Speaker
Description
To cope with the multiple contemporary crises (climate, social, economic), cities have eagerly searched for governance approaches which enable an inclusive socio-ecological transformation of their built environment, economies and societies. In the scholarly and policy debate about that issue, peri-urban areas, which are certainly part of the European urban landscape, have been widely neglected. Broadly speaking, peri-urban areas are highly dynamic territories characterized by spatial and demographic fragmentation. They comprise denser cores along the main corridors of public transport and motorways, small towns or villages loosely connected to the mobility network, and, in some cases, vast natural environments which connect these areas to a rural hinterland. Individual mobility is mainly based on the car, although this differs according to the spatial arrangements.
As a result, the urgency of intervening towards inclusive transformations is arguably greater in peri-urban areas than in large cities, as these areas may struggle more to comply with sustainability goals and provide a high quality of life for their inhabitants. This implies that peri-urban areas have a strong incentive to implement effective governance solutions. Addressing the key challenges of peri-urban governance basically means coordinating socio-spatial development in a crowded and complex landscape of policy actors, priorities, scales and borders, which are highly interdependent but have scattered institutional capacity.
In response to this context, our contribution analyses multi-scalar governance initiatives and instruments in an Austrian peri-urban area to critically address to what extent the dynamics, opportunities and limitations of cross-level governance may support, boost, hamper or neglect interventions towards inclusive socio-ecological transformations. Specifically, we discuss whether the overlapping and conflictual spatial scales, sectoral priorities and administrative borders that determine cross-level governance actions can go beyond zero-sum bottlenecks and generic responses that bypass strong, collectively shared goals. Our contribution presents a mapping of actors, instruments and initiatives involved in governance processes in the district of Bruck an der Leitha, a highly dynamic border region situated between two European metropolises, Vienna and Bratislava. As we are focusing on the peri-urban territory in Austria, the research project in general also examines peri-urban regions in Portugal, Belgium and The Netherlands. We are reflecting governance examples against the background of widely differing socio-spatial arrangements, differing perceptions of the regions by its residents, sub-optimal decision-making processes, poorly aligned actors and norms, and messy social choices.
In the peri-urban areas of Bruck an der Leitha there are five governance cases discussed, which touch different levels of governance and transformative topics and basically entail hard and soft governance efforts. These are analysed in detail to understand their impact towards a more accessible region, reachable daily amenities and sustainable mobility.
Preliminary conclusions point to the fact that spatial, social and institutional contexts matter in order to understand and improve governance efforts for inclusive transformations in peri-urban areas.
(1) InPUT: “Engaging Places and Communities for Inclusive Peri-Urban Transitions”. Project funded by the JPI Urban Europe Program “Driving Urban Transitions to a Sustainable Future” (2022).
| Keywords | Peri-Urbanism; 15-Minute-City; Inclusivity; Transformation; Governance |
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| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
