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Introduction
We analyse and support regional development.
Most projects focus an European spatial development, in particular on spatial integration, and on regional value chains.
More information
https://www.geography.nat.fau.eu/research/ag-chilla/
Current institution
Publications
Publications (126)
The document provides a comprehensive scoping review that examines the interface be-tween climate change and spatial planning, with a focus on the Alpine region. By analysing a wide range of scientific literature, the report aims to map out existing knowledge, identify gaps, and explore how spatial planning and climate change are being addressed in...
This synthesis report takes first steps towards an Alpine Spatial Development Perspective (ASDP). The document summarises the state of the art in literature and project reports, and gives an insight into the reflections of the Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development Working Group of the Alpine Convention (WG SPSD). The ASDP takes three sectora...
In recent years, digitalisation projects have helped rural areas to bridge some of the urban-rural disparities, such as accessibility issues as well as the digital literacy divide. To further exploit the potential of digitalisation for rural areas, we aim to understand the implementation of digitalisation processes and their conceptual alignment wi...
Das Working Paper zeigt Kooperationsprofile der Governance-Analysen des CoBo-Projekts (Cohesion in Border Regions), das vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung gefördert wurde (2021-2023). Hierin werden die Grenzregionen mit deutscher Beteiligung aus verschiedenen institutionellen Blickwinkeln beleuchtet und deren Themen, Akteure und Govern...
The ESPON InTerAlp project provides a systematic exploration of the specific spatial dynamics, challenges and opportunities associated with Alpine interface territories. The analysis addresses a number of key questions, including the definition and delineation of Alpine interface territories, the identification of common challenges and opportunitie...
Alpine interface territories link mountainous and inner-Alpine areas with pre-Alpine lowlands and, thus, are a very specific territorial type: Highly dynamic flows and interdependencies as well as controversial stakeholder interests meet in a rather limited spatial framework. Organising sustainable spatial development in this geographical context i...
The ESPON InTerAlp project provides a systematic exploration of the specific spatial dynamics, challenges and opportunities associated with Alpine interface territories and zooms into a number of relevant case studies. These cases serve to provide an in-depth exploration of different regional settings. The selection of case study regions covers a w...
The ESPON InTerAlp project is part of a larger effort to improve the understanding and support territorial governance and spatial development across the Alpine region. The Alpine region is home to several major European cities (among others: Munich, Milan, and Vienna), and is traversed by key transport corridors that connect Northern Europe with th...
The notion of cross-border living areas (‘Bassins de vie’/’Bacini di vita’) is part of the reflection on how the European integration process affects border regions. A transdisciplinary conference, held in Rome in April 2024, discussed this concept for the border region between Italy and France. Based on a number of impressions collected during the...
Cities and their networks play a significant role in spatial development. This holds true for settlement systems in general, and there is no reason that this should differ in mountain contexts.
However, research on this subject is scarce, and it remains a
relatively niche topic. Against this background, our article presents a scoping review of sett...
Europe's internal border regions are often referred to as the 'laboratories of European integration'. There are still many barriers along these borders that can potentially be overcome through successful cross-border cooperation. We address the laboratory dimension of cross-border cooperation in a two-stage Delphi survey with experts from the Czech...
Regionalprodukte besitzen ökonomische Relevanz: Während sie bislang v.a. im Kontext von
Landschaftsbild, kulturellem Erbe oder ökologischer Wirkung diskutiert werden, stehen Beschäftigung und Wertschöpfung weniger im Fokus der Debatte. Im Folgenden werden Ergebnisse der Wertschöpfungsanalysen aufgezeigt und Potenziale für die Wertschöpfung abgelei...
The Swiss Presidency of the EU Alpine Strategy (EUSALP) 2023 has focused on transversal topics and their political relevance. At the end of the presidency, the Annual Forum and the General Assembly took place in Bad Ragaz (19th Oct 2023), where four cross-cutting priorities were discussed:
- Promoting Digitalisation for the Alps
- Accelerating th...
Mobility and transport patterns in border regions are highly relevant topics, as these regions still tend to be areas of limited accessibility, embedded in complex political settings of transport policy. Moreover, the contemporary call for a transition to sustainable mobility applies also to border regions. Nevertheless, limited data availability a...
Contemporary crises have stimulated a new political and scientific interest in economic power structures and regionalisation. In particular, this concerns the local-global nexus, a key argument within the Global Production Networks (GPN) literature. This addresses the question of how global governance concepts help us understand regional production...
Die regionale Wertschöpfung im Bereich der Lebensmittelproduktion wird in der medialen Debatte aktuell breit diskutiert. Oft als Synonym zu Regionalität ist hiermit eine Produktion der kurzen Wege und im näheren Umfeld gemeint. Dabei wird dieser Begriff häufig sehr unscharf verwendet: In konzeptioneller Hinsicht werden ökonomische Begriffe mit Frag...
Cross-border integration is assumed to promote European cohesion. Yet the relationships between different forms of integration and the social and political outcomes they supposedly promote vary. In this paper, we investigate forms of cross-border integration in the Upper Rhine, comparing patterns of functional integration (socioeconomic indicators)...
Der Grenzraumatlas visualisiert Arbeitsmaterialien des CoBo-Projekts (Cohesion in Border Regions), das vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung gefördert wird (2021-2023). Hierin werden die Grenzregionen mit deutscher Beteiligung aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln beleuchtet und zueinander positioniert.
Die vorliegende Dokumentation fasst wichtige Impulse aus der ‚Grenzraumakademie‘ zusammen, die am 20./21. April 2023 in Berlin stattfand. Diese Veranstaltung brachte ca. 130 Gäste aus den Grenzregionen Deutschlands und den Nachbarstaaten in den Austausch mit Expertinnen und Experten verschiedener Politikbereiche und -ebenen. Die Grenzraumakademie w...
Der aktuelle Koalitionsvertrag der Bundesregierung sieht vor, die Zusammenarbeit in Grenzräumen zu verbessern und zielt dabei unter anderem auf sog. ‚Regionalräte‘ ab. Die vorliegende Studie im Auftrag des Auswärtigen Amts leuchtet das Potential von Regionalräten für die intensivierte grenzüberschreitende Kooperation aus.
Sie bearbeitet die folgen...
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a suspension of the Schengen Agreement within the European Union: national borders were partially controlled or closed. Especially in European border regions, where the idea of European integration is most evident, this led to limitations of cross-border linkages, putting the question of border-regional resilience into...
Prosciutto di Parma, Bavarian beer and Roquefort—Geographical Indications (GIs) have been systematically protected at the EU level for 30 years and are now an important part of the farm2fork strategy. The article analyses how the integration of the EU GI system can be explained from an institution and discourse theoretical perspective and ties in w...
Border regions have often been analyzed regarding cohesion and convergence. However, their development in times of crisis is a relatively new field of interest. This study combines convergence and resilience measurement and explores how both concepts relate. The empirical operationalization is a time series based on GDP trends since the financial c...
The Alpine settlement system is of key relevance for sustainable development in the mountain region. However, maps on the European scale indicate almost no cities in the Alps but only a few small towns. We argue that a differentiated mapping approach should involve medium and small settlements in mountain regions, as they have a high functional imp...
»Die Region« begegnet uns ganz selbstverständlich in Alltag, Politik, Wirtschaft und Medien sowie als (raum-)wissenschaftlicher Fachbegriff. Auch wenn Regionen auf den ersten Blick als etwas Faktisches erscheinen, zeigt sich beim zweiten Hinsehen, wie sich das Regionale einer konkreten Begriffsbestimmung entzieht - was auch als Stärke verstanden we...
»Die Region« begegnet uns ganz selbstverständlich in Alltag, Politik, Wirtschaft und Medien sowie als (raum-)wissenschaftlicher Fachbegriff. Auch wenn Regionen auf den ersten Blick als etwas Faktisches erscheinen, zeigt sich beim zweiten Hinsehen, wie sich das Regionale einer konkreten Begriffsbestimmung entzieht – was auch als Stärke verstanden we...
The concept of centrality focuses on fair accessibility to services of general interest. This is a considerable challenge in mountain regions due to low population density and morphological context. However, the centrality debate has hardly taken morphology into account, even though mountain areas require a specific form of spatial organisation – a...
Contemporary debates in border studies tend to see the national level as a rather residual category. There are, however, strong arguments that the national level still plays an important role for the governance of border regions. The question is what kind of formats are in place related to coordination and networking of border regions within nation...
Only a tenth of municipalities in the Alps have a population of more than 10,000 inhabitants. Yet they are home to far more than a third of the Alpine population. When it comes to research and policies for the Alps, however, the debate on peripheral mountain regions dominates over that on towns.
The 9th Report on the State of the Alps reflects on...
Dokumentation des Workshops von 16./17. Mai 2022 im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums des Innern und für Heimat.
This introductory article has three goals. First, it briefly introduces Bavaria’s border areas. Second, the paper introduces three institutional and political perspectives to explain the governance arrangements and processes in the border areas, namely institutional ambiguity, reterritorialisation and multi-level mismatches. Further, the article di...
The political dynamic in the Bavarian-Czech border area is still characterised and
challenged by its location along the former Iron Curtain as well as its history of war
and displacement. This particular situation has led to a unique pattern of coopera-
tion. In comparison to other border areas it is striking that the middle level – i.e. the
level...
In recent years, a growing number of institutional mapping
approaches has reflected on border regions’ development. These
approaches visualise the relationship between institutional and
spatial patterns. In parallel, the quality and quantity of
cooperation-related information in the EU KEEP database (DB) is
continuously increasing. The aim of our p...
As a contribution to the Alpine Climate Target System, this overview of statistical data on land take in the Alps contributes to Step 1 "Define land-take/sealing and the need to stop both" of the Soil Implementation Pathway 2 "Defining Alpine wide guidelines for minimised land-take and sealing". Regarding the task of developing an Alpine-wide defin...
The EU's cohesion policy aims at convergent development of the member states and their
regions, including border regions. In consequence, cohesion trends are a prominent research object. However, the effects of crises and the role of resilience for border regions is a less prominent research object. Recent crises include the current pandemic, the r...
Objectives
Among the few studies examining patterns of COVID-19 spread in border regions, findings are highly varied and partially contradictory. This study presents empirical results on the spatial and temporal dynamics of incidence in 10 European border regions. We identify geographical differences in incidence between border regions and inland r...
This Regional Report presents findings of territorial and governance analyses of the Lake Constance region. It reflects on challenges and opportunities and illustrates a participatory process for promoting integrated development and planning. Spatially integrated perspectives and integration of land and water perspectives are a promising focus: In...
ESPON LAKES has explored the challenges and opportunities for spatial development in large lake regions. The first objective of the project was to develop perspectives for sustainable integrated development in the three stakeholder regions of this Targeted Analysis (lake Balaton, lake Constance and lake Vänern). To do so, each lake region was analy...
ESPON LAKES has explored the challenges and opportunities for spatial development in large lake regions. The first objective of the project was to develop perspectives for sustainable integrated development in the three stakeholder regions of this Targeted Analysis (lake Balaton, lake Constance and lake Vänern). To do so, each lake region was analy...
This paper reflects on place attachment in times of digitalisation in rural regions. Our qualitative study explores the extent to which and with which characteristics place attachment 'translates' into the digital format. The paper analyses 193 digital projects presented in the internet. These cases cover several European countries with a particula...
Agricultural land demand tends to be in weak condition vis-à-vis settlement development, transport infrastructure and industry expansion. At the same time, the awareness and demand of consumers for regional food is constantly rising, in particular in urban regions. The resulting challenge is that high demand for regional food is concentrated at pla...
Our paper paves the way for discussing the significance of EUropean disintegration in relation to EU cohesion policy. It relies on an interdisciplinary literature review outlining how geography and political science grasp the concepts of EUropean integration and disintegration. This review is being undertaken to operationalise a reflective framewor...
Die Border Studies sind aktuell geprägt von einer Parallelität konstruktivistisch-relationaler Ansätze einerseits und angewandt-funktionaler Perspektiven andererseits, wobei diese Diskussionsstränge wenig verbunden sind. Anhand einer empirischen Fallstudie zeigen wir, dass raumstrukturelle Argumente eine relevante Rolle in der Erklärung von grenzüb...
This study analyses the economic effects of the EU policy on the protection of origin. The focus is on three types of food products with Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), whose reference areas are located in the Free State of Bavaria: Beer (Bayerisches Bier PGI), asparagus (Franken-Spargel PGI, Schrobenhausener Spargel PGI), and carp (Aischg...
In this article, we explore the possibilities of reducing information loss when aggregating spatial census data to larger areal units in an algorithmic data driven way to mitigate modifiable areal unit problems. We propose using Fisher’s F-value as a measure for homogeneity. We find that algorithm based clustering yields more homogeneous areas than...
In den vergangenen Jahren haben Methoden des Monitorings und der Evaluation in der Stadt- und Regionalentwicklung zunehmende Beachtung gefunden. Allerdings sind diese meist eher sektoral ausgerichtet und werden häufig aus der ex-post-Perspektive heraus durchgeführt. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht hier einen Schritt weiter, indem er am Beispiel des st...
different understandings of territoriality in cross-border contexts over time
history, governance, spatial context of the cross-border region
Cross-border commuting is a spatial phenomenon of rising importance throughout Europe. As one of the most concrete aspects of European integration, it facilitates the use of comparative advantages to live and work on different sides of national borders. But despite a general political appreciation of cross-border integration, neither the statistica...
Im aktuellen Diskurs werden ‚Landschaft‘ und ‚Wirtschaft‘ oft als Gegensätze gesehen. Der vorliegende Beitrag argumentiert, dass die menschlichen Einflüsse auf die Prägung der Landschaft in hohem Maße mit der ökonomischen Dynamik verknüpft sind. Landschaft ist dabei zugleich Ergebnis von bestimmten Schritten der Wertschöpfungskette wie auch Teil un...
Territorial analyses of the Alps 2050 project
If you want to know how the Alps area will look like in 2050 our ESPON project Alps 2050 is the best source of information. The project focused on the challenges the broader Alpine area is facing such as specific geographical position, globalisation, demographic trends, climate change and its impact on the environment, biodiversity, territorial pat...
The University Erlangen-Nuremberg on behalf of project partner Tyrol has produced an overview of cross-border mobility across the Alpine Region with a focus on daily commuting (WP2). The report includes an analysis of the quality of connections for road and rail infrastructure in twelve selected case studies. It allows classifying and comparing hot...
Bayern zeichnet sich durch seine hohe Biervielfalt sowie Brauereiendichte aus. Der Freistaat weist mit aktuell 642 Braustätten (Stand 2017) weltweit die höchste Brauereiendichte auf, wovon sich mehr als 170 Brauereien in Oberfranken und fast 70 Brauereien in Mittelfranken verteilen (Destatis 2018a, Bayerischer Brauerbund e.V. 2018a). Zur Bewahrung...
Final Report of Alps 2050 project
Scientific Annex to the Alps 2050 project including references of cited literature of all reports
In recent years, European regional policy has seen a surprising popularity of macro-regional strategies. We focus on the example of the Alpine strategy EUSALP and discuss which potential comes along with its underlying regionalization logics. We argue, firstly, that the still young regionalization process of the EUSALP neither follows the understan...
Aus mehreren Anlässen lohnt es sich derzeit, über die grenzüberschreitende Dimension der Raumentwicklung Bayerns nachzudenken. Erstens ist auf bayerischer Ebene eine neue Aufmerksamkeit für Fragen der grenzüberschreitenden Entwicklung festzustellen. Dies bezieht sich vor allem auf die bayerisch-tschechische Grenze. Zugleich wird im Alpenraum mit de...
Since 2009, the European Union has developed strategies for the Baltic Sea, Danube, Adriatic-Ionian and Alpine macro-regions. These macro-regional strategies represent a new tool of European Union governance that seeks to combine the community’s territorial cooperation and cohesion policy repertoire with intergovernmental ‘regional cooperation’ inv...
This publication takes stock of current developments on macro-regional strategies. A wide range of topics is covered in this publication, such as the involvement of regional parliaments in macro-regional strategies, general aspects of governance, policy integration, cross-sectoral cooperation, as well as monitoring and evaluation of macro-regional...
This year marks the 5th anniversary of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) endorsed in 2011 by the European Council. The cooperation’s main goals are to better connect the region, protect the environment, build prosperity and strengthen institutional capacity and security. After five years of implementation, it is time to take stock of th...
Regionalentwicklung ist überall präsent: Wirtschaftsförderer denken an die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit ihrer Stadt, Pendler machen sich im allmorgendlichen Stau Gedanken um metropolitane Verflechtungen, Bürgerinitiativen formieren sich gegen den Bau neuer Windkraftanlagen usw. Was kann man tun, damit sich eine Region positiv entwickelt? Erstmals erfolgt i...
The document presents a "cook book" for developing housing scenarios and forecasting housing needs
unter Mitwirkung von Michaela Fendt, Lukas Heinsch, Anna Heugel, Marlene Huschik, Lu-kas Kratzer, Johanna Nitsch, Melanie Reisch, Nico Weninger, Wolfgang Wenk, Sebastian Wolkersdorfer
Der vorliegende Artikel betrachtet eine neue Form der Regionalisierung, die mit der Etablierung von Makroregionen in der EU zu beobachten ist. Am Beispiel des Donauraums wird die Entstehung dieser großräumigen Kooperationsräume reflektiert, die zunehmend Basis für verschiedene raumrelevante Politikfelder und transnationale Projekte sind. Auf Basis...
Diskussionen zu ‚Region‘ und ‚Regionalentwicklung‘ sind aktuell sehr dynamisch. ‚Die Region‘ ist en vogue – sowohl innerhalb der ‚Praxis‘, in der immer wieder neue Regionalentwicklungsinitiativen oder Regionalmanagements entstehen, als auch innerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Reflexion und Analyse. Praktische Herangehensweise und theoretische Reflexio...
Luxembourg's planning system is currently undergoing a fundamental reform with the establishment of completely new structures in some parts of it. The present paper reflects these developments in the following steps: We start by proposing a heuristic based on the planning culture perspective originally developed by Frank Othengrafen and colleagues,...
We develop three ways to reflect on cohesion in Eastern Europe, all of them based on the GDP indicator. The ‘default perspective’ measures convergence / divergence between countries and regions on a European scale; the ‘club perspective’ measures differences of the performance between and within country groups; and the domestic perspectives analyse...
Europeanization has been interpreted and analysed in a multiplicity of ways in academic debates. Whichever interpretation and analytical approach is used, Europeanization almost always has implications for policy rescaling in some shape or form. This can include the rescaling of policymaking agendas, processes, networks or powers, or alternatively...
This paper explores the coexistence of relational and territorial spaces-soft spaces-through the experiences of EU integration and territorialization. First, we seek a better understanding of EU integration through an engagement with the literature and research on soft spaces. We propose that EU integration is best understood as involving an interp...
Le système luxembourgeois d'aménagement du territoire fait actuellement l'objet d'une
réforme fondamentale visant à en restructurer totalement certains aspects. Le présent article
passe en revue les changements en trois phases. Nous allons dans un premier temps décrire
brièvement le contexte territorial du Luxembourg, lequel présente certaines spéc...
The paper reflects the territorial perspective of the European Union and starts with the reference to three strands of debates that are currently active on the interface of political geography and European law. First, since the 1990s we see a debate on a possible competence on the European level for spatial planning. In this context, the principle...
ULYSSES is an experimental and innovative project supported by 18 European border and cross-border areas (hereafter CBA) that aims at using applied research results from ESPON as a yardstick for decentralised cross-border spatial development concepts. Within this overall framework, a targeted analysis including high-quality, comprehensive and multi...
The European Union does not have the formal competence for a policy of developing metropolises. However, the European influence on the metropolitan development is considerable and currently enforcing. This statement is based on three arguments: Firstly, the urban question is set on the European agenda more and more (p.ex. Charta of Leipzig, declara...
The Habitats Directive of the European Council was adopted in 1992 and aims to protect wild fauna and flora as well as to conserve their habitats on a transboundary European scale. Jointly with the areas of the 1979 Bird Protection Directive, the selected areas will make up the Natura 2000 Network, which is the most important outcome of the Europea...
