ESPON NoStaGeo. Territorial governance of non-standard geographies. Final Report

Different types of functional areas may be identified across European territory, serving the purpose of having a better place-based policy design, delivery and evaluation, while being based on relevant statistical evidence. While for many of those functional areas there is vast evidence already available, as in case of functional urban areas (FUA), much less consideration has been given to emerging geographies, understood as new functional territories shaped by international flows and exposed to their transboundary impacts. As outlined in the ESPON 2030 Thematic Action Plan on ‘Governance of new geographies’, there is a strong policy demand for understanding better how, by following on the concept of functional areas, the policies may facilitate functional relationships across the space and deliver a territorial governance model fostering multi-level cooperation beyond the administrative boundaries. The objective of this European research project is to deliver high quality research on emerging non-standard functional territories in terms of their definitions, delimitations, development trends and ongoing hard and soft cooperation arrangements. Through observations for the entire ESPON Programme area, with the support of territorially confined cases, this project shall provide policy advice on how to arrange optimal territorial governance mechanisms that would combine formal frameworks with soft spaces of governance, adequately addressing functionalities in such new geographical areas. In effect, this project shall help strengthen capacities and skills of policy stakeholders at different relevant levels in harnessing the potential of functional approach in planning and governance. The main guiding principle will be twofold: - To study emerging non-standard geographies based on a flexible notion of ‘functional areas’ as manifestations of spatial patterns of technical, environmental, natural and/or social interrelationships and networks, without presuming geographic forms and contiguous relationships. - To identify and study the links and appropriateness between new soft, hard and combined governance frameworks in the context of emerging challenges and problems that they are set up to respond to. Given the fact that a lot of research and evidence already exists on functional areas, the service provider will focus on ”emerging non-standard geographies”, which in practice means areas: Which do not belong to more “standard-type” typologies Which are forming the geographical dimension of emerging and/or new territorial challenges related to, for instance, Covid-19 pandemic, transition towards carbon neutral economy, energy transition, migration, pollution or environmental elements such as water basins, green areas etc. In this context, functional territories covered by ESIF’s integrated development strategies within Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 may also be examined. That are characterized by the documented functional relations or networks or flows between people and/or places and that have existing governance mechanisms in place. That are not exclusively defined by administrative borders nor necessarily composed of contiguous spaces. Where data is fragmentary or a lack of pan-European overview is evident. There is a clear need to widen the notion of functional areas with a focus on a set of topics, which are not typically aligned with administrative borders, and – instead - relate to the management of the shared resources and infrastructure (e.g. water basins, green areas, natural resources, energy production and distribution networks, transport facilities, data infrastructure, etc.) or manifest themselves in a geographically indistinct spread of pollutants, epidemics, migration flows. Better understanding of these geographies (i.e. data and network analyses, trends, their emergent characteristics, challenges and opportunities) is needed so as to come up with new inputs for establishing appropriate functional governance mechanisms.