Within the European Union the issue of territorial transformation and management is one of the main fields of public action. Starting with the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), approved in 1999, and subsequent strategies defined at the Lisbon (2000) and the Gothenburg (2001) councils, the European Union has identified policy options and keywords such as territorial cohesion, polycentric development and co-planning. Those concepts address the objectives of territorial development, and should form the basis for enhancing convergence between Member States territorial policies.

From ESDP to Territorial Agenda

The process started with the ESDP has been continued in recent years with various meetings, projects and researches, and has reached the next significant step with the signing of the Territorial Agenda for the European Union and the Liepzig Charter on Sustainable Urban Development in Lipsia the 24th and 25 th of May 2007¹.
More in details, the Territorial Agenda contains a set of policy options that will address the use of EU structural funds and other Community-driven strategic actions at the local scale.

The Agenda identifies the following priorities:

• strengthening polycentric development and innovation through networking of city regions and cities;
• promoting new forms of partnership and territorial governance between rural and urban areas;
• promoting regional clusters of competition and innovation in Europe;
• supporting the strengthening and extension of trans-European networks;
• promoting trans-European risk management including the impacts of climate change;
• promoting the strengthening of ecological structures and cultural resources as the added value for development.

All these objectives will have to be pursued at each territorial level (European, National and regional) through adequate and coherent policy actions. An action plan for the Territorial Agenda will be defined during the Portuguese EU Presidency, in the second half of year 2007.
For what concerns the Liepzig Charter, its focus is on urban areas, and has got two main objectives:

• making greater use of integrated urban development policy approaches (for creating and ensuring high-quality public spaces, modernising infrastructure networks and improving energy efficiency, promoting proactive innovation and educational policies);
• focalising the attention on deprived neighbourhoods within the context of the city as a whole (particularly through the pursuing of strategies for upgrading the physical environment, the strengthening of local economy and local labour market policies, the elaboration of proactive education and training policies for children and young people, the promotion of efficient and affordable urban transport).

New challenges
Even if the documents approved in Lipsia, as well as the ESDP, are not legally binding, their relevance in defining and addressing territorial policies in the EU can not be underestimated. Public administrations at every level are more and more forced to face new challenges that somehow bring up for discussion many consolidated approaches to territorial policies. Three crucial questions have to be mentioned here, as a starting point for further reflections:

• territorial issues can not be anymore the object of sectorial policies; this means that on one hand the institutions that are traditionally in charge of territorial planning have to interact with other actors, both institutional and non-institutional; on the other hand, when designing development strategies the territorial effects of non-territorial policies (for example policies on innovation, labour market, services delivery and so on) have to be taken into account;
• local authorities need more and more to build their developing strategies in accordance with more general territorial frameworks. On a concrete scale, this means that governance structures at every administrative level have to be strengthened. Putting the European territorial policies into practice in many cases requires a new design of existing administrative structures, with a higher degree of flexibility, inter-institutional cooperation and stakeholders involvement;
• the local scale has to establish strict links with the European level. It is a two-way question: local authorities have to get familiar with the concepts, the approaches and the practices promoted by the European Union, and the higher level has to take advantage of local identities and specificity, treating them as an opportunity for a sustainable development

¹ Both documents (in English and in French) can be downloaded at the Internet site of Germany Federal Ministry of Transport, Buildings and Urban Affairs: http://www.bmvbs.de/en/EU-Council-Presidency/Events-,2655.997066/Informal-Ministerial-Meeting-o.htm

Paolo Zeppetella - Regione Piemonte

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