Looking Towards China 2012

As many RSA members will know, there are two international conferences next year. One is in the lovely Dutch city of Delft. The other is in Beijing from 24 to 26 June. The call for papers for Beijing can be found here, but the point of this post is to begin to think about China in a comparative sense as we look towards 2012 and the arrival of hundreds of RSA boffins in the Chinese capital. The RSA GIS experts have overlaid China onto the European area in order to provide a quick comparison. This is then done for the United States as well*. The moral of the story for now? China is BIG! (click any map to view it in full size)

* Apologies to Canadians and Russians - your countries are just too big! For keen geographers, the map projection used here is the Behrmann Equal Area Cylindrical so you'll see a bit more distortion than is desirable but then the internet is not spherical so what else can we do?

Open Days 2011 and Poster Competition

Here at RSA Blog HQ we're keen to spread the word about events that might interest the membership. The "9th OPEN DAYS 2011 European Week of Cities and Regions" is one such event. It runs from the 10th to 13th October this year and once again there is a poster competition for Early Career Researchers. There are two information sheets about this (as below); one is the call for papers, the other one has the guidelines in it. That's all for today, more soon...

EU Territorial Agenda 2020

At the most recent European Union Informal Ministerial Meeting of Ministers responsible for Spatial Planning and Territorial Development (that's a mouth-full!) a new EU Territorial Agenda for 2020 was agreed. The agenda is designed to meet European Union challenges posed by the global structural changes of the economic crisis, the growing interdependences of EU regions, demographic and social changes, the diverse impact of climate change and the environment, energy concerns, and the loss of biodiversity, as well as address vulnerable natural, landscape and cultural heritage.

The agenda defines six territorial priorities in order to meet the above mentioned challenges:

• Promote polycentric and balanced territorial development
• Encouraging integrated development in cities, rural and specific areas
• Territorial integration in cross-border and transnational functional regions
• Ensuring global competiveness of the regions based on strong local economies
• Improving territorial connectivity for individuals, communities and enterprises
• Managing and connecting ecological, landscape and cultural values of regions

The approach to implementation has a decidedly more local and diversified feel to it then older EU policy. The focus is more at the local level rather then the European level as well as the encouragement of more experimental approaches to policy development and implementation. It seems the hope is that the more local and nuanced the policy, the more likely it will be implemented and successful.

To read more about the territorial agenda have a look here.