{"id":7224,"date":"2024-01-12T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/full.polito.it\/research\/espon-smst\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T17:46:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T15:46:23","slug":"espon-smst","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/full.polito.it\/en\/research\/espon-smst\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPON SMST"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">The core mission of EU cohesion policy is to reduce regional disparities and promote long-term regional development. To achieve this goal, investments in public services, infrastructure, skills and multi-level governance have continued to foster convergence in recent years; however, as the investment effort is often concentrated in large urban areas, small and medium-sized towns risk being left behind.<br\/>To this end, the ESPON project \u201cSmall and medium-sized towns and cities: policies strengthening their role in achieving active, inclusive, and functional territories\u201d focuses on their prosperity and aspires to provide policy-makers at all levels, from European to local level.<br\/>The FULL research centre of the Politecnico di Torino dealt with an analysis of the Italian case at a national scale and an analysis at a local level, focusing on the role of small and medium-sized cities in rural and Piedmont contexts. The work produced policy recommendations on how to strengthen small and medium-sized cities so that they can become key contributors to the achievement of a more balanced territorial development as well as economic, social and territorial cohesion.<\/p>\n\n<p>Read the working papers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.espon.eu\/publications\/new-working-paper-empowering-small-and-medium-sized-cities-balanced-territorial\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The core mission of EU cohesion policy is to reduce regional disparities and promote long-term regional development. To achieve this goal, investments in public services, infrastructure, skills and multi-level governance have continued to foster convergence in recent years; however, as the investment effort is often concentrated in large urban areas, small and medium-sized towns risk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4869,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"dipartimento":[225],"primo-piano":[],"research-tag":[305,310,330,347],"research-tematictag":[245],"research-type":[228],"class_list":["post-7224","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","dipartimento-dist-en","research-tag-territorial-cohesion","research-tag-territorial-gaps","research-tag-eu-policies","research-tag-urbanization","research-tematictag-just-transition","research-type-research-project"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>ESPON SMST - FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/full.polito.it\/en\/research\/espon-smst\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ESPON SMST - FULL | the Future Urban Legacy Lab\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The core mission of EU cohesion policy is to reduce regional disparities and promote long-term regional development. 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