1. RELOCAL
16th February, Barcelona

2. Basic information
RELOCAL is 4-year project of 14 partners coordinated by UEF and covering 13 countries
Budget is 4.9M€
Scientific Coordinator of the project is Prof. James W. Scott (UEF)
Project Coordinator is Research Director Petri Kahila (UEF)
Project internal management is organised through the Project Coordinator and the Project Executive Group
Adjunct project bodies are Policy Advisory Group and Scientific Advisory Group (project external management)
Dissemination Team will be in charge of strategic communication and dissemination (MCRIT and UEF)

3. Concrete research rationales
Basic assumption: the local plays an important role in promoting spatial justice and well-being in Europe
Aim is to identify and reposition the relevance of the local in European Cohesion Policy
General research questions
How can spatial justice be conceptualised, operationalised, adapted?
Analysing and understanding processes of territorial inequalities in different localities
How does the local relate to cohesion in an EU context?
What factors and filters are operating that enhance or limit the relation between the local and cohesion? What might bridge abstract notions of spatial justice and local practises on the one hand and CP on the other?

4. Objectives
new conceptual frameworks of territorial cohesion that focus on the role of locale and place. This also includes methodologies that facilitate longitudinal multi-scale measurement, mapping and a mix of qualitative and quantitative modes of analysis in order to develop more effective indicators of socio-spatial inequality, equality demands and policy impacts.
working and practicable definitions of spatial justice based on the local quality and availability of social opportunities and bundles of services that not only promote individual development but that are also essential to the stabilisation of community.
critical evaluations of the substantive adequacy, local accessibility and development impacts of existing cohesion policies and in this way assess the role of policy in achieving the European Social Model and thus promoting greater spatial justice.
new policy and development models that bridge conflicts and trade-offs between regional development and governance models that address territorial cohesion and spatial justice across Europe.
new, empirically tested, theoretical frameworks for the relation between regional autonomy, decentralisation, local participation on the one hand and greater economic, political and social justice on the other.

5. Project Structure

6. Conceptual framework Two key concepts
Spatial justice
Social
Distributive
Procedural
Spatial
Temporal
Locality
Heterogeneous
Vertical
Horizontal
Transversal
The concept of spatial justice closely relates to, and overlaps with, the concepts of territorial cohesion, sustainable development, and the European Social Model.
The concept of spatial justice indicates equity in social space, integrating five dimensions of justice: social, procedural, distributive, spatial and temporal, which distinguish it from these related concepts.
Locality, as the spatial focus of research and the nexus of a range of forces that contribute to spatial (in)justice and democratic legitimacy. Localities are not bound enclaves, but porous and interlinked parts of wider contexts.
Therefore, the RELOCAL adopts a critical and relational approach, analysing the locality from a critical and open perspective, through four interrelated dimensions: differential, vertical, horizontal and transversal.
Two key concepts

7. Relational epistemology
A spatial ontology: the localities approach
By adopting spatial justice as its starting point, the RELOCAL project’s key assumption, and the focus of its empirical data, are localities, the places in which the challenges of spatial justice and democratic deficit, and the responses to these challenges and inequalities, can be analysed and understood. Such a spatial focus facilitates the investigation of various challenges and responses within given territories and in their relations to other places, particularly under the conditions of crisis. This would respond to the European Commission call’s invitation to ‘explore the links between territorial cohesion, sustainable development and spatial justice in Europe in times of crisis’.
A relational epistemology
Justice is a comparative concept: it is a process of judgement on the quality of relations between two or more states of affairs. On their own, the number and composition of agents and material objects are not judged to be just or unjust. It is only when they mediate the relations between people and territories, and only in comparison with others, that they find such meanings. Relations, therefore, are the focus of analysis. Through them, the power arrangements that make up spatial governance, behaviour of actors, access to material goods and services, spatial and social relations between them, composition of localities and their relations with other localities become just or unjust.
A mixed methodology
The locality and its relations form the unit of analysis, where spatial (in)justice will be studied. The local area under investigation, however, does not need to be defined in a strict sense. We will not make try to draw rigid and final boundaries around particular areas, but see them as flexible definition of an area with porous and potentially changing boundaries. To undertake this investigation, the project will use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.
Conceptual framework
Mixed methodology
Relational epistemology
Spatial ontology

8. 33 Case Studies
Operationalisation of case studies (close integration of WPs 6, 3,4,7)
Developing a methodological framework for case study analysis
Empirically analysing the themes as relevant for WP 3, 4 and 7
Synthesising the results in national and comparative reports
Key outputs so far:
guidelines for the selection of cases and for case study research
Running of 8 pilot cases (started in Oct 2017), experiences of which feed into the methodological framework and into thus into the 33 case studies

9. Integration of research interests
A common framework for investigating the cases

10. Two quantitative WPs
WP2
measuring and describing regional inequalities across Europe and over time, and in this way provide a better understanding of the linkages between regional conditions and socio-economic outcomes.
WP5
Using geocoded longitudinal individual level (micro) data with respect to social and spatial inequality
Overcoming the Modifiable Area Unit Problem by focusing on ‘egohoods’.
Assessing of how spatial inequalities at different geographical scales affect individual level outcomes over the life course (neighbourhood effect).