181 articles found [157 - 168]
  • Featured Map | 9 February 2010

    This month, ESPON presents trends in population development, namely on population growth in EU and its neighbourhood. Demographic development will have a major influence on future territorial development in Europe. The human resources have a significant impact on the economic development of regions and cities. It is therefore a key concern for policy makers to attract and develop a highly skilled labour force in their regions and cities.

  • Featured Map | 9 February 2010

    The Territorial Agenda of the European Union states that “Mobility and accessibility are key prerequisites for economic development of all regions of the EU.” In practice this means that regions having a high accessibility to raw materials, suppliers and markets are in general economically successful regions and improve their competitive position in the global market. If so, transport infrastructure improvement might be an important policy instrument to promote regional economic development. Therefore it is highly policy-relevant to know if regions with high accessibility are at the same time economic successful regions. To understand this, ESPON compared the potential multimodal accessibility of regions in 2006 with GDP-PPS per capita in 2006.

  • Featured Map | 5 February 2010

    Generally it is assumed that regional accessibility is important for the economic and social opportunities of a location or a place. Recent research on agglomeration economies suggests that economic growth, labour migration and accessibility are closely interrelated in reality. However, around 1/8 of the European regions have a high GDP per capita despite a low accessibility. Apparently these less accessible regions found other ways to overcome deficits of low accessibility and reached a good economic welfare.

  • Featured Map | 2 February 2010

    The accelerating globalisation and new emerging markets will have major impacts on Europe and in particular on its territory, its cities and regions. European policy making related to the territorial development, competitiveness and cohesion, has in future to consider deeper the global context. Countries, regions and cities will increasingly need to understand their development opportunities and weaknesses by examining their position as part of a world-wide competitive reality.

  • Featured Map | 1 February 2010

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 29 January 2010

    Accessibility is an important aspect in the debate of regional development. It is used as an indicator to describe the territorial aspects of the transport system. Access to and from a region or city is considered an important aspect of the competitiveness of the location. During the last years efforts have been made to improve the accessibility of cities and regions in large parts of Europe. Many of these efforts have been related to improvements of the rail networks. 

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 29 January 2010

    Balanced overall growth is considered a precondition for reasonable equilibrium in living conditions across the entire EU territory. The economic success of a region can be assessed in many ways. A measure that is most often used is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) both in absolute figures and as a rate of change, the latter being helpful to measure economic growth.

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 29 January 2010

    Europe’s mountain areas are in many ways of great importance as they comprehend a set of features to be considered as territorial potentials, in particular as water resource, they have an ecological, cultural and environmental diversity, which is an asset.

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 29 January 2010

    One of Europe’s features is its multitude and diversity of coastal areas. Today 35% of the European population lives close by the sea. Of all regions at Nuts 3 level, 29% are considered coastal regions. Traditionally, coastal areas specialised in fishery and trade resulting in the development of numerous harbour cities along the coast. Large metropolitan regions have then grown along the waterfront together with a large amount of small and medium sized cities. Nowadays harbour functions of coastal cities have developed into a dense network of maritime transport.

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 27 January 2010

    Thinking towards the future is an essential precondition for investigating where policies are necessary and how they should be shaped. Development has its own momentum, but policies can make a difference.

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 15 December 2009

    ESPON provides a number of publications bringing together the results from the various ESPON projects and providing synthesises on specific issues.

  • ESPON 2006 Programme | 11 December 2009

    Until the Seminar in Nijmegen, every ESPON seminar was followed by a "guidance paper" elaborated by the coordinating projects: ESPON 3.1 and ESPON 3.2.

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