Eduardo Medeiros

Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon | ISCTE · DINÂMIA'CET-IUL

Governance is the political facet of 'inclusiveness', one of the three main pillars of the New European Bauhaus (NEB) projects, alongside 'aesthetics' and 'sustainability'. Governance is embodied by rules and norms and implemented through hard tools (laws, planning designs and strategies, funding schemes, etc.) and soft tools (ways of decision-maki...

2024/0 PILOT issue Lessons and reflections from the b-solutions initiative 10 aebr.eu b-solutionsproject.com Medeiros, E. (2024). The contribution of EU b-solutions initiative to foster soft and hard territorial governance and how to assess its main cross-border impacts in the EU cross-border regions. ABCD, 0, 10-21. The contribution of EU b-soluti...

This handbook provides a complete guide to the New European Bauhaus self-assessment method, designed to promote sustainability, beauty, and inclusiveness in the built environment of Europe and beyond. The handbook comes together with an online tool allowing to evaluate the performance of projects and support their improvement. The online tool is se...

The operational programme for Sustainability and Use of Resources (POSEUR 2014-2020) is the most powerful mechanism of EU Cohesion Policy to be implemented in Portugal concerning sustainable environmental development. The programme has a place-based approach that attends to the territorial characteristics of the Portuguese regions. This study focus...

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the conditions of normal life in many aspects. However, it most impacted the life of people around national borders. What is more, while in other regions, after the successful vaccination campaigns, life begins to return normal, the borderlands still display signs of the effect of the pandemic, what we could call p...

The ‘Do No Significant Harm’ principle (DNSH) seeks to ensure that European Union policies and European cohesion policy achievements comply with the objective of not significantly harming the environment and climate. The inclusion of an EU principle like the DNSH can increase the administrative burden on Managing Authorities. However, it can delive...

Mutual trust is an important element in starting cross-border processes, and institutional trust is vital to forging sound and effective cross-border cooperation. It is widely debated that the recent covidfencing process in Europe chipped away existing long and medium-term cross-border institutional ties, in most European borders, at least for some...

Despite being one of the main European Union (EU) policy goals, expressed in the EU treaty and expected to be fostered by EU Cohesion Policy, territorial cohesion is still an under-researched scientific concept and policy process. Against this background, this special issue provides novel theoretical and practical perspectives on the relationship b...

Urban environmental sustainability is a growing concern within the United Nations and the European Union’s ongoing policy agendas to fight climate change. This paper contributes to this debate by presenting the main impacts of the Operational Programme for Sustainability and Use of Resources (POSEUR 2014–2020) in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (NUTS...

This chapter provides an overview of Portugal's urban policies in the context of the 2030 Agenda, with a particular focus on the country's incorporation of EU policies and strategies. Despite being an EU member state since 1986, Portugal has demonstrated its commitment to the UN's 2030 Agenda, actively contributing to its development through instit...

Understood in some conceptual analysis as a pillar of territorial cohesion and due to its critical role in promoting territorial integration, territorial cooperation is often presented as one of the major positive achievements of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy. In this context, this article proposes a conceptual framework to assess the contrib...

This paper contributes to the literature by documenting how regions have experienced and managed the COVID-19 crisis, particularly for regions that are largely understudied and whose territorial characteristics (related to hyper-remoteness and poverty) deserve greater attention. To this end, the study investigated regional strategy and planning doc...

Following the publication of the most recent (2018) National Spatial Policy Programme (Programa Nacional da Política de Ordenamento do Território—PNPOT), several critical development risks were identified for the Portuguese territory over the next few decades. These include expected rises in average temperatures and overall reduction of precipitati...

Territorial cohesion is an EU concept and, in recent decades, several EU policies, such as the EU Cohesion PolicyEU Cohesion Policy, have contributed decisively to promoting territorial developmentTerritorial Development in socioeconomically lagging EU regions. It resembles a European political ideal that collectively we try to achieve, but without...

Eduardo Medeiros is a Geography Professor (got the professionalization in 2002) and an Integrated Research Fellow in DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal. He has a Ph.D. in Geography—Regional and Urban Planning, and has around 200 publications, including more than 50 published papers in international journals, 11 books, and...

Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) is still a ‘new kid on the block’ on the panorama of policy evaluation methodologies. In synthesis, TIA methodologies are thematically holistic and multi-dimensional and require the analysis of a wide pool of data, not only of economic character but also related with social, environmental, governance and planning...

Environmental sustainability has been a key policy goal of the European Union (EU), particularly under recent EU Cohesion Policy strategic frameworks. This paper contributes to the analysis of the relevance of EU Cohesion Policy-related environmental sustainability investments, by assessing the impacts of the Operational Programme for Sustainabilit...

RESUMO Atualmente, a sustentabilidade Ambiental tem ganho relevância nos diferentes quadrantes da sociedade. A importância deste tópico para a União Europeia contribuiu para a criação de vários programas de apoio ao combate às alterações climáticas, importantes para o desenvolvimento dos seus estados-membros. Neste âmbito, o artigo explora o POSEUR...

We live in an era with growing global concerns in the field of environmental sustainability. Institutional and social sensitivity to environmental protection is particularly relevant in the territory of the European Union (EU). In this regard, EU Cohesion Policy allocates a significant part of its financial package to attain strategic policy object...

Territorial cohesion is a formal EU policy goal since 2010, when it was placed in the Lisbon Treaty, alongside the long-term EU goals of economic and social cohesion. Understandably, by itself, a policy goal is irrelevant if it cannot be assessed. In this light, this article discusses potential methodological approaches to measure territorial cohes...

Sustainable tourism is a main priority of European Union policies, with the aim of mitigating the potential harmful consequences of this sector on a given territory. The main research goal of this article is to better understand the impact of the public investments financed via EU Cohesion Policy in the tourism sector in the Portuguese Algarve NUT2...

his paper presents a potential ‘theory of everything’ for regional development processes which can be applied to development and cohesion policies. Denominated as strategic-based regional development, this more comprehensive regional development theoretical background embraces several established regional development paradigms, which include sustai...

Sustainable development is a key feature of national, European Union and global development strategies. The main research goal is to provide evidence on how impactful public policies on environmental sustainability in Portugal are at the regional level, in various policy areas. In this context, this paper analyses the main impacts of the Portuguese...

For more than six decades, the European Union (EU) has promoted, one way or the other, systematic European territorial integration, understood as the process of reducing many kinds of crossborder barriers. This article debates the role of the EU b-solutions initiative in facilitating cross-border commuting in Europe via its contribution to a body o...

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the conditions of normal life in many aspects. However, it most impacted the life of people around national borders. What is more, while in other regions, after the successful vaccination campaigns, life begins to return normal, the borderlands still display signs of the effect of the pandemic, what we could call p...

This article proposes an alternative policy development approach for territories encompassing rural areas with small urban settlements or ‘small places’, which normally suffer from lagging territorial development trends. The proposed ‘Development Clusters for Small Places’ approach draws on the potential of all places to further their development v...

Sustainable policy transitions require a shift towards more collaborative societal values coupled with a sustainability supportive fiscal framework. The materialisation of sustainable policies and practices in the field of energy, the environment and health also require the establishment of building blocks for a more empowered, informed and vibrant...

One of the consequences of covidfencing processes (see Medeiros et al. 2021a), resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, has been the elevation of cross-border processes and border areas as policy and academic issues. A theoretical avenue through which to encapsulate these contemporary concerns to deal with the closing of borders is the...

Administrative capacities are among the crucial factors influencing success in European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy absorption. The current research concentrates on the public sector, while administrative capacities in other stakeholders are omitted. Our research focuses on whether local stakeholders from civil society have sufficient capacities to...

This paper assesses participatory urban planning in Lisbon, based on the ongoing urban development plan. The results of the qualitative analysis on the urban governance and participatory process covering a two-year period (2010–2012), in which the urban development plan was discussed, suggest a highly participatory urban planning process, involving...

Urban planning offers various design possibilities to solve fundamental challenges faced in urban areas. These include the need to physically renew old industrial and harbour riverside areas into liveable, inclusive and sustainable living spaces. This paper investigates the way urban planning policies have helped to renew the waterfront areas in th...

Despite the positive contributions of several European Union (EU) policies to reduce border barriers, the EU Cross-Border Review (CBR) initiative reaffirmed their relevance and persistence. Since 2018, the EU has supported the b-solutions initiative, specifically focused on tackling legal and administrative border obstacles, aiming to highlight rep...

Despite the positive contributions of several European Union (EU) policies to reduce border barriers, the EU Cross-Border Review (CBR) initiative reaffirmed their relevance and persistence. Since 2018, the EU has supported the b-solutions initiative, specifically focused on tackling legal and administrative border obstacles, aiming to highlight rep...

Development remains a central concept for policy design and implementation aimed at improving the quality of life of the world population, despite a manifest rise in neoliberalist economic growth policy strategic guidance rationales. In accepting the relevance of development processes, this paper proposes a global development formula embracing four...

Cross-border regions are the laboratories of European integration. Daily interactions across European borders let citizens experience the benefits of the European Union (EU) internal market. Still, many border barriers continue to prevent individuals and organisations from exploiting the full-potential of European border regions and the benefits of...

In my almost 30 years of academic experience in following the former EU Interreg Community Initiative, latter on (2007) transformed into one of the main EU Cohesion Policy goals (European Territorial Cooperation). I have heard and read, countless times, in international events and publications, many stating the importance of ‘institutional trust’ t...

The concept of transnational territories for policy implementation (TTPI) is increasingly presented within the European Union (EU) as offering prospects for tackling common development issues affecting transnational spaces. Following on from the experiences of Interreg-B and the EU macro-regional strategies (MRS), this paper explores the advantages...

This chapter presents TARGET_TIA as a relevant and flexible Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) methodology. TARGET_TIA was created in a context where existing ESPON TIA tools were mainly designed for assessing ex ante territorial impacts of EU directives. Hence, in view of the need to properly assess the main ex post territorial impacts of EU Cohe...

Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) is a relatively ‘new kid on the block’ of policy evaluation. Resting upon the holistic notion of territory, which encompasses multiple analytic dimensions (economy, society, environment, governance, spatial planning), TIA is the most complex, yet with the policy evaluation procedure with the largest potential to...

This book presents a comprehensive debate and analysis of existing Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) methodologies, designed under the auspices of the ESPON programme since the mid-2000s. This is intended to serve as a TIA handbook for the reader, to better understand the main differences, advantages and shortcomings of each presented TIA methodo...

Far from signalling the optimal organisational design and legislative framework for stimulating cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation processes across Europe, the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) affects various aspects of multi-level governance. In accepting this, this chapter discusses potential benefits of...

This article explores potential points of intersection and complementarity between several human geography related policy goals and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, it identifies promising directions for delving more deeply into fundamental policy goals associated with spatial planning and territorial cohes...

This preprint summarises a proposal for a global development formula, which could measure the benefits of implementing a global development approach over the current territorialism (nations-states) approach which dominates the world. It is supported by four complementary global development pillars: (i) Global Governance; (ii) Global Wealth; (iii) G...

This paper provides new insights into the main pillars of the territorial universe of EU policies, by undertaking a systematic overview of European Union (EU) key territorial development reports, agendas and programmes. These include the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), the three Territorial Agendas, and the European Territorial Obs...

The beginning of 2020 saw the global spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a systematic closure of national borders across the world, which we refer to as the 'covidfencing' panorama. As expected, in Europe, where close to two million commuters cross national borders on a daily basis to work, this new reality has provoked significant setba...

When, in 2015, Jeffrey D. Sachs, published The Age of Sustainable Development, it seemed to me to be the culmination of a life's work of a renowned academic in providing a crucial contribution to build a sustainable development rationale. However, the publication of his latest book proves that, far from signalling the end of a brilliant academic ca...

The evolving and globalized economic system has been affecting the roles of certain territories, as well as the nature of their interdependence, over the past decades. These changing geographies of global development have received considerable attention from a wide spectrum of academic research fields, mainly due to persisting trends of uneven deve...

This paper examines the design and implementation process of Integrated Strategies for Sustainable Urban Development (ISUD), as well as their main effects and lessons learned in two European cities: Barcelona in Spain, a vibrant European metropolis, and Évora in Portugal, a medium-sized city with a world heritage historic centre. The former is faci...

This text is a summary of a text written by Eduardo Medeiros, Martín Guillermo Ramírez, Gyula Ocskay and Jean Peyrony, providing an initial overview of the 'covidfencing' process in the European cross-border regions, based on data provided by EU online platforms and seminars, as well as the authors collected experiences from their professional acti...

This paper discusses the concept of Urban SUNstainability and its importance for territorial sustainable development. Generically understood as a process for attaining sustainable development in urban areas, via the intense production and use of solar energy, Urban SUNstainability is presented as a convincing urban policy strategy for a greener, su...

This paper explores the implementation of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy in Portugal during the 2014-2020 programming period (Portugal 2020) and its contribution to promoting sustainable territorial development. It starts with an anatomization of the dominant analytic dimensions of the concept of sustainable territorial development. It then ex...

Este artigo centra-se na discussão crítica das estratégias e modelos territoriais propostos no primeiro Programa Nacional da Política de Ordenamento do Território (PNPOT 1.0) e na versão para discussão pública da alteração do PNPOT (versão 2.0). Com base num exercício de análise comparativa, concluímos que a nova versão apresenta melhorias signific...

The European transnational cooperation process, implemented via the ongoing 15 EU IN-TERREG-B programmes, is integrated in the second objective of EU Cohesion Policy: Euro-pean Territorial Cooperation. Aiming to promote better cooperation and regional development processes within the European Union by a joint approach to tackle common issues, the E...

This article debates the need for a renewed territorial cohesion narrative for an updated version of the EU Territorial Agenda. It proposes a more simplistic and practical vision for the territorial cohesion concept and the need to transform it into a measurable notion. It also advances alternative policy implementation avenues to achieve territori...

This article debates the concept of border area and identifies a number of factors which should be considered when delimiting cross-border areas for policy implementation (CBAPI). These include historical, spatial, demographic, cultural, data, institutional, economic, infrastructural and environmental factors. The relevance of this debate for the b...

Este artigo aborda o processo de industrialização e desindustrialização na Península Ibérica desde o início do século XX até o início do século XXI. Especificamente, o artigo concentrase nos processos territoriais dinâmicos que levaram a uma tendência geral de desindustrialização em muitos redutos ibéricos industriais, desde o início dos anos seten...

This article addresses the process of industri-alization and deindustrialization in Iberia Peninsula from the early XX century to the dawn of the XXI century. Specifically, it focuses on the dynamic territorial processes which led to a general deindustrialization trend in many industrial Iberian strongholds, since the early 1970s. Furthermore , it...

The notion of territorial cohesion is still very much misunderstood within EU entities. This is so, despite being mentioned regularly, since 2001, in European Commission Cohesion Reports , and later on being included the Lisbon Treaty, in 2009, alongside the goals of social and economic cohesion. Indeed, over the last couple of decades, few attempt...

This paper debates the evolution and importance of the urban dimension of EU policies and in particular EU Cohesion Policy in the past three decades. It discusses the growing relevance for supporting a Urban Agenda for the EU, and the gradual adoption and implementation of Integrated Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (ISUDS), by pointing out...

There is political interest in Sweden’s proximity to Norway, which is reflected in the regional policy focusing on developing business needs. As such, proximity at the regional level is simply expected to generate economic growth. The authors propose a holistic approach to spatial planning in a Swedish–Norwegian border region in place of the simpli...

This paper identifies themain territorial impacts of EU Cohesion Policy in the Iberian Peninsula, in the first four programming periods (1989-2013). Moreover, it discusses the relevance of the strategy associated with this Policy, the role of EU funds in promoting a more cohesive territory, and suggests alternative paths to improving its effectiven...

The Territorial Cohesion goal was only included in the EU Treaty by 2009, with a view to promote a more balanced and harmonious European territory. One year earlier (2008), the European Commission (EC) published the ‘Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion —Turning territorial diversity into strength’. Neither one, nor the other, clearly defines the me...

This paper discusses the role of medium towns as crucial anchors in achieving the policy goal of Territorial Cohesion. It highlights the need to counterbalance market trends to favour the continuous channelling of investment and people into larger metropolitan areas by way of proactive measures focused on attracting investment into medium towns, an...

The work of Jeffrey Sachs on world development, global macroeconomics, and the fight against poverty is vast and, in my view, widely relevant for providing a global perspective of these processes. But, more important, his work is influential in providing alternative visions to solving global environmental problems by advocating the importance of su...

Administrative boundaries create all sorts of barriers. These include obstacles associated with crossborder mobility. The presence of cross-border transports can be pivotal to reducing the barriereffect on citizen’s mobility and to increasing territorial integration of the European Union (EU). As recent surveys have revealed, cross-border accessibi...

This book offers a comprehensive overview of several urban related aspects that are of central importance to successful territorial cohesion processes. In essence, it sheds new light on issues concerning urban polycentrism, functional urban regions, integrated sustainable urban development, and the EU Urban Agenda; and on how they can help to achie...

Despite being mentioned in several EU documents in recent decades, Territorial Cohesion is still a very much misunderstood and illusive concept, both for politicians and for academics. Over the years, the EU Cohesion Policy rationale has been gradually shifting towards a growth and investment agenda, following on from the main goals of EUROPE 2020,...

EU cross-border cooperation programmes were formally established with the launching of the first INTERREG Community Initiative (1989-1993). Since then, these programmes have been expanding to Northern and Eastern Europe. At present, the INTERREG V-A (2014-2020), formally known as European Territorial Cooperation (strand A – crossborder cooperation)...

This paper investigates the role and influence of Geography and Geographers in the European Union (EU) policymaking process. On top of this, it both adds to the perennial debate of the ‘utility role’ of Geography in policymaking, and the concerns in concentrating geographical analysis in more relevant and practical issues for designing, implementin...

This chapter discusses the advantages of making use of Territorial Impact Assessment procedures on European Territorial Cooperation Programmes. In more detail, it underlines the advantages of Territorial Impact Assessment as a novel Project/Programme/Policy evaluation tool, when compared with other existing policy evaluation techniques, and discuss...

Acting on its own initiative, the European Commission has launched a series of Community Initiatives since 1988, to solve specific problems of significant interest to the European Union. Amongst these Initiatives were the INTERREG, launched in 1990, with the goal of preparing European border areas for a Community without internal borders. In 2007,...

This book fills an existing academic literature gap by providing a sound and synthetic analysis on the process of European Territorial Cooperation over the last 30 years. This follows from the support from the former EU INTERREG Community Initiative, since 1989, later transformed into the second main goal of EU Cohesion Policy, by 2007: European Te...

This paper addresses EU Cohesion Policy and its contribution to supporting territorial development strategies in Portugal in the last couple of decades. Based on the identification of the main drivers of territorial development, and on the use of a wide range of data, it shows the positive and the negative effects of EU Structural and Cohesion Fund...

Despite the non-territorialised strategic goals of the EU 2020 Strategy, the long-term aim of EU Cohesion Policy to promote harmonious development of the European territory – social, economic, and ‘territorial cohesion’ – remains a central goal of achieving a more cohesive EU territory. This book examines the ‘territorial dimension’ of EU Cohesion...

Formally initiated in 1989, European Union (EU) cohesion policy (ECP) has since passed through a series of metamorphoses, along its five programming periods, while becoming the most financed EU policy. As its name indicates, its initial goals were earmarked for promoting economic and social cohesion, following the intentions expressed in the Single...

This paper examines the role and importance of the territorial dimension of EU Cohesion Policy, during its five programming phases (1989-2020), by relating this implementation process with several territorial elements, and by assessing their constant changes, namely in three main components and related elements: (i) the 'policy strategy' designed t...

The use of territorial impact assessment procedures is gaining increasing relevance in the European Union policy evaluation processes. However, no concrete territorial impact assessment tools have been applied to evaluating EU cross-border programmes. In this light, this article provides a pioneering analysis on how to make use of territorial impac...

European Union Cohesion Policy and Spain: a territorial impact assessment. Regional Studies. This article examines the territorial impacts of European Union Cohesion Policy in Spain in the first four programming phases (1989–2013). It makes use of a multidimensional and multi-vector territorial impact assessment (TIA) procedure, which goes beyond t...

This article addresses the concept of Territorial Cohesion, which has been gaining increasing interest within academia and the EU policy circles. In particular, this article examines its relevance and main dimensions, and also suggests a comprehensive definition based on those dimensions. Additionally , this paper proposes a methodology which can b...

http://rsa.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21681376.2015.1013151

Impact Assessment procedures have gained increasing attention from the European Commission (EC), as fundamental tools in providing evidence of the potential impacts of European Union (EU) financed projects/programmes/policies. Yet, only recently, the Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) of EU directives and Policies have gained a broader support fro...

Inner Scandinavia is one of the Swedish-Norwegian INTERREG-A three sub-programmes, and has been working in operationalizing cross-border projects in the border area since 1994. To date, several cross-border strategies have been implemented, one for each programming period of the INTERREG-A programme. This article investigates whether these strategi...

Portugal is a young European democracy. However, it has been a member of the European Union (EU) for twenty seven years. During this time, it received more than 75 billion euros from the EU Cohesion Policy, in order to correct regional imbalances and to boost territorial development. As might be expected, the intervention strategies designed for th...

The article examines whether the goal of territorial cohesion can be achieved in the area designated ‘Inner Scandinavia’ through the interventions of the European Union's cross-border cooperation programme, INTERREG-A. The programme supports a polycentric development of the Inner Scandinavian border region, which is one of three Swedish-Norwegian I...

Historic developments that occurred in the last centuries have affected the barrier effect of national borders in Europe and, consequently, the degree and the in- tensity of the cooperation between neighbouring countries. However, the establishment of the European Single Market, in the last three decades, has deepened the cross-border cooperation i...

This article focuses on presenting the main territorial impacts of the projects approved under the auspices of the EU Cohesion Policy in Algarve (Portugal), over the last couple of decades (1990–2010). In general terms, it tunes up the TARGET_TIA methodology to assess the territorial impacts at the regional level. More concretely, it analyses the t...

Historic developments that occurred in the last centuries have affected the barrier effect of national borders in Europe and, consequently, the degree and the intensity of the cooperation between neighbouring countries. However, the establishment of the European single Market, in the last three decades, has deepened the cross-border cooperation ins...

This article examines the territorial impacts of the EU Cohesion Policy in Portugal, between 1990 and 2010, at the national level. To reach some conclusions, after a brief overview of the existing literature on territorial impact assessment (TIA) procedures, we present the main features of a proposed TIA technique, which we called TARGET_TIA, and a...

No período do QCA III (2000-2006), Portugal foi alvo da intervenção de um Programa Operacional orientado para o apoio à Agricultura e ao Desenvolvimento Rural (AGRO), complementado por medidas de apoio a este domínio nos sete Programas Operacionais Regionais. Transversalmente, três outros Programas de apoio ao Desenvolvimento Rural foram implementa...