Geographic Specificities and Development Potentials in Europe
The EU-commissioned Applied Research Project GEOSPECS (Geographic Specificities and Development Potentials in Europe) aims to provide a coherent framework to characterize past trends, state and potential future developments of geographical specificities for territorial policy and regional development. Regions with “geographic specificities” that are subject of the study include:
- Border areas
- Sparsely populated areas
- Inner peripheries
- Mountain areas
- Highly populated areas
- Islands
- Coastal zones and
- Outermost regions.
“Geographic specificities” are understood to create both challenges and opportunities, thus departing from the previous perception of “natural handicaps”. The research project does not only analyse the geographic specificities themselves but also includes transversal themes such as economic development conditions, social processes and natural resources and risks, in order to quantify and qualify state and trends in the regions.
One reason for exploring these regions is that concepts such as “mountain”, “island” or “border area” create a sense of commonality among regional actors from across Europe. A secondary objective of the study is therefore to facilitate the integration of this sense of commonality.
In order to disentangle the complex interactions between geographic specificities and different social, economic and institutional processes, a number of activities will be carried out by the research consortium. The delineation, description and mapping of the regions with geographic specificities naturally forms the first step, followed by the compilation of a database of social and economic structures and trends in areas with geographic specificities, qualitative analysis of development processes in areas with geographic specificities, case studies, consultations, and the formulation of policy options.
Nine different project partners (universities and research institutions) form across Europe take part in the GEOSPECS project, each focusing on a particular geographic specificity. The Centre for Mountain Studies concentrates on all questions relating to mountain areas, but also analyses biodiversity and protected areas.
However, the project does not aim to run parallel studies on different types of geographic specificities; the objective is to construct a coherent discourse on specific types of territories. A key ambition of the project is to strengthen the dialogue and knowledge exchange between the different types of geographic specificities. This implies that connections must be established between fields of research that have, until now, been envisaged in relatively isolated ways.