The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Implementing the Territorial Agenda 2030

Local pilot actions and transfer of results at national and European level

Project briefing

  • Status Completed
  • Project duration July 2020 – November 2023
  • Programme MORO

The Territorial Agenda 2030 (TA2030) is a political framework agreement of the European states on the key objectives of spatial development in Europe. Under the German EU Council Presidency, the ministers responsible for spatial planning adopted this document on 1 December 2020. The revised Agenda calls for the first time to implement the Territorial Agenda goals through dedicated pilot actions. Germany took the lead in a pilot action on structurally weak regions. The MORO project implemented the pilot action, provided support and evaluated it.

Background

In December 2020, the Territorial Agenda 2030 was adopted as a revised version. More than before, the document focuses on the practical implementation of the formulated priorities. The Agenda aims to contribute to a sustainable future for all places and regions in Europe. To achieve this, it takes up the challenges of recent years. These include, in particular, the recovery process since the economic and financial crisis, the significant readjustment of the European climate policy, advancing globalisation and digitalisation as well as demographic change.

Europe´s regions exhibit heterogeneous starting situations and development potentials. Therefore, global trends have very different spatial impacts. In the past, there has been an increasing development gap between prosperous and densely structured metropolitan regions, on one hand, and sparsely populated, infrastructurally weak regions, on the other. This gap resulted in the all too frequent feeling of “being left behind”. The core of the new Agenda, to strive for equivalent living conditions in all regions at the same time, takes up a key element of national spatial development policies. The provision of services of general interest in structurally weak regions increases the stability and resilience of regions, but also creates new development prospects. Against this background, Germany led a European pilot action for services of general interest in structurally weak regions was implemented under the title “A future for lagging regions”.

Objective

The federal interest was to bring the priorities of the Territorial Agenda 2030 to life through the implementation of a pilot action, to anchor the Agenda in regional practice and to increase its visibility. Through the local and regional implementation of the TA goals in model projects, the national spatial development policy objective to create equivalent living conditions was linked to the implementation of the Territorial Agenda 2030.

Based on existing spatial development concepts and related measures in the model regions as well as through a European learning process, the aim at the regional level was to provide impulses for the adaptation of structures and practices. The aim was also to gain insights into how core aspects of regional planning can be effectively implemented and introduced in specialist planning, such as in the areas of mobility, digitalisation and health. In addition, the project aimed for greater attention to the concerns of structurally weak areas in programmes and policies.

Contractor: The German Association for Housing, Urban and Spatial Development, Berlin in cooperation with INFRASTRUKTUR & UMWELT Professor Böhm und Partner, Potsdam.

Implementation of the territorial agenda 2030 - Joining Forces for Rural Areas Impulses for cooperative regional development in Germany and Europe Individual publication

Contact us

  • Sina Redlich
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 3 "European Spatial and Urban Development"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-2336
    Email: sina.redlich@bbr.bund.de

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