Workshop Monitoring Territorial Dynamics

Territorial Cohesion is an important topic in the current debate on policy development in Europe. The recently published Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion brings this topic to a wide public debate. In order to understand structures, trends and scenarios influencing territorial cohesion it highlights the need to improve the evidence base for territorial cohesion and to monitor territorial dynamics in support of policymaking. The ESPON 2013 Programme is asked to take up this challenge.

The ESPON workshop took place at the ESPON CU Premises in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, on 12 November 2008. The purpose of the Workshop was to share related experiences at national and European level and to exchange ideas on a system of monitoring territorial dynamics within the European territory, its regions and cities.

The Workshop brought together national territorial observatories from France, Germany, Belgium / Flanders and Romania, findings of the ESPON 2006 Programme provided by BBR and inputs from the current ESPON 2013 Programme as well as experiences from the European Commission / DG REGIO, the OECD, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and Kopernikus / GMES (Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security).
 
The first part of the workshop dealt with the experiences made by national observatories and the European Commission in monitoring territorial dynamics. In addition, respective results achieved within the Project on Monitoring Territorial Development (4.1.3) carried out in the framework of ESPON 2006 Programme as well as activities related to monitoring, indicators / indices and the ESPON Database being implemented within the ESPON 2013 Programme were presented.

During the lively afternoon session, which was centred around impulse statements given by JRC, OECD, Kopernikus / GMES and the ESPON 2013 Database Project, participants had the opportunity to provide input and to discuss ideas for a future Monitoring System. To go for a process combining top-down and bottom-up approaches in order to ensure the use of information also on regional and local levels was very much welcomed. 

In concluding the seminar it became clear that a European Territorial Monitoring System should address both, policy makers and the broader public. Indicators should be as simple as possible to underline the usability and transparency of the system. The input to the system might be based on raster and point data. Considering finally the way monitoring results are communicated, there was a general support for mainly using maps which are easily understandable and not too complex in illustrative terms.      
 
All presentations from ESPON Workshop are available below. Should you have questions regarding the Workshop on Monitoring Territorial Dynamics, please do not hesitate to contact the ESPON Coordination Unit at [email protected].