Debating the urban dimension of territorial cohesion

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 meaning of the Territorial Cohesion concept. The later, however, proposes three main policy responses towards more balanced and harmonious development: (i) Concentration: overcoming differences in density; (ii) Connecting territories: overcoming distance; and (iii) Cooperation: overcoming division. Although not explicitly, this document identifies several ‘urban questions’ to be dealt when promoting territorial cohesive policies: avoiding diseconomies of very large agglomerations and urban sprawl processes, combating urban decay and social exclusion, avoiding excessive concentrations of growth, promoting access to integrated transport systems and creating metropolitan bodies. In this light, this chapter proposes to debate the importance of the urban dimension to achieve the goal of territorial cohesion at several territorial levels.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Scenario Analysis and Strategic Environmental Assessment

The European Union (EU) has introduced the Strategic Environmental Assessment (Directive 2001/42/EC), with the aim to support the implementation of actions in the long run and evaluate the impacts of policy, plan and programs The strategic thinking and the participation of the stakeholders to the decision-making process represent the main innovations in contrast to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). In this context the paper presents scenarios analysis developed within Future studies literature as a tool to facilitate strategic thinking in SEA and to support an integrated planning process based on the participation of the main stakeholders involved. Starting from an analysis of the literature on case studies developed in different contest where scenario methods are test within SEA process, a cognitive methodological framework is pro-posed with the aim to underline the role of scenario analysis in each phase of SEA decision-making process, from the definition of the main scenarios to the evaluation of the strategic action and the monitoring after the plan implementation