EU–China Regional Policy Dialogue: Unpacking the Mechanisms of an Unlikely Policy Transfer

This article investigates EU–China dialogue on regional policy, a puzzling exercise in policy transfer because such policy is by its nature inward-oriented and the intricacies of regional development imply uncertainty about its effects in different contexts. The article sheds light on the reasons of both sides for engaging in this unlikely...

Spatial Planning for Climate Adaptation and Flood Risk: Development of the Sponge City Program in Guangzhou

Many Chinese cities are increasingly exposed to the impacts of climate change, particularly to flooding. The National Sponge City Program was set up to address this challenge. This chapter examines how municipal interventions in spatial planning have been formulated in response to this national program. The case of Guangzhou is examined, a mega...

REPAiR: REsource Management in Peri-urban AReas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism: D6.1 Governance and Decision-Making Processes in Pilot Cases

REPAiR will develop, test, and implement strategies for improved urban<br/>metabolisms in six peri-urban living labs (›PULLs‹) in the case study areas of<br/>Amsterdam, Ghent, Hamburg, Łódź, Naples, and Pécs. In the frame of REPAiR a<br/>geodesign decision support environment (GDSE) will be developed and first<br/>tested in the PULLs.<br/>In...

Towards a regional typology of EU identification: COHESIFY Research Paper 6. Work Package 2 – Task 2.4: Output 2.4

This paper explores the linkages between the characteristics of regions and EU<br/>identification and proposes a regional typology of EU identification. Starting from a brief review of the literature on determinants of EU identification, the paper adds to it by asking questions about how these determinants operate on the regional level and how...

Boundary spanning for governance of climate change adaptation in cities: Insights from a Dutch urban region

Adapting to climate change in the urban setting requires cooperation across scales, levels of government, organisational boundaries and policy sectors. The study presented in the paper explores governance of urban adaptation policies through the conceptual lens of multi-level governance and boundary spanning. It focuses on the South Wing of the...

The governance of flood risk planning in Guangzhou, China: using the past to study the present

Based on the framework of governance adapted from the work of Patsy Healey and drawing on the case of Guangzhou, which is regarded as the most vulnerable city in China to flooding and waterlogging, this paper adds to the literature on urban climate change adaptation. It does so by shedding light on the history of the city’s struggle against the...

Challenges of adaptation to the increasing flood risk in cities: lessons from the Pearl River Delta

In some of the delta cities which are the most exposed to flooding caused by climate change - like Shenzhen and Guangzhou investigated in this paper - there is surprisingly little recognition of this problem and hardly any action is taken to address it. This paper draws on the insights from these two cases to address the following research...

'Doing more with less' or 'doing less with less'? Assessing EU cohesion policy's financial instruments for urban development

In the context of a severe economic crisis and austerity, new ideas were put forward to reform cohesion policy to enhance its effectiveness and the return on investment. Among them, financial engineering instruments, such as JESSICA, expected to offer a means to ‘do more with less’ in this difficult budgetary context. In the case of such...