New Metropolitan Perspectives - Local Knowledge and innovation dynamics towards territory attractiveness through the implementation of Horizon / E2020

The 3rd edition of the International Symposium “New Metropolitan Perspectives” aims to face the challenge of Local Knowledge and Innovation dynamics towards territory attractiveness through the implementation of Horizon 2020 and the EU Strategy 2020. The symposium is jointly promoted by the LaborEst and the CLUDs Laboratories of the PAU Department, Università Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Italy, in partnership with a qualified international network of academic institution and scientific societies. It represents the conclusive event of the MAPS-LED (Multidisciplinary Approach to Plan Smart Specialisation Strategies for Local Economic Development) Research Project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions – RISE 2014. Recent economic and political developments press the scientific community addressing two issues of current relevance: - The spatial implications of the economic and demographic decline of... Read more

The 3rd edition of the International Symposium “New Metropolitan Perspectives” aims to face the challenge of Local Knowledge and Innovation dynamics towards territory attractiveness through the implementation of Horizon 2020 and the EU Strategy 2020. The symposium is jointly promoted by the LaborEst and the CLUDs Laboratories of the PAU Department, Università Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Italy, in partnership with a qualified international network of academic institution and scientific societies. It represents the conclusive event of the MAPS-LED (Multidisciplinary Approach to Plan Smart Specialisation Strategies for Local Economic Development) Research Project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions – RISE 2014. Recent economic and political developments press the scientific community addressing two issues of current relevance: - The spatial implications of the economic and demographic decline of large areas in Europe and Western Countries; - The impact of ICT dissemination on urban/rural environment and, broadly, on the idea of ​​society. For decades, technical tools, especially in the field of urban planning, have been developed to allow urban and territorial transformations in a context characterized by expansive dynamics. Looking at the productive system and, within it, the job’s organization as one of the discriminating elements of territorial transformation, the following question arise: what is the destiny of the industrial and post-industrial city, known as a place of concentration of workforce and market? The MAPS-LED project reflects the progressive attention given to Smart Specialization Strategies (S3) in boosting the implementation of Europe 2020 strategy, at regional and local level. S3 has been designed to capture knowledge and innovation dynamics closely connected with the context characteristics. The contingent challenge is to reverse the persistent gap among lagging regions in Europe, which remain at same development stage despite long-term structural funds in research, innovation and technological development. The principal cause/effect relationship of the different regional responses to European innovation policy during the last decades seems to lie in the existence of a market asymmetry because of a chronic mismatch of supply-demand for innovation. This is partly due to a persistent lack of investigation of local characteristics about territorial capital, innovation networks and their level of carrying capacity to foster innovation. In this sense, contexts conditions, especially in cities located in lagging regions, can significantly affect the implementation of complex policies such as S3. On the other hand, the complexity of S3 policies and the unknown effects/impacts it can generate make this research area very risky and uncertain due to the continuous experimentation of an on-going policy implementation that can vary from place to place, from city to city, from region to region. This variability, linked obviously to the different contexts characteristics, is the base in developing real “tailor-made” policy at local level in response to the local needs in exploiting local resources (human, social, relational, territorial capital). These considerations focus the attention of the academic community on the dimension of distant-future. The spread of new communication technologies and new production systems are increasingly pushing everywhere towards the progressive "liquefaction" of the social structures, organizational models and systems that have been known so far, as Bauman's intuition. Such a long horizon necessarily requires the renewal of a visionary, utopian vision that imagines society of the future through a dreamlike dimension of avant-garde. It becomes crucial to debate the running direction, the profound changes are going on in contemporary society and its impact on urban/rural environment of the future. In order to trigger this process of mid and long term change for regions and cities, it is required an integrated, intersectorial and multidisciplinary approach.