In the past months, ESPON collected sources and evidence on how national and local actors are reacting to the COVID-19 crisis.

Bilbao approved a plan with more than 50 measures of exceptional nature

Responses from Luxembourgish municipalities

Catalonia has a population of 7,727,029 citizens and, since the end of February, around 65,000 cases of coronavirus have been detected.

A workshop aimed at discussing the future of the Baltic Sea Region took place on 5 March 2020 at Nordregio,  in Stockholm.

The impact of the pandemic made borders in Europe visible again, sometimes even within the same country. But interesting examples from the Interreg Central Europe Programme show that transnational cooperation is central for regions and cities to become more resilient and to find common solutions that can benefit citizens all over central Europe, especially when facing an imminent crisis like the pandemic.

The city of Athens’ Reception and Solidarity Center shared with ESPON its initiatives to protect the homeless, the city’s most vulnerable group during the pandemic of COVID19.

Another interesting case study from ESPON Project URRUC comes from Valle Arroscia, a territory that is located on the Alpi Marittime mountains, in the Northern part of the Province of Imperia. Read about urban-rural linkages and challenges in the area and the recommendations of the project to overcome them. 

Mountain and coastal areas, islands and sparsely populated areas face several challenges related to their development. According to ESPON project BRIDGES, these challenges are similar and interlinked for all the areas the Territories with Geographical Specificities (TGS) and have concrete implications to all the five Policy Objectives of Cohesion Policy

Urban-rural linkages contribute to integrating rural and urban areas into a more functional territory. These linkages aim at improving access to public services within functional areas, as well as increasing the residential and economic attractiveness of the rural areas, among others. In this article an interesting case study of Scarborough Borough, in the UK, provided by the ESPON project, URRUC