Speaker
Description
The paper explores regional gap scenarios balancing society-economy-environment domains amidst escalating uncertainties. The study exemplifies multiscale peripherisation of Estonia at EU external borders, with a strong impact on the urban system of depopulation, green deal, and the geostrategic security agenda. The latter has still been understated and remote in regional and cohesion research and policy support despite ongoing tensions. Also, the importance of governing with intent is becoming the mainstream, with an understanding of the anticipated impacts of new strategies, business models, services, for example, remote work, digitalisation and platformisation (Oldbury and Isaksson 2023).
The study analyses the aggregate impacts of the scenarios on Estonia's territorial development and cohesion, including impacts on economic development, social well-being, cultural prosperity, land use, environmental sustainability, as well as defence and security. Based on the key axis of regional gap-balance, four scenarios are set: A. Metropolisation, B. Dispersed regionalisation, C. Small cities, and D. Growing by immigration, which all include sprawling, dispersed, and compact sub-scenarios. The scenarios are assessed on their impact on resource needs, consumption changes, and environmental pressures at six types of urban regions in their core, suburban hinterland, and rural hinterland. Four scenarios are compared by land take, housing stock, infrastructure requirements, industrial and logistics estates, retail and services, and home-work, home-services mobility. The causal chains, key drivers, and triggers of shrinkage and the regional gap, as well as the key policy packages and regional support to make the scenarios a future outcome, are elaborated.
Since the 1990s, there has been a massive depopulation of many regions across Estonia, with urban growth supported by neoliberal planning and agglomeration increasingly shifting to the Tallinn metropolitan region. Regional polarisation shapes new residential, job, business, and service geographies driven by a rescaled urban system and agglomeration economics. Degrowth has multiple hidden and blurred territorial features amplified by fuzzy multilocality and networked if classic surveys and indicators are applied.
Population trends continue to change significantly and potentially disrupt the structure of Estonia's urban system. Population projections for 2050 forecast that the majority of local authorities would see their populations decrease by more than a quarter, while 9 local authorities could experience a decrease of more than half. For Estonia as a whole, metropolisation (A) amplifies regional imbalances. The regional gap and peripheralisation manifest as economic and social inequalities. Regionalisation (B) is executed at the expense of hinterland counties and small cities. The small city scenario (C) preserves the historic county-based urban system, keeping and revitalising regional balances. Small cities also retain their vitality, and rurality is preserved with regional specialisation and optimal diversification.
As a controversial outcome of regional shrinkage, depopulation and degrowth may increase energy consumption, carbon footprint, infrastructure, and service costs. Supporting left-behind regions can alleviate population exodus and further metropolisation but requires massive and very precise policy intervention. Additionally, as an isolated international agenda, the radical policy for national security and regional resilience shifts requires significant trade-offs in cohesion and regional policy, supported by emerging planning discourses.
A new security and cohesion relationship with civic transparency should be positioned as a core element of regional planning, facilitating a shift away from a reactive, crisis response stance (Hunter, 2023). The basis for the strategic choices guiding the future urban system should be defined in the national spatial plan "Estonia 2050," aiming to define the territorial conditions for sustainability and a high-quality living environment throughout Estonia. The emphasis tends to highlight the ‘left-behind’ risks of re-regionalisation, with modelling, designing, and delivering multiple complex transitions for territorial cohesion, with integrity and an increasingly strong security dimension.
References
Oldbury K., Isaksson K. (2023) Strategic Planning Capacities in a Time of Platformisation. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies, 3, 4–20. https://doi.org/10.18261/njus.3.2.1
Hunter, A. (2023) Addressing Cohesion Policy’s identity crisis in a changing European Union, Brussels: European Policy Centre.
| Keywords | urban system; scenario; regional gap; cohesion; security, Estonia |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
