Host: The Association of Japanese Geographers
Name : Annual Meeting of the Association of Japanese Geographers, Spring 2024
Date : March 19, 2024 - March 21, 2024
This report introduces the functional area approach, which has been emphasized in EU regional policies in recent years, and examines the trends and implications of its introduction into the community-driven rural development program LEADER/CLLD.
The functional area approach was first developed in the context of urban policies, where the EU established functional urban areas (FUAs) as a grouping of cities and their commuting areas. The Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) program for 2014-2020 is based on the FUA concept. Subsequently, these territorial settings were not limited to urban areas, but were also introduced in policies targeting rural areas, which are referred to as functional areas. To further develop the functional area approach, the "Functional Areas in the EU" program has been launched as a pilot project in 2021.
In this period (2021-2027), the functional area approach is also being introduced in the Community Driven Rural Development Program (LEADER/CLLD); LEADER/CLLD has so far been a local rural development policy targeting rural municipalities. In this report, we use LEADER/CLLD in the Austria-Italy border region as a case study to examine how the implementation of the functional area approach has changed the territorial setting and what it means in terms of urban-rural relations and local governance.
