Territories Categories: Europe

Regional studies often treat the region as a sub‑national unit, and it spans from neighbourhoods to cross‑border macro‑regions. In Asia, this elasticity is intensified by language. Words that look equivalent on paper rarely carry identical histories, politics, or scales. This short piece reflects on the Chinese notion of quyu (区域) and how it travels between […]

The blog below offers a reflexive, research-informed reflection on regional perception and spatial scale, grounded in lived experience in Australia. While it begins with a personal anecdote, it develops insights that align with broader discussions around borders, mobility, and comparative spatial experience. It contributes to ongoing conversations about how regions are perceived, experienced, and constructed […]

Why do some firms weather crises while others disappear? And what role do productivity and geography play in determining who survives? These questions are at the heart of understanding how economies recover from downturns. Productivity is one of the main engines of long-term growth and competitiveness. A central lesson from economic research is that competition […]

WORLD PLANNING SCHOOLS CONGRESS 2026: Call for abstracts, roundtable proposals and PhD workshop applications is open! The 6th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC) will take place from June 29th to July 3rd, 2026, in Espoo & Helsinki, Finland. The WPSC PhD workshop will be organized in Tampere prior to the congress (June 26-29, 2026). The […]

Rural areas are vulnerable to climate change but also contribute to it through their close ties to the natural environment through agriculture, forestry, tourism and resource extraction. Unsurprisingly, then, the local level is considered one of the key areas where reaction to climate change should be conceived (European Commission 2021); however, their responses are often […]

Lonely Teleworkers Remote work has become easier in the past years. For some employees, working fewer days at the office means fewer days of travelling, and they choose a longer travelling distance and settle in cheaper, greener, more spacious peripheral locations. However, there is a drawback to that spatial reorganization. Living away from the bustle […]

The International Conference on Urban e-Planning, the annual event of the Urban e-Planning Research Network (UEPNET), will mark its 10th edition in 2026. It is organized in collaboration with the International Journal of E-Planning Research (IJEPR). It will be held online from 8–10 April 2026. After nine successful conferences from 2016 to 2025, the 10th […]

Earlier in 2025, the UK government announced a commitment to reduce spending on disability benefits by restructuring entitlements and eligibility to various health-related benefits. It claims through its Pathways to Work, papers that it seeks to reduce economic inactivity across the UK ‘…[so] that everyone who can realise the benefits of work is expected and […]

In the UK, the Covid-19 pandemic was marked by strong spatial differences in the strictness and duration of government-mandated lockdowns. The average number of weeks spent in strict lockdown was 50% higher in urban local authorities than in rural ones. The marked increase in working from home that ensued, largely facilitated by the use of […]

Devolution has been at the core of the UK government’s initiatives to reduce regional inequality across the country. The Conservatives’ ‘Levelling up’ agenda was built around it, and Labour’s plan to ‘Power Up Britain’ also relies on the empowerment of local and sub-regional authorities and communities, based upon an analysis that areas have been ‘held […]

The UK government can meet some of its biggest challenges by combining mayoral devolution with its mission-led approach. Empowering local leaders to deliver on national missions will mean giving them greater control and bigger budgets. In the UK, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has had a rocky first year in office. With opinion polls tumbling and […]

Place leadership has come to be seen as the ‘missing factor of the regional development puzzle’ (Sotarauta et al, 2017), but how such leadership operates in environments of conflict and contestation is still poorly understood. Using Northern Ireland as an illustrative case, recent research has sought to better understand how place leadership dynamics manifest when […]

The 40th Anniversary of the miners’ strike has encouraged considerable academic and media attention on the nature and lessons of the strike (Hendy,2024), but less on the long-term economic and social consequences of Thatcher’s and subsequent Governments’ policies on the former Coalfields.  Our report, on the impact of austerity on inequality and deprivation in the […]

Athens serves as a vital site of democratic heritage and urban evolution. Over the decades, its society and built environment have undergone a gradual but significant transformation. Like many historic cities, Athens faces complex challenges across social, economic, environmental, cultural, tourism, and security dimensions. This blog explores initiatives focused on the preservation and development of […]

The UK has historically failed to learn important lessons from European countries on spatial rebalancing. It has recently acknowledged the need for effective local institutions and a long-term national strategy, but its asymmetric approach is unlikely to reduce geographic inequality. The failure of levelling up When the previous UK government launched its levelling up agenda […]

Marcus is the Head of Partnerships and Engagement at the Regional Studies Association, where he leads on identifying, securing, and managing strategic collaborations with networks, organisations, and consortia. He oversees joint projects and sponsorships, using member and market insights to enhance the RSA’s membership offer. Marcus also supports the development of territorial networks, delivers marketing […]

Victoria supports the RSA’s financial and operational functions by processing invoices, grants, and expense claims, assisting with purchase ledger tasks, bank and credit card reconciliations, audit preparation, VAT compliance, and Charity Commission filings. She also manages health and safety compliance, including staff training, DSE assessments, insurance, and data protection, while handling HR administration such as […]

Child poverty is regarded as a multidimensional, yet heavily economically based phenomenon. Previous studies on the UK or OECD countries underline the role of low income, job insecurity and worklessness, especially in lone-parent and minority households (Bradshaw, 2002; Thevenon et al., 2018). Additionally, in-work poverty is rising, and other factors, like housing, parental health and […]

The first signs of a slowdown in residential address changing were identified towards the end of the last century, starting in the USA, as is so often the case with social trends and then being found to be particularly marked across the rest of the New World. But other countries, including the UK, have not […]

The “advantage of backwardness”—the notion that low-income countries can grow faster by borrowing and adapting existing technology—has long been central to the theory of economic convergence. However, transition countries seeking European Union (EU) membership have been lagging behind. Despite some progress, the gap between them and the EU remains substantial. Why have these countries struggled […]

The following piece is a brief extract from a more comprehensive study on the impact of two trends in the context of Cohesion Policy: hyper-Lisbonisation and re-nationalisation. The article investigates how these trends are intertwined with the reiterative resort to employing Cohesion Policies funds outside of their original objectives and legal provisions, particularly to counterbalance […]