RELOCAL Special Session in the AESOP Annual Congress in Venice

RELOCAL had a Special Session in the AESOP Annual Congress in Venice on 9-13 July about “The Role of the Local in Improving Cohesion and Spatial Justice”

The special session titled “The Role of the Local in Improving Cohesion and Spatial Justice” discussed the capacity of place-based approaches to deliver spatial justice, and how understand the role of the local level in deploying cohesion policies.

The session was planned to address the following questions:

• How do perceptions, capacities, tools and policies, forms of co-ordination, governance, participation and autonomy interact with each other and affect the relevance and effectiveness of place-based approaches in reducing spatial injustice?
• How specific place-based approaches to local development can be integrated into the design and deployment of the future Cohesion Policy of the EU?

Some of RELOCAL partners participated, exposing the main findings from their cases studies:

– Kotka case, Finland – Powers and limits of the local: bottom-up initiative meeting top-down policies for spatial justice

– Place/Ladywell Housing Project, London – A temporary local project with metropolitan impacts