Introduction to the special issue

European urban policy has often been portrayed in the literature as a clear case of ‘Europeanization’ (Carpenter 2013; Dossi 2017; Carpenter et al. 2020; Hamedinger and Wolffhardt 2010; Marshall 2005). This concept relates to that multidirectional process whereby the reshaping of national and sub-national policies under the influence of the EU is accompanied by a bottom-up and even horizontal transfer of knowledge, paradigms and best practices, that are increasingly shared by institutions in a multi-level governance system. In this special issue we largely concentrate on the first type of relationships, the ways in which the planning practices, and local development trajectories, of certain cities are being influenced by the implementation of EU projects.

Cities started to be explicitly viewed as key elements of regional development in the European Community at the end of the 1980s. Following the reform of the Structural Funds approved in 1988, the reshaping of regional policy was accompanied by programmes that, for the first time, were specifically designed to stimulate actions in urban areas (Williams 1996). The success of these early initiatives – i.e. Urban Pilot Projects – was essential to demonstrate that the European Union could play a key role in overcoming the development problems experienced by European cities, including the social consequences of economic decline and the environmental challenges of urban areas (Atkinson and Zimmermann 2016).

As a result, the subsequent decades were earmarked by growing political and financial efforts from various EU institutions to widen the role of cities within Cohesion Policy. This was first manifested in the creation of different policy instruments directly targeted on cities (i.e. URBAN Community Initiative, URBACT or, more recently, the Urban Innovative Actions), in order to increase the capacity of municipalities to experiment with new planning solutions to face the challenges of urban development. Later, the focus on urban issues and challenges also became embedded in the mainstream instruments of Cohesion Policy, including the Structural Funds, which are the responsibility of regional authorities. This progress led to the acknowledgment that the development of cities and regions are, to some extent, inextricably linked, and to recognise that this symbiosis must be a guiding principle of any future reform of EU Cohesion Policy (McCann 2015; Medeiros 2019).

After almost 30 years of widespread interventions in cities and regions there is no clear measure to prove the impact of EU urban policies on regional development and vice versa (EC 2020; Farole, Goga, and Ionescu-Heroiu 2018). Post the 2008 economic crisis, many urban areas in Europe are still suffering with development problems and socio-economic inequalities, often accompanied by similar issues at regional and metropolitan levels (EUROSTAT 2016). At the same time, however, there is some evidence that Cohesion Policy has stimulated the progress of urban policy and the wealth of cities in many parts of Europe. In several regions that were ranked among the ‘less developed’ in the 1990s, the substantial EU funds that were made available for the implementation of plans and projects, have had clear impacts on urban areas. For many other cities across Europe, EU intervention has meant undertaking relevant changes to their urban structure, through the regeneration of deprived neighborhoods, the construction of modern transport infrastructures, or the creation of new facilities to increase economic attractiveness and quality of life.

Against the backdrop of these contrasting experiences, this special issue was conceived with the aim of exploring some of the different ways EU regional policy may have influenced the development process of four Southern European cities, Porto (PT), Malaga (ES), Palermo (IT), and Thessaloniki (GR). The selection of case studies here is not a coincidence, since they are all cities at the ‘margins of Europe’ in both the sense of places outside the geographical core of the continent and located in those regions – the ‘less developed regions’ – where EU Cohesion policy has been manifested in significant investment over an extended period of time. For that reason, the special issue also seeks to provide an urban perspective to regional marginality, often neglected in the debate around the urban dimension within EU Cohesion Policy.

In the case studies presented in the following articles, the authors were requested to carry out their analysis under the lens of some general research questions. The first one relates to the impact of EU projects on the physical and/or socio-economic regeneration of the city, or certain parts of the urban area where their influence is more recognisable. Another group of questions refers to the potential effect of EU initiatives on local governance, in terms of stakeholder participation in planning processes, the emergence of public–private cooperation, or new institutional arrangements and styles in government. Last but not least, authors have tried to understand whether or not European sponsored projects have delivered new planning capacities in the policy making process, and how the EU approaches and methods to encourage sustainable urban development have been embedded in local planning practices.

In these analytical efforts authors show that urban transformations may be the result of various planning initiatives – from area-based integrated action plans to more sectoral interventions (i.e. infrastructure, public facilities, etc.) –, and that the development strategies of cities can be influenced by other external factors, including national urban policies and changes in local politics. As a result, in any given city EU planning initiatives must be seen as part of a wider policy-making process, being influenced by both changes in regional and local policies, as well as by the shifting priorities of the EU in addressing urban development over the different programming cycles.

To contextualise the processes in the four cities studied, the first article of the special issue, written by Ignazio Vinci, places the emergence of an urban dimension in EU policy, within the framework of Cohesion Policy and its primary objective of reducing regional disparities. The article begins by reviewing the debate surrounding regional disparities in Europe and provides a description of the changing geography of the EU through the perspective of the different Cohesion Policy periods. The paper then traces the history of the political process that has led urban areas to become a pillar of EU regional policy culminating in the emergence of the ‘sustainable urban development’ concept. The different interpretations of this concept in the planning practices of contemporary European cities are then discussed. In the final part of the article, the author identifies some of the limits of EU regional policy in addressing problematic development issues in urban areas (i.e. territorial divides and social exclusion). At the same time, however, he recognises that the linkage between the urban and regional dimensions of sustainable development is expected to remain a core issue for both policy-makers and urban scholars in the near future.

In the article on the Porto case study, written by João Igreja and Paulo Conceição, the authors investigate the connections between European projects and national policies in the city’s recent transformation process, with a specific focus on the regeneration of the old town. In the context of a country that has benefited significantly from EU regional policy since the 1990s, Porto emerges as one of the Portuguese cities most actively involved in the Europeanisation process, with resulting influences on both the policy-making approach and local governance. Nevertheless, after reviewing the most relevant planning episodes in the city over the preceding decades, the article stresses that the transfer of the EU approach to local urban policy has not followed a linear process and that various models of intervention have overlapped over time. By recognising the effects of EU urban initiatives during certain periods of the city’s recent history, the authors arrive at the conclusion that the legacy of other political and institutional processes must not be neglected in explaining the regeneration process. This includes the neo-liberal turn that has shaped urban policy since the mid 2000s and reforms of local government.

In the study on the case of Málaga, Sonia De Gregorio Hurtado explores a Spanish city that is acknowledged as an exemplar in the use of EU funds, particularly in stimulating the revitalisation of the historic centre through area-based projects. The description of the context covers a period that starts with the beginning of the Democratic Period (1975), a wide angle perspective that is essential to understanding the way in which the innovative approaches to urban development promoted by the EU have been embedded in the praxis of national and local policy-making. In this context, by undertaking a detailed review of a range of planning initiatives, the author highlights the manner in which EU projects have been implemented hand in hand with increasing institutional capacity. This is illustrated by the key role played by the municipality in both strategic and operational terms. The in-depth analysis of the current development pattern of the historic centre shows however, that over this long-term period, the EU programmes were not able to effectively address the city’s social problems and could not prevent the emergence of gentrification and a tourist-led local economy. Through the observation of these processes, the author concludes by pointing out useful lessons for the evolution of EU urban policy in the post-2020 scenario.

In a case similar to that of Málaga, Ignazio Vinci explores the role of EU programmes in the development process of Palermo (the fifth largest Italian city) through a long term and multidimensional perspective. Firstly, EU initiatives are examined in the light of relevant external factors, including the changing priorities associated with urban areas in national policies and the impact of the post-2008 crisis on local government. Secondly, the changing context of European projects in the city is also presented as a result of drastic shifts in local politics, with the emergence of different – and often contrasting – development strategies with the power to affect the targets of EU funds over time. In this article, the author argues that the effectiveness of EU projects has also been significantly influenced by the way they were implemented in terms of spatial and sectoral integration. Overall, a greater spatial and thematic concentration has turned out to be a key factor in the impact of EU projects’ action plans (e.g. in the case of the old town regeneration), while the road towards sustainable development is still unclear when this objective is addressed to an urban or a metropolitan dimension.

In her paper, Evangelia Athanassiou investigates the way urban sustainability has been interpreted in the urban regeneration projects planned after the outbreak of the financial crisis (2010) in Thessaloniki, the second largest Greek city. The article starts with a critical analysis of the imaginaries, goals and processes promoted by EU urban policies, and their limits when transferred to the socio-political context of Southern Europe. More specifically, the author focuses on urban sustainability, outlining the way it is conceptualized in official EU documents. The influence of the concept of sustainability on spatial planning at national level in Greece is then explored and, in a fine-grained way, the manner in which the objective of sustainable development is embedded in urban regeneration projects is investigated. With this framework as a backdrop, various projects and integrated action plans in Thessaloniki are examined, from the Urban Pilot Project aimed at revitalizing historic districts in the city centre, to the waterfront regeneration realized during the 2007–2013 programming cycle. Through the analysis of these projects, the author shows how the urban sustainability concept can take different operational meanings in practice and, at the same time, its wide use as an instrument to legitimize the Europeanisation of local policy in the country is explained.

As awhole these papers provide insights into some of the positive impacts of Cohesion policy. They can be found both on the material infrastructure of the respective cities and on the quality of policies and practices being developed by various actors at city level. These practices also illustrate that the challenges of urban areas remain entrenched, embedded in local political and cultural contexts which, in turn, are part of much wider regional, national and global networks. This explains why the contribution of cities to regional development is so inextricable and, at the same time, that a strong focus on urban development is still needed to help future EU policy.

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.