Towards spatial justice across Europe through place-based interventions: lessons learned from considering medium-horizon future scenarios

This chapter presents medium-horizon (10 years) future scenarios of European localities experiencing spatial (in)justice at different scales and scopes, and identifies resulting changes in interventions, ranging from public policies to bottom-up initiatives, undertaken to tackle this issue. A novel methodological approach was developed which includes elements of Theory of Change (ToC) and morphological scenario elaboration. The single most plausible scenarios for 2030, defined for each of the 33 case study locations in 11 EU member states, revealed a high degree of uncertainty and, with a few exceptions, the future outlook seems likely to be negatively shaped by a neoliberal paradigm perpetuating injustices in terms of winners and losers, especially in locations that cannot benefit from spill-over effects of wealthy urban centres as well as in areas stigmatized for different reasons. There seems to be a strong country effect even within regions characterized by the same welfare regime, which captures the country’s economic potential and quality of institutions, confirming the importance of a place-based approach to effectively meet the spatial justice needs of a locality. Many of the local successes and failures are bound up with local factors and shaped by unique contexts. Policy-oriented lessons that can be learned from this analysis concern the tools to design future actions addressing spatial (in)justice as well as their planning in terms of integration, longevity, and succession. Coordinated governance approaches appear to be key at this point, together with mutual trust, shared vision, and continued support for the future local development across administrative levels.