Urban Planning and European Innovation Policy: Achieving Sustainability, Social Inclusion, and Economic Growth?

Kim Carlotta Von Schönfeld,António Ferreira

doi:10.3390/su13031137

Kim Carlotta Von Schönfeld, António Ferreira

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031137

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Abstract

Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy. Funding schemes, research, and planning across all Member States are expected to be innovative. This article provides a critical analysis of the drivers and effects of this evolution. While positive results have been achieved due to innovation policies, this article proposes that taking a wider critical perspective reveals important caveats. The article zooms in on the EU’s innovation policies by analysing policy documents, projects funded, and on-the-ground impact on three citizen initiatives. The analysis asks whether and how the EU’s self-set goals of sustainability, social inclusion, and economic growth are approached and met in them. The findings suggest a problematic funnelling process. First, an emphasis on innovation is created with the objective of systematically unblocking resistance to the development and implementation of novelties in the name of competitiveness, job creation, and economic growth. Second, the idea of innovation is very loosely defined, while, when translated into urban planning, it is interpreted narrowly in terms of efficiency and behavioural change, digitalization, and smart technologies. As a result, (narrowly defined) innovation-led economic growth begins to supersede alternative values and visions for the future of European cities and regions. This can represent a problem for EU Member States as it creates a very limited, risk-based, and divisive direction of development. To contribute to the (re-)establishment of alternatives, this article finally offers policy recommendations primarily concerned with the reinstatement of the public interest beyond innovation-centred planning perspectives.

Highlights

CITTA—Centre for Research on Territory, Transports and Environment, University of Porto, Abstract: Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy
To uncover what the term “innovation” means in EU policy and how it relates to the goals of sustainability, economic growth, and social inclusion; how innovation is used in identifying and supporting initiatives and research throughout the EU; what a critical eye on the implementation of local policies driven by the European innovation logic can reveal
By conducting three different types of empirical research and a theoretical exploration based on the findings, the article concludes that it does—if one agrees that economic growth is a condition for social inclusion and sustainability, and that these can be treated as by-products of a focus on economic growth

Summary

Introduction

CITTA—Centre for Research on Territory, Transports and Environment, University of Porto, Abstract: Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy. As a result, (narrowly defined) innovation-led economic growth begins to supersede alternative values and visions for the future of European cities and regions This can represent a problem for EU Member States as it creates a very limited, risk-based, and divisive direction of development. Such critical authors argue that innovation can lead to environmental degradation, precarity, learning deficits, the dismantling of desirable societal and technological configurations, stress, and anxiety, among other possibilities (see, e.g., [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19]) This raises the question of whether innovation-centred policy making achieves the goals it has set itself (i.e., sustainability, social inclusion, and economic growth)

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