Territorial Impact Research Articles

Desafíos e incertidumbres en torno a la ordenación sostenible del territorio: una perspectiva eurolatinoamericana

Texto resumen.

Territory Impact on the Performance of Spanish Vacation Hotels

Although Spain is among the world's most visited tourist destinations, not all Spanish regions receive the same flow or number of tourists, and the type of visitor varies from one region to another. This paper analyses the structure of the tourism industry across the six most important tourist regions in Spain. Its main aim is to identify the most relevant factors for each of these regions, explaining the differences between them not only in terms of the number of tourists they receive but also in terms of tourist behaviour. The authors select two theoretical models empirically validated in previous studies: Porter's Diamond model, which helps to explain why the tourism industry is more competitive in some Spanish regions than in others, and the theory of tourist districts, which clarifies why the tourism industry tends to develop in very specific geographical areas.

Applying territorial impact assessment in a multi-level policy-making context – the case of Slovenia

Territorial impact assessment (TIA) aims at informing policy-makers on the policy impacts on different geographical areas (‘territorial units’). This paper presents a methodology for TIA which was tested on four European Union (EU) directives and their likely impacts on territorial units in Slovenia. This involved clustering Slovenian statistical (NUTS 3) regions according to their policy-relevant characteristics. The evaluation framework was reflecting the specific territorial cohesion objectives at corresponding governance levels (EU, national, local). This exercise indicates that there are some significant differences among Slovenian regions for different impacts, which become somewhat blurred when aggregated. Furthermore, the meaning of impacts differs depending on the governance level from which they are viewed. We conclude that important differences may be lost when impacts are generalized in policy assessments.

TITIM GIS-tool: A GIS-based decision support system for measuring the territorial impact of transport infrastructures

To achieve sustainability in the area of transport we need to view the decision-making process as a whole and consider all the most important socio-economic and environmental aspects involved. Improvements in transport infrastructures have a positive impact on regional development and significant repercussions on the economy, as well as affecting a large number of ecological processes.This article presents a DSS to assess the territorial effects of new linear transport infrastructures based on the use of GIS. The TITIM – Transport Infrastructure Territorial Impact Measurement – GIS tool allows these effects to be calculated by evaluating the improvement in accessibility, loss of landscape connectivity, and the impact on other local territorial variables such as landscape quality, biodiversity and land-use quality. The TITIM GIS tool assesses these variables automatically, simply by entering the required inputs, and thus avoiding the manual reiteration and execution of these multiple processes. TITIM allows researchers to use their own GIS databases as inputs, in contrast with other tools that use official or predefined maps.The TITIM GIS-tool is tested by application to six HSR projects in the Spanish Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan 2005–2020 (PEIT). The tool creates all 65 possible combinations of these projects, which will be the real test scenarios. For each one, the tool calculates the accessibility improvement, the landscape connectivity loss, and the impact on the landscape, biodiversity and land-use quality. The results reveal which of the HSR projects causes the greatest benefit to the transport system, any potential synergies that exist, and help define a priority for implementing the infrastructures in the plan.

Open Data for Territorial Specialization Assessment Territorial Specialization in Attracting Local Development Funds: an Assessment. Procedure Based on Open Data and Open Tools

The New Cohesion Policy opens to an integrated place-based approach for the improvement of territorial and social cohesion. The issue of territorial impact assessment of regional development policies highlight that data availability, open access to datasets in “near real-time”, participation, knowledge sharing, assumed importance within the development planning process. The contribution of ‘open data’ appears to be mature and in this paper we present an application of spatial analysis techniques for the evaluation of spatial effects of EU funds starting form open data by open-coesione. The application regards an internal areas of Basilicata Region: the Agri Valley. A complex contests in which an environmental and agricultural traditional vocation conflicts with a recent development of oil extraction industries. Conclusions regard further applications and perspectives for improving and supporting regional development planning considering the exploitation of open data sources and spatial analysis.

Houston (Un)limited

How do cities grow? And how do decisions made about mobility and territory impact and structure that growth? Focusing on Houston, Texas after the Second World War, this article looks at how decisions made by city officials helped cement the dual processes of annexation and highway building into the city's growth structure. These strategies, while helping to explain how Houston become a leading metropolitan center during the second half of the twentieth century, also turned into path dependencies that limited Houston's mobility choices and stretched the city's ability to provide services to its citizens. The implementation of these two growth mechanisms shaped the unique development of the city and structured its relationships to the communities around it.

Territorial Impact Assessment of European Draft Directives—The Emergence of a New Policy Assessment Instrument

European Union directives, along with their transposing arrangements in EU member states, can have unanticipated and sometimes undesirable impacts on certain regions and places. These include impacts on the use of space (e.g. new infrastructure or sprawl), governance, and on wider social, economic or environmental dimensions. Although ex-ante assessment of the potential impacts of EU initiatives has been carried out since 2002 through the European Commission's Impact Assessment procedure and also through national equivalents in some member states, important impacts are still overlooked, frequently because of their territorially heterogeneous nature within and between EU member states. This paper presents the results of the ESPON EATIA research project, in which a new territorial impact assessment methodology was developed for national and regional administrations in EU member states in order to inform their national positions during the negotiation of European draft directives and potentially other policy proposals.

The Rural under the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union: Sustainable Rural Development aspects of Pillar II in Finland and Estonia

National ministries of agriculture and competent EU authorities currently have the reforms of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) high on their agendas in terms of planning and designing the upcoming programmatic period. Also subjected to this debate are the allocation of the budget to each pillar and their territorial impact. The interest of this article lies with two interrelated aspects. The first comprises an overview of the Pillar II budget and how this is allocated within EU member states. The second considers how these measures relate and contribute to the improvement of the socio-economic situation and the state of the environment in rural areas of the EU in general, and in Estonia and Finland in particular. Seemingly, the way funding has been allocated thus far, with a heavy focus on agriculture and directly related activities, is not appropriately suited to facilitate a holistic improvement of the state of rural areas of the EU, while it does not reflect the contemporary economic transition processes in these areas. In terms of protection of the agri-environment, Finland exhibits an unprecedented coverage of areas under environmental support measures, as a Pillar II component, while implementation of the same policy in Estonia results currently in the coverage of less than half of the potential areas. The imbalances in the two countries in terms of actual financial support per hectare are also considerable. To facilitate sustainable development in such areas as a whole, policy streaming should not be broken down into objectives to be reached via broad actions that address particular sectors, and it should not attend to the satisfaction of sectoral interests. Rural areas and their economies, in terms of sustainable development, should be approached in an integrated manner, enabling this process to advance in a holistic and territorial fashion, taking into account all the necessary dimensions of sustainability.

The Impact of Intangible Assets on Regional Productivity Disparities in Great Britain

During the past few years there has been a growing consensus in the literature that intangible assets represent a major source of productivity growth. Intangibles facilitate the accumulation of knowledge and information via learning and innovation, allowing, in this way, modern economies to improve the efficiency with which they utilise their resources. Nonetheless, despite the proliferation of studies that investigate the territorial impact of intangibles (variously defined), the full effect of these assets on regional productivity dynamics remains elusive. National Accounts still treat most of what can be considered intangibles as intermediate expenditure entailing that they are largely excluded from conventional measures of gross value added (GVA) and investment. The present paper attempts to tackle this shortcoming not only by including intangibles as capital in the aggregate production function, but also by employing GVA data that are adjusted for intangibles as output. The aim is to investigate the role of intangible assets on the evolution of regional productivity disparities in Great Britain during the period 1995–2004. The analysis considers the spatial effects of intangibles on both partial productivity measures and total factor productivity levels, while the regional figures are also scrutinised for the possible presence of σ-convergence and β-convergence trends during this time.

Use of historical sources in a study of the 1895 floods on the Danube River and its tributaries

Hydrological data series that are measured on the Danube River are temporally limited. Instrumental flow data can be prolonged by documentary data from historical sources in archives. This paper deals with knowledge gained by studies of historical materials regarding the 1895 catastrophic floods on the Danube River and its tributaries as reflected in the contemporary local press and also in studies of other historical records (flood marks, chronicles, books and photos). Records from the newspapers (Wiener Zeitung, Preßburger Zeitung, The New York Times and Komáromi Lapok) and other analysed sources show the relatively large territorial impact of the floods in March and April 1895, which affected not only the Danube and its tributaries, but also some neighboring basins. Catastrophic consequences of the flood were especially reported from the lower parts of the Danube River (from its confluence with the Drava River up to the mouth of the Black Sea) and the tributaries of the Tisza and Sava rivers. In 1895, the second highest flood after the 2006 flood on the Lower Danube was observed since 1841.

Paisajes migratorios en la Región de Murcia: territorio y ciudad en los flujos contrapuestos norte-sur (turismo residencial) y sur-norte (migración laboral)

El fenómeno de las migraciones contemporáneas asume en el área mediterránea unas características propias, pues al tiempo que se registra la afluencia de contingentes procedentes de África y América asociados a actividades productivas, también se producen importantes aportes de la Europa occidental que son atraídos por el turismo residencial. Estos flujos, de características socioeconómicas y culturales tan diferentes, coinciden en un mismo contexto territorial y provocan procesos urbanos y arquitectónicos de signo muy diferente y en ocasiones antagónico en cuanto conforman «fronteras interiores», fraccionamientos residenciales, y tienden a disolver el espacio público. En este artículo se analizan algunos aspectos de los paisajes migratorios de la Región de Murcia que son extrapolables a otras zonas del área Mediterránea interpretados dentro de esta contraposición de flujos migratorios procedentes del Norte (la Europa Occidental) y el Sur (el Tercer Mundo) y su impacto sobre el territorio rural y urbano. El enfoque metodológico parte del fenómeno social y económico de las migraciones, que ha recibido abundante bibliografía científica en las últimas décadas en el ámbito de las distintas ciencias sociales, pero se centra en el impacto territorial y arquitectónico, aspectos sintetizados en el término que hemos compilado de «paisajes migratorios».

El viñedo en espaldera: nueva realidad en los paisajes vitivinícolas de Castilla-la Mancha

Texto resumen.

Soil degradation processes in the Italian agricultural and forest ecosystems

A number of processes of degradation threaten soil functions. Ten of them are acknowledged by the European Union and fifteen by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but at least another seven have been indicated by different authors in Italy and in other parts of the world. This short review paper summarizes the nature, economic relevance, and territorial impact of soil degradation in Italy, and with reference to Europe as a whole, and highlights the most relevant research needs in soil conservation. The direct annual costs of the main soil degradation processes are estimated to be over 38,000,000,000 euro per year in Europe as a whole, while in Italy, only for landslides, floods, and soil erosion, costs amount to 900,000,000 euro. Loss of the ability to produce food commodities because of soil degradation is particularly important in Italy, since selfsufficiency in food has recently decreased to less than 80% and Italian agricultural soils are hit by several problems, such as limited soil drainage, unfavorable texture and stoniness, shallow rooting depth, and poor chemical properties. On average, soil sealing, reduction in organic matter, and soil compaction in Italy are comparable with those of many other countries, but the occurrence of soil erosion, floods, and landslides is more widespread than in most parts of Europe, and also the presence of salt-affected soils is becoming a major worry. The fight against soil degradation in Italy is certainly more difficult than in other countries because of the high environmental variability. However, according to the current trends, Italy is mostly probably destined not to achieve the European objective to significantly reduce main soil degradation processes by the year 2020. There are several research needs in the field of soil conservation in Italy. These include: i) a better basic knowledge about many soil degradation processes and of pedodiversity; ii) reliable, sensitive, and locally validated models for main degradation processes; iii) assessment of resilience of different soils against degradation processes, as well as of their reaction to the measures foreseen in the current European agricultural policy.

A top-down approach to assess physical and ecological limits of biofuels

The aim of this article is to analyse the physical and ecological limits of biofuels (in particular, ethanol). To this end, three aspects are discussed. First of all, the territorial element, i.e., the real productivity of energy crops (in particular, ethanol), to show that, in general, the productivity is much lower than most of the literature on the subject suggests. Similarly, we then stress the high total territorial impact (the Ecological Footprint) associated with this kind of energy production. Thirdly, we offer data concerning the very modest nature of the energy balance of biofuels (EROEI) and their real power density, considering the productivity of the crops grown for biofuel. As a comparison, these three aspects are estimated for other forms of energy, in particular, photovoltaic energy. We conclude that when the set of estimated parameters has been analysed, there exist reasonable doubts concerning the use of biofuels on a regional and global scale, so they should not, in principle, be promoted as a renewable energy source, nor is it desirable on such a scale.

The Territorial Impact of the Knowledge Economy: Intangibles and Regional Inequality in Great Britain

Knowledge-based activities are an important source of national and regional competitiveness. In the UK and other European Union countries knowledge industries represent not only one of the fastest growing sources of new jobs, but also account for an increasing share of Gross Value Added (GVA) and exports. Nonetheless, there are also indications that the actual importance of the knowledge economy still remains understated. Within the conventional System of National Accounts, expenditure on intangible assets, such as research and development or human and organizational capital, is not considered either as part of GVA or as investment. In the UK, Marrano et al. (2009) report increased market sector GVA figures by as much as 13% in 2004 after treating intangibles as investment. Considering that expenditures on intangibles vary considerably across regions, it is likely that the territorial impact of this aspect of the knowledge economy has remained largely unreported so far. Spatial inequalities in the investment in intangibles should result in sharper inequalities in regional output. This paper aims to address this issue, first by adjusting the UK regional GVA series for investment in intangibles and second by exploring the trends in regional economic convergence during the period 1991–2004.

Slovenia as the Natural Park of Europe? Territorial Impact Assessment in the Case of Natura 2000

The implementation of Natura 2000 is causing difficulties in the EU’s Member States, including Slovenia. In addition to the positive environmental it also results in the negative economic, social, and governance-administrative effects. To prevent similar quandaries in adopting and implementing EU policies, the project ESPON EATIA developed a participatory process for the territorial impact assessment. Testing the Habitat Directive has shown that in addition to the positive effects regarding the conservation of biodiversity, the directive represents a major obstacle for the economy and the delivery of investments. At the same time it represents the potential of the area for tourism and opportunity for the development of new industries. The regulation contributes to a better quality of life, but also extends the spatial planning procedures and conflicts between investors and the local community. This approach has proven to be an appropriate medium for the exchange of experiences of various stakeholders who are involved in either the preparation or the implementation of the rules and as the proper tool for the global assessment of the effects of selected EU regulation.

Assessing Territorial Impacts of the EU Cohesion Policy: The Portuguese Case

This article examines the territorial impacts of the EU Cohesion Policy in Portugal, between 1990 and 2010, at the national level. To reach some conclusions, after a brief overview of the existing literature on territorial impact assessment (TIA) procedures, we present the main features of a proposed TIA technique, which we called TARGET_TIA, and applied to our study case. This analysis permitted us to go beyond the general scope of the EU Cohesion Policy evaluations, which concentrate mainly on the socioeconomic and environmental dimensions, by placing on evidence other key-territorial dimensions, such as Territorial Governance/Cooperation and Polycentricity. Findings indicate that, in general, the EU Cohesion Policy had positive territorial impacts in Portugal, namely by supporting the construction of absent and necessary physical infrastructures. However, the lack of spatial planning and strategic vision limited a more effective and efficient use of Cohesion Funds in Portugal.

Prospects of Cross-Border Cooperation in Europe: Capacity-Building and the Operating Principle of “Horizontal Subsidiarity”

Based on a reflection of the seven central challenges which all cross- border territories in Europe are facing in practice, the article analyses how cross-border cooperation in Europe could be improved in the future. Two central fields are interpreted in this regard: training/facilitating and applied interdisciplinary research. The article suggests that a more effective cross-border policymaking of the future depends on a systemic capacity-building, based on the new operating principle of »horizontal subsidiarity«. For the moment being, cross-border cooperation is only a functional sub-system, created by and largely depending on contributions coming from the states involved. Horizontal subsidiarity, combined with new approaches such as territorial impact assessment, multi-level governance or joint interest representation would allow for a better development of an integrated cross-border policymaking, based on the real challenges and potentialities of a 360° perspective on the cross-border territory.

Territorial development. Quinoa, a catalyst for innovation

The International Year of Quinoa (IYQ) in 2013 celebrates this Andean plant for its potential contribution to the fight against hunger and poverty. The development of this sector can also have a territorial impact, depending on the context and on the accompanying process, as shown by the comparison between the Salars region in the south of the Bolivian Altiplano, the Central Chile region and the Mapuche region in southern Chile.

Creation of a Geo-Spatial Database to Analyse Railways in Europe (1830-2010). A Historical GIS Approach

The GIS is a tool that allows us to study the logic of the distribution of phenomena that occur on the Earth’s surface. In this article, we propose exploring its potential for historical research over long periods. Here, we present a Historical GIS (HGIS) of the railways of Europe for the period 1830-2010. This is a response to the need to carry out spatialtemporal analyses in order to evaluate the territorial impact of the railway and its influence on the distribution of population. The main objectives of this work are: to publicise the existence of this spatial database; to explain the approach followed in order to produce it; and to highlight some of the results that have already been achieved by using it. To date, the possibilities offered by HGIS have hardly been explored in research into the territorial impact of the railway. Similarly, until now, little work has been done in this area at the European scale. The most innovative aspects of this HGIS therefore lie in the methodology used and the subject treated.