Transactions of the Association of European Schools of Planning is an international, bi-annual, peer-reviewed, open-access journal, produced and owned by the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). It is free of charge to submit a paper and to publish in the Transactions of the Association of European Schools of Planning. Accepted papers are accessible online, to everyone, for free. All papers are subject to a double-blind peer-review process.
Preface
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The causes and impacts of new and enduring regional inequalities have been much debated in many regions and countries around the globe over the past decade. This has been reflected in public and political discourse with references to and imaginaries of so-called ‘forgotten’ or ‘left behind’ regions and peripheral territories. Discourses and movements of political discontent have sparked off renewed debates on uneven development and the experience of left-behind places, which struggle with persistent social and economic challenges and might appear to be seen as ‘places that don’t matter’...
Articles
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The UK government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda represents the latest attempt to address long-standing inter-regional socio-economic disparities in England. This paper assesses how the Levelling Up The UK White Paper, published in early 2022, frames the problem of interregional inequality and the potential of the proposed solutions contained within the paper to address the problem. We argue that the Levelling Up agenda as currently framed is likely to be too spatially vague to achieve meaningful reductions in the level of interregional inequality in England, and suggest that any attempts to...
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The subject of regional inequality has been garnering the attention of scholars over the past decade and has generated debates on territories forgotten by mainstream economic activities. Left-behind places are a global phenomenon yet with various situated conditions in different development contexts that required customized, place-based solutions. This paper discusses a possible approach to work with the left-behinds: using the university as an institutional resource to engage people and places in regional regeneration. Using the [anonymised] project as an example, we describe the...
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This paper presents the results of a comparative research on place-based policies towards “left-behind territories” in Europe. It shows the variety of trajectories of putting the territorial question on the agenda and of defining the 'forgotten' territories in Italy, Spain and Poland. This variety reveals specific processes linked to short- and long-term debates on the Nation. The tools used to help these territories tend to converge, under the influence of methods coming from the European Union. However, the functions of these territories are still unclear in national planning...
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The forgotten Italian territories have almost always been understood as compact physical and conceptual spaces. While changing its terms, borders, and issues from time to time, the forgotten regions have been described through a homogeneous image: Mezzogiorno, peripheries and Inner Areas. Such a representation has effects both in conceptualization and efforts taken to recompose the gaps between the forgotten territories and the most active parts. Yet, in recent years, the numerous crises of the 21st century have shattered this compact representation and brought out new...
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Addressing issues of regional inequalities and supporting ‘left behind’ regions is a global issue, but analysis of international regions that have successfully levelled up is limited. Developing and implementing effective place-based policies is critical for recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic but remains an under-explored issue. This paper provides insight into different policies and tools used to support left-behind places. Comparing experiences of addressing socio-economic challenges in Greater Lille, Nantes, the Ruhr region, San Antonio and Estonia, it discusses what ingredients for...
