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This workshop explores the territorial development opportunities in Europe and its neighborhood, focusing on urban structures, functional regions, and city networking. It highlights the global connectivity and growth of European cities while examining the challenges of supporting major global cities while allowing other globalizing cities to grow.
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Parallel Workshop Session: Workshop 1.1 Urban Fabric ESPON Internal Seminar 2012 “Territorial Development Opportunities in Europe and its Neighbourhood Fostering Global Competitiveness”
Functional networks of cities servicing global capital are more evenly spread and balanced within the European territory than in the US. National urban structures vary yet many European cities have had growing global connectivity. The London functional region remains Europe’s top-ranking centre followed by Paris, Milan and Madrid. Other particularly high performers are Brussels, Munich and Amsterdam. In an urban future, the challenge for Europe is to support its major global cities whilst allowing other globalizing cities to grow and to build functional complementarities with other international and national counterparts. Stimulus map Evolution of cities servicing global capital, 2000-2008
European cities are increasingly embedded in global networks of transnational commercial firms, movements of people (airports), goods (ports) and capital (stock markets etc.). Global flows are illustrated by intercity relations in office real estate. European cities have different roles and relations in global networks, showing geographical and functional specializations. The more global a city is the more diversified is its functional and geographical reach. In general, we find strong correlations between the diversity of city network links in different functions (stock exchanges, real estate, advanced producer services, and airport links, but not in port links) cities are distinguished by a scale (as well as a functional) specialization (global, European, national, regional gateway roles). What are the main territorial trends or observations from your project - for Europe, its regions and cities - in relation to “urban structures, functional regions and city networking”?
2. How do developments in Europe´s neighborhood influence the territorial development in Europe and vice-versa Globalization is NOT the end of geography: in all types of flows, proximity remains very important, though it is more evident in tacit knowledge exchange (advanced business services), flows of goods (maritime flows) and people (air linkages). As a result, neighbouring cities are strongly linked to European cities functional Europe stretches beyond the traditional limits of Europe to include Moscow, Istanbul, Casablanca etc. We identify a regionalization process alongside globalization.
Weight and share of ESPON-related flows at external ports in 2004
3. What opportunities and challenges exists for Europe and its neighbourhood for increasing competitiveness through further cooperation and integration? There is an important distinction between (+ve) city economic competitiveness and (-ve) territorial competition. Complementarities between European and neighbouring cities are a matter of fact. It is uncertain whether policy can intensify human, goods, service and financial flows. While regional complementarities are important, it is significant that the London-New York-Shanghai triad, which has the highest global connectivity in advanced finance and business services, straddles the world in the networked space-economy.
