Regional Development – Sustainability

Abstract: By means of this thematic focus, the UniGR-CBS is tapping the field of sustainable planning in border regions. Decisive challenges, such as the adjustment to the climate change, the ecological network issue, the economic development or the social cohesion extend beyond the borders of the Greater Region. Nevertheless, the planning approaches on either side of the border of the Greater Region bear little relation to each other, whether due to political interests, institutional traditions or the influences of other political fields. This thematic focus examines how the planners deal with such challenges, in particular within the scope of a sustainable approach, which has now become of great importance in all partial regions of the Greater Region.

Multiple risks and chances are currently opening up for regional development in border regions, which are resulting from demographical and social processes of change, economic transformations, European integration, pending requirements of adjustment in the environmental field (climate change, energy transition) and, last but not least, globalization.

The specific challenge for border regions is having to master these transformation processes not only within the scope of various regional, natural and cultural prerequisites, but also being confronted with different legal systems, framework conditions and planning concepts bearing national hallmarks during the development of solution strategies. This can result in the setting of different priorities and thus in a disparate development of the partial regions. The meta level thus deals with bordering, rebordering and debordering processes and the influences thereof on the sustainable regional development of border areas. Important aspects of regional development and sustainability within the transnational causal network are the population, settlement, transport and economic structures, the social and technical infrastructure, as well as the associated impacts on environmental quality and the ecosystem services.

The processing procedure may comprise analytical methods of observation (description and examination of problems and processes), normative aspects (definition of development targets and the evaluation thereof) as well as operational aspects (conception of strategic fields of action). Key issues of this thematic focus issue are:

Which processes of regional development and sustainability are constitutive for the border area?
What are the problems and bottlenecks currently affecting endogenous development?
Which players control the development of the border area?
Which internal regional sociocultural and ecological potentials can the regional development sustainably?
To what extent does the border impede or promote the development of transregional strategies?
How can interregional, cross-border interdependencies and cycles be initiated and used?
How can the efficiency of border regions be preserved, without questioning the integrity of the environmental system?

The topics of regional development and sustainability raise two paradoxes.

The first paradox is connected with the phase shift between the dynamic functional developments of the territory and the action of the institutions together, which are responsible for controlling planning. In a border region, characterized by massive streams of cross-border commuters numbering amongst the most extensive in the European Union, unique demands are made on mobility and the organization of transport systems. The control required in this regard necessitates the combination of decision-making instances at national, regional and sometimes local level, whose interests are very rarely the same, so it may happen that a temporal delay or certain contextual discrepancies arise with respect to the stated requirement in the institutions responsible for regional development.

This problem is traditionally posed in the field of spatial planning, but bears a particular hallmark in the cross-border context with respect to multi-level control as well as competencies. In this context, it should be considered that spatial planning from the point of view of competencies is a sovereign task. Even if international coordination tools, such as the EGTCs (European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation), do exist, decision-making in the spatial planning field remains extremely complex and sluggish.

The second paradox is associated with this very sluggishness and with the challenges of sustainability. Sustainable development has now become an inherent requirement of all regional development measures in all border regions within the Greater Region. Consequently, the sustainability challenge should be considered as a way to bring together the various development concepts being pursued by the different areas within the Greater Region.

With respect to the sustainable development in the cross-border context, it is difficult to ensure operationalization:

The habits of cross-border commuters are very frequently not sustainable. Cross-border employment is based on the search for opportunities (in particular with respect to remuneration), which may call for the use of an automobile and that applies even more so in the cross-border territory where there is only a very poorly-developed public transport network. Sustainable development involves saving energy and working, and producing better with less. However, everything becomes slower and more complex in a cross-border context: negotiations take longer, the national systems are incompatible in many respects, with divergent interests and the ideas of the respective, other side are exaggerated.

Thus, the emergence of sustainable regional development in a cross-border context could be a productive focus of research.
Of overriding importance is preserving and structuring a future-oriented development of border regions, in order to achieve economic stability, equal living conditions and ecological sustainability. This results in possible interdependencies with the other UniGR-CBS central working focuses. Said central working focus would take into account any disciplinary diversity as well as cross-cutting aspects and would integrate various approaches and methods from the spatial, planning, social and economic sciences.

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