TERRITORIAL RESILIENCE IN A TRANSFORMATIVE PLANNING APPROACH

Organizers

Grazia Brunetta, Politecnico di Torino 
Giancarlo Cotella, Politecnico di Torino 
Danial Mohabat Doost, Politecnico di Torino 

Contributors

Nicola Tollin, University of Southern Denmark
Francesco Musco, University Iuav of Venice
Pasquale Capizzi, ARUPS's Resilience and Adaptation Leader for Europe
Renata Anna Jaksa, HÉTFA Research Institute in Budapest
Alberto Giacometti, Nordregio Research Institute

In our changing world, cities, regions and territories are vulnerable and increasingly exposed to rapid and slow on-setting disasters and events: environmental and climate changes, economic and financial crises, social inequalities, and geopolitical shocks. The present age of crisis raises new challenges for territorial policy-making, positioning resilience as an increasingly crucial objective of European policies, besides competitiveness and cohesion. This is witnessed  by the 2020 Strategic Foresight Report, that puts forward resilience as a “new compass for EU policies", clarifying that Europe needs to decisively act on this matter.  

Within this framework, territorial resilience is an emerging concept to inspire decision- and policy-makers at all territorial levels to adopt multidisciplinary, holistic perspective that may lead  to mitigating vulnerabilities and strengthening the transformative capacity of cities.

Aiming  at providing  a contribution on this matter, the ESPON project Territorialising Resilience: Transforming Europe for an Age of Crisis (TERRES) examines resilience through a territorial lens, aiming to develop a comprehensive framework to support the development and implementation of policies. It includes a pan-European analysis of territorial trends at the regional level, encompassing the entire ESPON programme area, upon which the ESPON TERRES territorial resilience policy framework is pivoted, and tailored recommendations at local, regional, and EU levels have been developed to enhance long-term resilience strategies.

This roundtable serves as a platform for discussing the project's findings, providing an opportunity to present its theoretical framework, key outcomes from the case studies, and insights gained from the Future Workshops conducted during the research. 

The discussion will focus on the following questions:

• How can a territorial understanding of resilience assist European states in overcoming their most pressing challenges?
• How can the territorial conceptualization of resilience be effectively operationalized in spatial planning?
• What role does governance play in this context, and what characteristics define a governance system that promotes territorial resilience?
• What are the key resilience capacities that not only help to maintain the functionality of territorial systems but also drive transformative policies, strategies, and actions?
• How does the strategic planning dimension influence territorial resilience, and how should its spatiality be implemented?

Key words: Resilience, spatial planning, functional areas, ESPON