Accessibility and proximity have played and still play an important role in the development process. They enable economic development and sustain it at the same time. Together they also generate the peripherality effect. That what is outside of the “accessible and close” area is peripheral and presents less interest. My argument here is that in [...]
I live in Romania, a country which until 22 years ago was under a communist regime, and which had to drastically modify its social, institutional and administrative constructs in order to adapt the market economy and the ‘western’ style of life. I observed the reform (partial – my opinion might be biased in this respect) of [...]
This is a guest post from Horațiu Ferchiu. He is a planning professional and independent researcher with interests spanning from strategic planning, governance, and policy to politics, and federal Europe. He is currently brainstorming his future PhD subject around federalism and development. This article sums up some of his preliminary findings and thoughts, and is [...]
There is probably no surprise that the recent EU enlargements that brought the membership count up to 27, have actually pinpointed some major integration challenges that affected both existing and new member states. Considering this context and the EU regional policy’s contribution to the enlargement processes, it is maybe interesting to question how appropriate is [...]