Regional Strategies for Sustainable and Inclusive Territorial Development (ReSSI) – Regional Interplay and Dialogue

FUNDER

ESPON EGTC (co-financed by the EU ERDF programme)

VALUE

£243,835 (£80,036 for the Centre for Business in Society/Coventry University)

COLLABORATORS

Research Partners

• Centre for Business in Society (Coventry University, UK): Carlos Ferreira, Stewart MacNeill, Kevin Broughton and Nigel Berkeley.
• Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources Management (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): Christian Fertner and Niels Boje Groth.
• Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (Politecnico di Torino, Italy): Giancarlo Cotella, Umberto Janin, Marco Santangelo and Elena Pede.
• Institute for Geography and Planning (University of Lisbon, Portugal): Mário Vale, Margarida Querós, Eduarda Marques da Costa and Herculano Cachinho.

Stakeholder Partners

• Coventry City Council, UK
• Region of Southern Denmark, Denmark
• Piedmont Region, Italy
• Municipality of Oeiras, Portugal

PROJECT OBJECTIVES

The ReSSI project will examine how sustainable, inclusive and smart economic development (as defined by the Europe 2020 strategy) can be promoted by local and regional authorities in Europe, in the context of evolving landscapes of territorial governance and planning. This will be achieved by addressing six ‘knowledge needs’, defined by the stakeholders:

1. How to promote sustainable and inclusive regional development strategies, taking into account the changing role of regional authorities and the proliferation of stakeholders in functional territories?
2. What are good practices in delivering economic development policies in this new territorial governance framework?
3. What can be appropriate structures that will enable Coventry to share resources and align policy objectives with other participants in the newly created Combined Authority?
4. What can be new forms of cooperation and dialogue amongst municipalities in Southern Denmark around a wide spectrum of issues?
5. What is the role of Piedmont Region in governing the change in the non-metropolitan part of its territory, to ensure that these areas are not excluded from the main development trajectories?
6. How can territorial institutions in and around Oeiras be aligned to promote sustainable development and well-being in the region? 

IMPACT STATEMENT

The ReSSI project will involve a set of targeted analyses, resulting in three major outcomes:

1. A report analysing the stakeholder territories and the strategies used to navigate territorial development in each;
2. A framework of good practice for the creation and implementation of sustainable development policies; and
3. Concrete proposals for developing and delivering individual outcomes in each stakeholder region.

Examples the uses of these outcomes include:

• Promotion of sustainable, inclusive and smart economic development;
• Promotion of organisational reform in each stakeholder, with the objective of improving their adaptation to changing planning regimes;
• Development of policies for carbon reduction across a wide range of planning areas, such as transport, housing and energy generation;
• Addressing challenges associated with unemployment, demographic change, demographic vulnerability and unequal distribution of wealth and services;
• Use of ICT/digital solutions to enable public access to planning information to facilitate better.