of sectoral and functional visions, this paper intends to capture and discuss the scalarity of investments by following a qualitative-quantitative reading of territorial issues referring to the themes of economic revitalization and social resilience. From this perspective, scalarity is introduced as a spatial outcome of missions, using institutional monitoring systems as a detection source. It is enriched with the issues driving the Plan using registry and census descriptors on vitality, marginality or fragility of contexts, as acquired from sector studies. The analytical approach of the contribution draws on planned interventions and a solid knowledge base to establish a “logical connection” between the mission and the guiding questions, aiming to highlight the inter-scalar effects of investments.
From a multidimensional statistical analysis conducted on all the municipalities of the Veneto Region (563 administrative units), interesting structural relationships emerge between Pnrr investments updated to 2024 and demographic, socio-economic and land use variables referred to in the period 2020-2021. The test, of an exploratory nature, is based on a cluster analysis aimed at highlighting the territorial “weight” of the different groupings and identifying any spatial interdependencies. The profiles thus obtained are subsequently examined through a multiple linear regression model, allowing the model to characterize the financial landings according to specific urban-territorial assets.
Mapping the missions responses also allows research to capture the Pnrr’s contributions and opportunities in the implementation phase. It highlights how “additivity” and “integration” improve local public action and provide valuable criteria for evaluating effectiveness.