2025 RSA Regional Futures Conference

Speakers:
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, London School of Economics, UK
Rachel Franklin, Harvard University, USA

Chair: Luisa Corrado, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy & Deputy Editor-in-Chief Spatial Economic Analysis

More information to follow.

Among the advanced OECD economies, the UK has one of the longest histories of regional policies, dating back to the first experiments in 1928.  Despite this long history, present- day regional inequalities in economic performance and prosperity remain substantial, and in some respects are wider than at any time in the post-War period.  This begs the obvious question as to why past policies have had such a limited impact.

The aim of this panel and discussion session will be to interrogate past policies to understand why they have failed to solve the UK’s problem of regional economic inequality, and, crucially, to draw out lessons – both positive and negative – from past policy that might help researchers, and indeed present-day policymakers themselves, to forge policies better capable of resolving the challenges that the UK economy, in common with many other advanced economies, faces today and going forward. The discussion will be framed around a new book to be published in the RSA’s Regions and Cities Series, that examines past UK regional policy, and the lessons that can be drawn from it, as set out in essays written by experts in their respective fields. While the book is focussed on the long history of regional policy in the UK, many of the issues discussed and the lessons learned from this history have a relevance for regional policy in other advanced economies.

Speaker: Patricia Daley, University of Oxford, UK

Chair: Zack Taylor, University of Western Ontario, Canada & Editor-in-Chief Territory, Politics, Governance

Session Organisers
Nikos Kapitsinis, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Esteban Fernandez Vazquez, University of Oviedo, Spain
Jeisson Cardenas Rubio, University of Warwick, UK

Macro drivers of change, including technological change, globalisation, and green transition, as well as extraordinary phenomena, such as the 2008 global economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, have restructured contemporary labour. The green transition transforms European labour markets, though its effects vary significantly across regions. This occurs alongside the digital transition that promotes more sustainable production methods, including automation and autonomy. Vulnerable groups—such as migrants, NEETs (young people not in education, employment, or training), and low-skilled workers—are especially at risk, as they are overrepresented in high-risk sectors and face greater challenges when seeking re-employment. Existing views on the process of job creation and destruction (JCD) have provided crucial insights for the transformation of labour markets in the current transitionary period, although focusing on the demand side, particularly related to skills needed. Moreover, the largest part of literatures on JCD and its effects focuses on the national level, particular sectors, predominantly approaching them from a quantitative perspective, thus relatively overlooking working conditions in the jobs created. Thus, there is room for improvement of our knowledge on regional labour markets transformation in the context of green and digital transition. In this session, we invite interventions that offer conceptual, methodological and empirical papers of regional labour markets transformation in the context of green and digital transition. Potential contributions may focus on:

• Conceptualisation of job creation and destruction and its geographically and socially uneven effects
• How transitions materialize as localised processes that occur in multi-actor, multi-scalar and multi-dimensional environments
• What sectors, jobs and skills are under the greatest risk of being affected by the green and digital transition and what this means for regional labour markets and regional development
• What are the socially and geographically uneven effects of job creation and destruction in context of the green and digital transition
• What policies should be recommended to address the geographically and socially uneven implications of regional labour markets transformation in the context of green and digital transition

Session Organisers
Anna Growe, Kassel University, Germany
Eva Purkarthofer, Aalto University, Finland

This special session marks the inaugural event of a newly established RSA Research Network (RSA Research Network on Bridging Governance Gaps in City-Regions: Addressing Land Take and City-Region Building Through Comparative Research) and offers a unique opportunity to engage in a broader collaborative agenda over the next three years.

While global policy goals like SDG 11 emphasize sustainable urban development, the most tangible indicator of these ambitions—land take—extends far beyond core cities. It is deeply embedded in the socio-economic dynamics of functionally integrated city-regions, reaching into their suburban and even peripheral areas. Consequently, the realization of “no net land take” as a planning and policy goal is not a challenge for individual municipalities but for city-regions as a whole. Yet, institutional fragmentation and conceptual limitations continue to weaken city-regions as coherent spaces for action. These mismatches between functional interdependencies, planning frameworks, and political geographies undermine sustainability ambitions and call for renewed academic attention.

This session initiates the thematic exploration of a research triangle:

1. Identifying city-regions as functionally integrated spaces
2. Governance and planning to increase sustainable land use strategies in city-regions
3. Perceptions of city-regions as political-planning spaces for action

Session 1 – Focus on Governance and Imaginaries
Planning with extended urbanization: Elements of a strategic spatial planning vocabulary
Nicholas A. Phelps (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Roger Keil (York University, Canada)
Paul Maginn, (University of Western Australia, Australia)
Tony Matthews (Griffith University, Australia)
David C. Valler (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

City-Regional Transformation Through Cohesion, Canvas, and Constructs: A Comparative Analysis of Inter-Municipal Adaptation Processes in Germany
Lukas Häfner (Kassel University, Germany)
Anna Growe (Kassel University, Germany)

‘Nine dragons rule the regions’: the challenge of integrated regional development in China
John Harrison (Loughborough University, UK
Dongxin Lian (South China University of Technology, China)
Hao Gu (Hunan University, China)
Shifu Wang (South China University of Technology, China)

From Flexibility to Formality: Rethinking Planning Governance for Managing Land Take in Polish City-Regions
Łukasz Mikuła (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

Between suburb and city: conceptualising interplaces’
Wander Demuynck (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Ben Derudder (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Evert Meijers (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Michiel Van Meeteren (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Session 2 – Focus on Net-Land-Take and Urban-Rural Interrelations

Regional planning for no net land take: Designing strategic planning processes in peri-urban Austria
Philip Krassnitzer (University of Vienna, Austria)

Urban-rural coordination in local planning: Comparing multi-level planning governance in the Brescia and Kassel city-regions
Theresia Morandell (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Rural transformation and multi-scalar livelihood strategies under city-regional environmental governance: Evidence from 43 villages in the Yangtze River Delta metropolitan region, China
Simin Yan (Kassel University, Germany)
Chen Chen (Tongji University, China)

No net loss policies for biodiversity and land: synergies and trade-offs
Bernadeta Baroková (Charles University, Czechia)

Greening at the Margins: Cross-Border Mangrove Governance in the Greater Bay Area
Yunjie Zhang (Harvard University, USA): yunjie_zhang@gsd.harvard.edu

Please note the non-member rates include a 1 year RSA membership, this will be applied as soon as you register. Click here to find out more about RSA membership.