Matera Seminar

ESPON 2.2.3 The Territorial Effects of the

Structural Funds in Urban Areas

ECOTEC, ECORYS-Nl; IRS; MCRIT; Nordregio; OIR; SDRU

Structure

• Focus• Towards a typology of urban

areas• First policy recommendations• Challenges for the next phase

Focus

• Work has concentrated on identifying consistent indicators and methods for identifying those urban areas that might be eligible for Objective 2 style programmes in the future – across the EU 27+2

• Assessing the territorial effects of structural funds in urban areas has not been a priority

Towards a typology of urban areas

• Economic trends– Changing employment levels– Changing prosperity– Levels of dependency/vulnerability– Economic structure

• Social trends– Education levels– Income levels– Health– unemployment

• Environmental conditions

Data availability

• Common European data sets at NUTS 3

• Nationally available data at NUTS 4 or 5

• Data that is specific to individual urban areas – Through case study analysis– Awaiting data that will become

available through the Urban Audit 2

Initial typology

• Building on FUAs – using common data (at NUTS 3 level)– Limited economic data

• Employment*• GDP*• Economic structure (estimated)

– Limited social data• Unemployment*• Education levels• Population levels

Initial basic typology

Type Sub-type Definition Number of NUTS 3 areas

AA Those areas which are in absolute difficulty on 3 indicators

13

AB

Those areas which are in absolute difficulty on 2 indicators and relative on 1

36

AC Those areas which are in absolute difficulty on 2 indicators but have none in relative difficulty

136

AD Those areas which are in absolute difficulty on 1 indicator but have 2 in relative difficulty

85

Absolute difficulty

AE Those areas which are in absolute difficulty on 1 indicator but have 1 or less in relative difficulty

431

BA Those areas which are in absolute difficulty of 0 indicator but have 3 in relative difficulty

29 Relative difficulty

BB Those areas which are in absolute difficulty on 0 indicator but have 2 area which is in relative difficulty

150

Not in difficulty

C Those areas which have 0 areas in absolute difficulty and 1 or less areas in relative difficulty

713

Mapping of typology

Accessibility and the typology 1

Accessibility and typology 2

Structural Funds and the typology

Structural Fund assistance in functional urban regions in difficulties 1994-99 Absolute Fragile Relative No

no fua (in %) 0 0,1 0 1

local/regional (in %) 8 26 7 34

National (in %) 2 2 1 9

International (in %) 0 3 5 3

Total 10 31 13 47 Source: ESPON 2.2.3 using the spending typology of ESPON 2.2.1 and the functional urban areas typology of ESPON 1.1.1.

Developing the typology

• The strength of this typology is that it makes use of comparable datasets enabling robust comparisons to be made across the European territory.

• The weakness is that it applies at the NUTS 3 level, is particularly ‘blind’ to sub-urban level difficulties and utilises a limited set of indicators.

• An extended typology has been developed, but the data is not available to populate it.

Extended typologyEconomic

Social Environmental

GrowthEfficiencyStability

PovertyInstitution/InclusionConsultation/Empowerment

Biodiversity/resilienceNatural resources

Pollution

Intragenerational equity

Governance/ culture

Economic

Social Environmental

GrowthEfficiencyStability

PovertyInstitution/InclusionConsultation/Empowerment

Biodiversity/resilienceNatural resources

Pollution

Intragenerational equity

Governance/ culture

The elements of sustainable development – Munasinghe 1993

Components

• Multi-criteria analysis– PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization

METHod for Enrichment Evaluations)

• Status indicators (11)• Performance indicators (17)

• But: – from a total of roughly 1,600 FUAs in Europe

(including the accession countries and Switzerland) only about 100 FUAs showed a relatively complete set of indicators

First policy recommendations

• Urban NUTS 3 areas tend to perform badly in EU 15 (particularly local/regional), an urban focus thus valuable

• Not to attempt to undertake a comprehensive assessment of all urban areas in the EU for Structural Fund purposes

• To undertake an initial assessment based upon NUTS 3 level data

• To use MCA to undertake urban-centred analysis in partnership with urban authorities

• To make use of data from Urban Audit 2 to assess the potential role of the Structural Funds in assessing urban–level difficulties

Challenges for the next phase

• To assess the effects of the Structural Funds in urban areas– Data from 2.2.1– Case study analysis

• To assess the role of urban typologies in decisions regarding eligibility for Objective 2-style actions– Particularly issues of scale and competence

• To test the MCA approach using Urban Audit 2 data

• But, resource constraints