Development clusters for small places and rural development for territorial cohesion?

Abstract

This article proposes an alternative policy development approach for territories encompassing rural areas with small urban settlements or ‘small places’, which normally suffer from lagging territorial development trends. The proposed ‘Development Clusters for Small Places’ approach draws on the potential of all places to further their development via municipal clustering, based on four analytic dimensions: (i) existing functional areas; (ii) similarities in economic circularity and specialisation; (iii) presence of ongoing territorial and governance cooperation processes; and (iv) spatial physical connectivity and accessibility. Besides a theoretical overview of this policy approach, the article analyses concrete examples of its potential implementation in two case studies: Alentejo in Portugal and Innlandet in Norway. The findings highlight the potential advantages of municipal clustering over current mainstream regional development rationales to implement endogenous rural development in a supra-municipal scale, thus increasing institutional thickness and policy influence towards a more territorial cohesive region.