As highlighted by the Territorial Agenda 2030, Europe has many different types of places, such as capital regions, metropolitan areas, small and medium-sized towns, peri-urban areas, rural areas, inner peripheries, peripheral areas, northernmost areas, sparsely populated areas, islands, coastal areas, mountainous areas, outermost regions, crossborder regions, macro-regions, characterized by different territorial development trajectories, functional links and harder or softer territorial cooperation arrangements.

Although mostly associated with urban agglomerations, nowadays functional areas are seen as a connector of different types of places. Thus, today’s political agenda is concerned not only with functional urban areas (FUA), but different types of other functional and soft cooperation areas which may be regarded as new geographies – functional rural areas, functional cross-border areas, functional transnational cooperation areas, labour market areas, areas of landsea interactions, areas of green infrastructure, macro-regions, island areas, neighbourhood areas, etc. In addition, one can also look at functional areas based on flows and networking: different types of services, education at different levels, financial flows etc, it should also be noted that functional areas differ in size depending on what population groups are being considered: men/women, young/working age/old, low/high educated, etc. The preparatory study for the CEMAT’s 17th session identified more than 20 types of functional areas.

The ‘Governance of new geographies’ thus is a very comprehensive and cross-cutting TAP theme. It aims to create territorial evidence and recommendations in terms of governance of emerging new geographies at European level, national and regional levels which are linked to new functional territories and territories facing state of uncertainty or challenges concerning their development paths.

The objective of this TAP is to develop a knowledge base as regards to understanding such new geographies in terms of their delineations, functional and cooperation arrangements and involved actors and stakeholders. In addition, through the observations for the entire ESPON Programme area, this TAP intends to provide new knowledge and possible pathways on how find appropriate and new governance mechanisms.

Among others, this TAP:

• Includes methodological studies aimed at identifying emerging geographies.
• Assesses existing ones and promotes and proposes new governance mechanisms, including functional approach in planning and governance; facilitates networking and involvement of civil societies, youth initiatives and other stakeholders which would play an important role in terms of elaborating appropriate and innovative governance solutions.
• Strengthens the capacities and skills of policy makers in order to harness the potential of functional territories. Networking and social participation shall be reinforced to explain different experiences.

Read more about the Thematic Action Plan (TAP) on 'Governance of new geographies' in the document that is attached below. 

Do you want to comment, add or propose something new in relation to this TAP? Join the debate! How?

• You can send us an email at [email protected] 

Be part of the consultation -help us to shape the new ESPON programme for you!