case studies situate localities

The project will analysis of the present and potential role of municipalities and other local-level actors in the development and implementation of cohesion policies. It will illustrate through a cross-national comparison the main challenges involved in promoting a greater place-based and locally oriented to emphasis within European Cohesion Policy, and it will contribute to an extensive review and assessment of the research background in preparation of case studies.

Comparative case studies allow to investigate spatial justice and fairness at local-regional level. Based on concepts, hypothesis and macro- and micro- analyses in previous stages, the selected cases focus on understanding and explaining, through a bottom-up perspective, how social needs and equality demands are articulated and pursued on the local-regional level and how factors on local, regional, national and European level condition goal achievement. At the same time, the locations of the case studies.

The results from the case studies in view of the quality of the territorial governance of cohesion policies will be re-reconsidered. This shall help providing an analysis of territorial governance models and regionalism arrangements. With this information a set of alternative “territorial governance models” for coordinating and implementing policies targeted at spatial justice will be elaborated. These sets of alternative territorial governance models will be presented to groups of practitioners from each welfare regime in different policy debates.