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New perspective on towns in Europe:
From analysis to policy reflections
ESPON TOWN project
Loris Servillo
Vilnius (Li), 04 December 2013
What is a town?
Linguistic differences and translating problems
Conventional wisdom on towns
Town: 1) an urban area that has a name, 2)defined boundaries and
3)local government, AND that is larger than a village and generally
smaller than a city
Definition within the TOWN project
Town: 1) a built-up area (a polygon that has a number in a database!), 2)
with boundaries possibly crossing administrative limits, and 3)
where you search (and sometimes find) for local capacity and
horizontal and multi-level local governance
Morphological interpretation
Small and medium-sized towns
Morphological interpretation
POPULATION (inh.)
DENSITY (inh. / kmq)
< 300
300 - 1500 > 1500
< 5000
OTHER
SETTLEMENTS
VST
VST
5000 50000
OTHER
SETTLEMENTS
SMST
SMST
> 50000
OTHER
SETTLEMENTS
large SMST HDUC
General picture
~8,350 urban settlements can be classified as SMSTs
~70,000 urban settlements can be classified as Very Small Towns
(below the 5.000 inhabitant threshold)
SMST: about 27% of EU population
Very Small Towns: 19% of EU population
!
Policy message
Complexity and institutional diversity across Europe concerning the
relationship between administrative and morphological definitions
Not only a technical aspect:
- Data issue
(thus)
- Policy issue
N (SMST
polygons in
database)
Mean number of intersections between SMST
polygons and:
local authority units
NUTS3 regions (2006)
(LAU)
Belgium (BE)
184
1.23
1.05
Czech Republic (CZ)
222
1.73
1.01
Spain (ES)
France (FR)
Italy (IT)
Poland (PL)
Sweden (SE)
Slovenia (SI)
England & Wales (UK)
Total
65
881
252
42
41
43
574
2304
1.78
2.89
2.41
1.33
1.00
1.26
1.19
2.05
1.00
1.06
1.11
1.02
1.00
1.00
1.12
1.07
!
Policy message
EU
Settlement
polygons
NUTS3 with
prevailing
settlements
Preliminary results
EU macro-trends
Variation of Population and GDP at NUTS3
level between 2001 and 2011
Measured on 3 types of regions:
-
-
Region predominantly populated in small and
medium settlements
(pop in HUDC < 30%)
Highly urbanized regions
(pop in HUDC > 70%)
Region with population evenly distributed in
various settlements
(in between)
In relation with early suppositions
- Have we assisted to a general shift of population toward cities and
metropolitan areas?
- Have we registered a general impoverishment of (regions
characterized by) smaller settlements?
- Can we consider towns as isolated and independent settlements?
-
National policies matter?
Meso-level: relationship with urban regions?
Objective 1 regions
!
Policy message
What makes SMSTs different
•
On average, SMSTs (in database) are different from large cities on a
range of measures:
• Social (older working population, more pensioners, higher ‘nonforeign’ population)
• Economic (greater proportion employment in manufacturing,
more self-employment, more likely to be net exporter of labour
(dormitory), less diverse in sectoral mix)
• Housing issues (more second homes)
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•
•
Changes in SMSTs during the period 2001-11 are different from the
change that are observed in cities over the same period
• Demographic (faster growing, net migration rate higher)
• Economic (slightly greater rate)
However between group and between country differences:
‘All’ Small
towns (N=1339)
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Small towns
in Slovenia
Small towns
in NW Italy
Migrationenhanced
aging?
Shrinking
Growing
Labour
exporters
Net migration
by country
So what?
!
Policy message
•
Do SMSTs across Europe face ‘common problems’?
• Social and economic problems for SMSTs are only ‘common’ in
an abstract sense
• In practice the ‘problems’ of towns are mainly framed by their
national/regional context (clusters of ‘problem-sets’)
•
What concerns of European policy touch down on SMSTs?
• Giving SMSTs a voice in regional debates
• Small town does not mean small problem
• No ‘one size fits all’….
• Supporting alternative visions of the local economy
• Collective action within/among small towns
• Supporting the definition of micro-regionalism
processes
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So what?
!
Policy message
Place-based approach recommended?
Endogenous growth vs specialized towns with urgent challenges (retail trade,
deindustrialization)
In many case, at the local level, difficult to anticipate problems, to make
choices (and alliances);
How does the national/regional policy deal with a town specificity (and
specific cases of towns)?
Investment driven? Bottom-up and top down? How is it negotiated,
coproduced with the local stakeholders?
Does the national, regional, local level prioritize, discriminate?
Is there a ‘policy model’?
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Thank you
Loris Servillo
[email protected]
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