Contexts and Interconnections: A Conjunctural Approach to Territorial Cohesion

This article contributes to current debates around EU policy on territorial cohesion and its place-based approaches. Based on substantial empirical research in seven member countries in an on-going EU Horizon 2020 project, the article develops a conjunctural approach based on Doreen Massey’s conceptualisation of place to provide insight into how local development functions in spatial and temporal dimensions. One of the main objectives of the case studies is to compare policy programmes and practices that seek to alleviate territorial inequality and generate economic growth and territorial cohesion. In such a comparison, the issue of conflating and rescaling administrative territorial units and boundaries demands particular attention. Administrative boundaries do not necessarily reflect the complexity and interconnections between policy actors, businesses, and local communities. Local specificities make it difficult to compare the local political room for manoeuvre due to different administrative principles, unequal degrees of devolution of competences or differences in constitutions, e.g., federal states versus unity states. In this article, we argue that, faced with an analysis of highly diverse cases, a conjunctural analytical approach can help to capture and unpack some of the places’ complexities and regional interconnections and be a useful supplement to more conventional comparisons of more similar places. Through two examples, the article discusses what the application of this conjunctural approach means in practice, how it helped shape our understanding of how differently and how it can be further developed to accommodate place-based approaches to researching territorial cohesion

Cohesion in the local context:Reconciling the territorial, economic and social dimensions

This brief editorial introduces a set of articles dealing with territorial challenges in Europe. The EU and the member states have put attention to a silent, but growing issue of inequality: The spatial disparities are in several member states considered able to provide wider political tensions and challenges. Consequently, the EU has launched a research theme in its framework programme Horizon 2020 to cope with such matter. Most of the papers in this issue have their origin in the Horizon COHSMO project "Inequality, Urbanization and Territorial Cohesion: Developing the European Social Model of Economic Growth and Democratic Capacity." While social or economic inequalities are recognized as a social problem, spatial disparities are forgotten or ignored. However, territorial inequalities do boost social and economic differences and add to growing tensions and contradictions in many cases. Coping with such challenges is a difficult matter; most European countries have had programmes aiming at rebalancing regional inequalities for many years. Despite major investments in public services, infrastructure, education and culture, as well as targeted support for private investors, businesses raising employment opportunities and so on. However, the success in terms of growing population and employment has been limited. Instead, endogenous structures and relations receive more attention; in particularly local capacity to generate solutions and means to promote economic and social development. This ability strongly links to the concept of collective efficacy, i.e., a joint understanding and capability to organize and execute actions of mutual benefit

Uncovering the 'cracks'?:Bringing feminist urban research into smart city research

Several urban scholars have stressed the difficulties of locating and capturing the smart city, while at the same time smart city initiatives are becoming normalized and integrated in urban policy and practice. Besides the focus on technological innovations within information and communication technology, artificial intelligence, internet of things, new infrastructures and Big Data, smart cities are also about economic, sociocultural, architectural, ecological and political changes. As Engelbert et al. (2018) argue, citizens represent different interests and needs that are rarely stated in smart city discourse. According to Sangiuliano (2014), smart cities are generally not attentive to gender inequalities and, as Rose (2016) has pointed out, smart city conferences – both academic and professional- are dominated by men. Feminist urban scholars, scrutinizing patriarchal urban development, raise questions of how to develop an inclusive smart city and whether it is possible to claim the concept of smart cities for a more inclusive city. In this article, adding to earlier feminist urban theorists and intersectional approaches, we want to turn to the methodological challenges on how to investigate and ‘unpack’ power relations within smart city visions and materializations. We argue that there is a need for an increased methodological awareness within the smart city research in order to include social difference