scholarly journals Paths of the urban regeneration process in Central and Eastern Europe after EU enlargement - Poland and Bulgaria as comparative case studies

Spatium ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Przemysław Ciesiółka ◽  
Angel Burov

The enlargement of the EU towards Central-Eastern Europe in the years 2004 and 2007 and the related EU funds provided new opportunities and created new challenges to both big metropolitan cities and smaller settlements. One of the particularly important challenges was to define appropriate national and local policies for the urban regeneration of neglected areas, which were abundant in this part of Europe. The objective of the paper is to analyze and evaluate actions taken in Bulgaria and Poland at the national and local level in the field of urban regeneration after the countries? accession to the EU. The paper compares the general national and local planning approaches and capacity building for urban regeneration in the context of regulative and procedural issues. The local case studies represent two types of urban areas under regeneration: the metropolitan core cities Pozna? and Sofia and medium-sized non-core towns of Pi?a and Gabrovo. The results are in the form of a concurrent evaluation of both the achievements and negative effects resulting from the national and local processes in the envisaged and the recently implemented activities with regard to the regeneration of deprived urban neighborhoods and areas.

Resources ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Guzik ◽  
Krzysztof Galos ◽  
Alicja Kot-Niewiadomska ◽  
Toni Eerola ◽  
Pasi Eilu ◽  
...  

Major benefits and constraints related to mineral extraction within the EU have been identified on the examples of selected critical raw materials’ deposits. Analyzed case studies include the following ore deposits: Myszków Mo-W-Cu (Poland), Juomasuo Au-Co (Finland), S. Pedro das Águias W-Sn (Portugal), Penouta Nb-Ta-Sn (Spain), Norra Kärr REEs (Sweden) and Trælen graphite (Norway). They represent different stages of development, from the early/grassroot exploration stage, through advanced exploration and active mining, up to reopening of abandoned mines, and refer to different problems and constraints related to the possibility of exploitation commencement. The multi-criteria analysis of the cases has included geological and economic factors as well as environmental, land use, social acceptance and infrastructure factors. These factors, in terms of cost and benefit analysis, have been considered at three levels: local, country and EU levels. The analyzed cases indicated the major obstacles that occur in different stages of deposit development and need to be overcome in order to enable a new deposit exploitation commencement. These are environmental (Juomasuo and Myszków), spatial (Juomasuo) as well as social constraints (Norra Kärr, Juomasuo). In the analyzed cases, the most important constraints related to future deposit extraction occur primarily at a local level, while some important benefits are identified mainly at the country and the EU levels. These major benefits are related to securing long-term supplies for the national industries and strategically important EU industry sectors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 2484
Author(s):  
Vladimír Falťan ◽  
František Petrovič ◽  
Ján Oťaheľ ◽  
Ján Feranec ◽  
Michal Druga ◽  
...  

Monitoring of land cover (LC) provides important information of actual land use (LU) and landscape dynamics. LC research results depend on the size of the area, purpose and applied methodology. CORINE Land Cover (CLC) data is one of the most important sources of LU data from a European perspective. Our research compares official CLC data (third hierarchical level of nomenclature at a scale of 1:100,000) and national statistics (NS) of LU in Slovakia between 2000 and 2018 at national, county, and local levels. The most significant differences occurred in arable land and permanent grassland, which is also related to the recording method and the development of agricultural land management. Due to the abandonment of agricultural areas, a real recorded increase in forest cover due to forest succession was not introduced in the official records of Land register. New modification of CLC methodology for identifying LC classes at a scale of 1:10,000 and fifth hierarchical level of CLC is firstly applied for local case studies representing lowland, basin, and mountain landscape. The size of the least identified and simultaneously recorded area was established at 0.1 ha the minimum width of a polygon was established at 10 m, the minimum recorded width of linear elements such as communications was established at 2 m. The use of the fifth CLC level in the case studies areas generated average boundary density 17.2 km/km2, comparing to the 2.6 km/km2 of the third level. Therefore, when measuring the density of spatial information by the polygon boundary lengths, the fifth level carries 6.6 times more information than the third level. Detailed investigation of LU affords better verification of national statistics data at a local level. This study also contributes to a more detailed recording of the current state of the Central European landscape and its changes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 3828-3834

Increased urbanization in an unprecedented manner has resulted in the splitting of urban areas into small divisions for the administrative convenience and effective planning purpose. In India, ward is the smallest administrative unit and has been in attention since 74th Constitutional Amendment Act. This act provided for autonomy to the ULBs to be responsible for the planning, implementation and operation of municipal services at local level. As per the Master Plan of Delhi 2021, all the wards shall have a Local Area Plan (LAP) to meet the needs and aspiration of the local people. The LAP is deciphered at the individual ward level in case of Delhi. There are 272 wards in Delhi and the population of these wards varies from 5000 to 200000. Hence, it is gathered that one approach or framework for urban management at local level may not be suitable for all wards of Delhi and also it is technically not achievable to have 272 individual LAP in the light of both financial and material resources shortage. With this background, the study is conducted and authors have attempted to list the criteria for spatial categorization of wards through literature review with the view to catalogue the wards in Delhi. This will enable planners to formulate strategies suitable for various wards catalogued under one category leading to effective utilization of common resources As a pilot study three important planning criteria - population density, building density and development pattern - were identified from literature studies and Geographical Information System (GIS) application and correlation analysis statistical used over these three criteria to catalogue the wards in Delhi. Consequently, 272 wards of Delhi were catalogued under 9 different categories. The findings are suggestive that physical planning attributes are important tools to define the vast spatial built areas into categories that are more conducive for local planning in comparison to the administrative boundaries delineated on the basis of population only. This may give stimulus to the operative planning at local level and shall enable policy makers and planners to design the strategies which are more efficient in terms of resources, time and are more effective and implementable at ward level. The originality of the study is in the fact that no such study has been conducted in the Indian context that attempts to catalogue built and unbuilt spaces based on physical planning attributes


1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (9) ◽  
pp. 1575-1602 ◽  
Author(s):  
C M Guy

The development programmes of major grocery retailers in Britain have transformed the retail systems of many urban areas. Impacts upon patterns of consumer behaviour and shopping provision have been substantial. Although many writers have discussed retailers' changing corporate strategies and their implications for new store development, there is still a need for local case studies. In this paper, therefore, processes of change in grocery provision in Cardiff, a city of almost 300000 population, are examined, mainly over a recent twelve-year period. An initial burst of superstore development was accompanied by closures of many small grocery stores owned by multiple and cooperative organisations. Since about 1986, rates of new store development and of store closure have diminished. These changes were superimposed upon a longer term decline in independent food retailing. The question of trading impact is then investigated through associations over time and space of store openings and closures. Although some of the closures in this analysis appear to be explained, it is clear also that certain characteristics of the stores themselves (particularly size and location) were strongly related to the likelihood of closure. This in turn reflected corporate strategies for growth, repositioning, or retrenchment amongst the multiples concerned, mediated through the local property market and land-use planning policies. The conclusion is that the case study clearly exemplifies the impacts of recent events in British retailing, but that further studies are needed to build a comprehensive understanding of retail change at the local level.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 523-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Weck

The article is intended to give insight into the state of the art of local economic development in area-based urban regeneration in Germany. The impor-tance of local economic development has been widely recognised and a series of workshops, evaluation reports and programmes has been initiated to promote this policy area. A set of policy programmes has been developed to support integrated action in distressed urban areas. There are no radical changes in the different programme designs, but rather subsequent adaptations and amplifications through time. Policy learning has taken place in a process cutting across all levels of government. The state of the art of local economic development is illustrated using the example of the city of Gelsenkirchen in order to see how different funding programmes on the national and/or Länder (federal states) level are applied and combined on the local level, and how they help to formulate an integrated urban renewal approach. A range of policy challenges remains. The challenges on the local level include, for example, the development of strategic capacity in designing and implementing local-economic development measures.


2021 ◽  
pp. 176-193
Author(s):  
Svetlana Knyazeva

The article examines a wide range of the problems associated with the boundless enlargement of the European Union which makes it possible to place the Balkans in the context of general European development. To become a member of the EU is the important goal of the post-socialist countries of the Balkans/South-Eastern Europe. Bulgaria, Romania, and the post-Yugoslavian states of Slovenia and Croatia became full members of the EU. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania are still at different stages of integration into the European community. This accession is the logical completion of the processes of social, political, economic and legal transformation of the Balkan countries, in which they themselves and the European Union as a whole and its individual member states are interested for reasons of geopolitics and geoeconomics. However, the accession to Europe (or the return to Europe) of the Balkan states with their authoritarian and socialist past includes not only the reform of the economic, political and legal systems, but also a change in value orientations. While in the states of the so-called «founding fathers» of the EU a Western European corporate civic identity is being formed, in the countries of the former Eastern Europe and the Balkan region, ethnic identity remains remains largely in the mainstream of public consciousness. The author examines axiological, ideological and psychological aspects of the accession of post-socialist countries to the EU, and also analyzes specific foreign policy problems associated with this process and the role of regional international organizations in the «europeanization» of the Balkans and in the settlement of ethnic and interstate conflicts in the region that still remain acute. Negative tendencies, first of all - the strengthening of populist sentiments and the coming to power of politicians reflecting these sentiments, pose challenges and threats not only to the European Union, but also to Russia.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 879-895
Author(s):  
Melina Grizo ◽  
Jovan Ananiev ◽  
Zaneta Poposka

The paper aims to contribute to the clarification of several aspects of the minorities’ right to participate in public life on local level. It considers the following elements: analysis of the Macedonian legal and constitutional framework; analysis of relevant provision of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the European Union’s treatment of the issue in the framework of its foreign policy of ‘Regional Approach’ (1996-1999). The analysis relies on two comparisons. Firstly, it contrasts the content of the EU conditionality in the field of minority rights developed during the 1990’s in the framework of the eastern enlargement with the content of conditionality in the same field developed in the framework of the ‘Regional Approach’. Secondly, the study encompasses a brief comparison with the later development of the relevant standards within the framework of the subsequently developed EU enlargement policy of Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP). Considering that the EU relies on the standards developed in the system of Council of Europe in the field of minority rights, the analysis in particular attempts to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of this ‘’borrowing’’, during which the Council and the Commission rely on certain aspects of the body of rules of the Council of Europe, while omitting others.


2019 ◽  
Vol 277 ◽  
pp. 02014
Author(s):  
L Araujo-Alvarado ◽  
CY Ortega-Montoya ◽  
A Ávila-Galarza

The accelerated growth of cities in developing countries poses a challenge for urban planning such as guaranteeing the safety of all inhabitants from natural and anthropogenic threats. The objective of this study is to determine the urban areas and social sectors of three medium sized Mexican cities that are exposed to high risk activities. The results indicate that for the metropolitan area of San Luis Potosi, 57.6% of high risk activities are within the urban sprawl, while 100% are in the cities of Zacatecas and Fresnillo. In all three case studies, most of the activities studied are in areas with low and medium rates of marginalization. In San Luis Potosi, 4.1% are in areas with high and very high population density but none of the case studies showed a conglomeration of these types of risks in a determined area of the cities. A database of companies with high risk activities, regulated at a federal level, public became public in Mexico in 2014. This information is of great value at a local level to define the strategies of land use planning that guarantee access to environmental justice as well as effective prevention strategies and responses to chemical emergencies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shabana Khan ◽  
Jyoti Mishra

Abstract The cost of urban disasters has been consistently increasing, particularly in the cities of developing countries located across the tropics. Among various challenges of disaster risk management and climate change impacts, it is noted that most residents are poorly informed about their risk exposure and apposite response. The paper is based on the premise that one important cause for this gap is inadequate emphasis on risk communication at different levels of planning and agreements. Accordingly, it highlights some important gaps in the risk communication across international agreements including Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and evaluates their impacts at the local level. It brings three select urban case studies located in the tropical areas of South Asia region that illustrate contradiction and chaos that results from inadequate stress on risk communication at the global level. The findings are based on secondary data and literature focusing on global agreements, risk communication, and disaster response. The paper argues that even though global strategies address urban risks, the fragmented nature of risk communication results in poor response and contributes to losses that occur in disasters. It suggests a need to address risk communication as a priority for dealing with risks at different scales. There is also a need to redefine risk communication that extends beyond warning generation and considers multiple factors influencing response including interlinked vulnerabilities, and variations emerging from varied geographical, socio-cultural, economic, and political processes.


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