The background for the study is a three-fold change in the environment for regional policy-making:
- the growing spatial complexity of economic linkages
- the growing complexity of regional governance patterns, with the emergence of multi-modal governance
- the opening of society up to intensified communications and networked organisation
The project will gather and analyse information from four case study regions, and from comparisons between these regions. The project will test the hypothesis that a new, flexibly integrated form of regional strategy is emerging in response to the three features of economic, political and social change. The project will draw out policy implications from this exploration, and will devise a toolkit to assist policy makers to adjust their own approaches to regional strategy.
The four pilot regions are West Midlands (UK), Zealand (DK), Västerbotten (SE) and Randstad (NL).
The project is carried out by a consortium consisting of University of Birmingham - Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS), Delft University of Technology - Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies (OTB), University of Copenhagen - Forest & Landscape, University of Umeå - Centre for Regional Science (CERUM) and NORDREGIO