Dr. Jonathan Hopkins (p), Dr. Simone Piras

Many rural territories across Europe are experiencing vicious circles of depopulation and declining public services, despite possessing valuable economic and environmental assets. Among European countries, Scotland is noteworthy for its high population concentration, counterbalanced by many sparsely populated rural, remote, and island (RRI) regions. Consequently, the Scottish Government’s 2021 National Population Strategy (NPS) made the promotion of a more evenly distributed population a key goal, and the subsequent Action Plan to Address Depopulation (2024) has acknowledged the place-based complexity of demographic challenges. Achieving a more balanced population would require the voluntary relocation of residents from urban to RRI areas, but from a foundational economy perspective, activating this virtuous circle requires an increased accessibility of keystone services. We contribute to this debate by assessing the changing desirability of Scotland’s territory and evaluating the correlation between desirability and local outcomes. We adopt a novel approach merging original datasets of place characteristics calculated from open sources and results of choice experiments from a sample of 1,007 respondents representative of the Scottish population. The spatial dataset contains information on attributes of places (operationalised as 5km wide hexagons) including population levels; the locations of schools, healthcare facilities and grocery shops; the quality of digital connectivity and of the natural environment; and the urban-rural nature of the locality. The choice experiment used the same attributes to derive preferences and willingness-to-accept coefficients which, once multiplied by the characteristics of each place, provide a proxy for the “utility” that people derive from moving there or, equally, for their monetary willingness to accept. The diversity of our sample allows us to map desirability across different socio-demographic groups, including retired people and young families. Changing place characteristics over time (2019-c.2025) allow us to determine how desirability has changed, and thus which areas have experienced decline or improvement. Willingness-to-accept values provide a tangible figure of the compensation one would require, in terms of a higher salary, to move to a less desirable place, or the income one would forego to move to a more desirable place. Finally, the discrepancy between actual population dynamics and desirability provides an indication of local constraints to relocation, primarily in terms of housing availability – a key factor in rural Scotland. Our analysis can support the design of efficient incentives – in terms of service provision – to move towards the goal of the NPS, mimicking the “20-minute neighbourhood” concept for RRI areas.

Dr. Sara Tavares (p)

Over recent decades, medium-sized cities in the State of São Paulo, such as Ribeirão Preto and Jundiaí, have experienced sustained territorial expansion, reshaping peri-urban and formerly rural areas into new residential zones. While existing studies have extensively documented the physical enlargement of urban footprints—often supported by land-use datasets such as MapBiomas—most analyses remain focused on morphological patterns of sprawl. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to identifying the socio-demographic characteristics of the populations occupying these newly urbanized areas. As a result, research frequently measures how cities grow spatially without adequately addressing who inhabits expansion zones and how these processes reshape socio-spatial structures.

This study aims to bridge this gap by analyzing recent urban expansion and examining the socio-economic profiles of households residing in newly developed areas. The research integrates land-use and land-cover data with microdata from the Demographic Census conducted by IBGE. Urban growth over the past decades is mapped through geoprocessing techniques, enabling the identification of expansion polygons. These areas are then analyzed using spatial statistical methods, including measures of spatial autocorrelation and cluster detection, to assess patterns of income distribution, household composition, gender of household head, and race/color.

The findings reveal that expansion in medium-sized cities often occurs at rates exceeding demographic growth, contributing to declining densities and fragmented urban fabrics. More importantly, newly urbanized areas exhibit statistically significant socio-spatial differentiation. Higher-income households tend to cluster in specific expansion corridors, frequently associated with gated or high-standard developments, while lower-income groups are disproportionately located in peripheral social housing zones with weaker infrastructure. These patterns suggest that urban expansion reinforces spatial inequality and contributes to emerging forms of segregation, echoing broader processes of uneven development identified in urban and regional theory.

The study demonstrates that incorporating socio-demographic characterization into analyses of urban expansion is essential for effective planning. Understanding who occupies the urban fringe enables municipalities to anticipate infrastructure needs, allocate public services more equitably, and design policies aimed at preventing entrenched segregation. In an era of structural regional transition, managing urban growth with analytical rigor becomes central to fostering territorial cohesion and promoting more inclusive development trajectories in Brazilian cities.

Mr Ahmet Salih Odabaş (p), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Eda Yücesoy

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the socio-spatial, economic, and demographic transformations within the Golden Horn (Haliç) region of Istanbul, driven by urban regeneration policies starting from 1990s and accelerating drastically in the 2010s. In Golden Horn—a highly stratified historic, cultural, and geographical focal point of Istanbul—urban interventions function as mechanisms for spatial value production, rent generation, and the redefinition of public space, frequently resulting in profound social differentiation and exclusion. Having adopted a quantitative, relational methodology, the research covers a compiled dataset of street-level unit land value prices between 2000 and 2026. The analysis is based on the Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), where Golden Horn neighborhoods are clustered based on their value categories of social characteristics and degrees of transformation. By plotting these socio-economic shifts spatially and temporally, the MCA reveals the hidden trajectories of transformation. The results show that neighborhoods subjected to large-scale, state-backed transformation projects exhibit unit price increases that radically outpace regional averages, acting as catalysts for broader transformation. Ultimately, post-2000 urban policies in Istanbul have utilized legislative instruments to commodify historical and cultural heritage, fundamentally fracturing the Golden Horn's socio-spatial landscape. The resulting geography is one of deepened inequality, where the success of "transformation" is measured by maximized land values and the inevitable displacement of traditional, lower-income communities.