Low accessibility: a defining feature of Northern periphery planning?

The name “Northern Periphery” implies an area with low accessibility, in relation to a presumed “European centre”. It refers to centre-periphery models of Europe which have been identified as a potential policy issue by academics since the 1950 [E1] and 60s[E2] . The emergence of a European core area can however be traced back to Medieval times, as the result of trade routes between the southern shores of the North Sea and northern Italy[E3] .

 This vision of Europe received an semi-official status through the report produced by David Keeble[E4]  for the European Commission in 1988. On the basis of accessibility calculations, this reports defined “a four-sided plateau of high accessibility to Community-wide economic activity” with corners on Stuttgart, Hamburg, Birmingham and Lille. Similar calculations have been applied in a number of studies since, up to the present in the context of ESPON.

 More importantly, it has been commonly accepted in European policymaking that high accessibility creates specific economic potentials. The European Commission’s Third cohesion report for example stated that “Regions with better access to markets are likely to be more productive and more competitive than others”. One is tempted to conclude from this that transport infrastructures improvement focused on connections to the largest European markets would be most efficient when it comes to improving the economic potentials of peripheral areas. This has indeed been a major focus of the “Trans-European Networks” idea promoted and financed by the European Union since 1992. 

 The negative correlation between “peripherality” and “economic potentials” has however been questioned by some. Looking at the UK case, Michael Chisholm[E5]  notes that the impact of distance on the price of freight is very low, compared to transhipment expenses. He furthermore estimates that, among a range of factors that determine the value added generated by industrial activities, freight costs account for less than 10%. Chisholm however concluded that peripherality remains a major obstacle to economic development through the negative image it connotes.

 Other authors question the effect of Trans-European Networks on the economic performance of peripheral regions. In a 2006 report[E6]  to the European Parliament, the Italian consultancy Trasporti e Territorio foresee negative that Trans-European Networks will have a negative impact on employment and value added throughout the EU regions of the Northern periphery. This can be seen as a potential manifestation of the “perverse ‘pump’ effects” of increased accessibility identified by Andrew Copus[E7] . He defines this as the process “whereby the removal of the ‘natural protection’ of poor accessibility results in economic activity being siphoned away from the periphery to more accessible areas enjoying various agglomerative advantages”.

 Core-periphery approaches have to some extent been challenged by polycentricity in the European territorial discourse. As described under the theme “polycentricity”, this alternative vision is not necessarily more favourable from the Northern Peripheries’ perspective.

Local and regional spatial planning initiatives need to consider the following points in relation to accessibility:

• What aspects of current transportation networks hinder or hamper economic development? Is the problem transportation time, network capacity, reliability, lack of competition between operators (high prices) or insufficient infrastructure for transhipment between different modes of transportation?
•  What external links are or would be most beneficial to the local economy? Neighbourhood or long haul? Within or outside the EU?
•  In relation to the two previous points: To what extent does the European Union’s objective of increased integration between all member states converge with the local and regional needs for enhanced accessibility?
•  Is the main challenge for a peripheral locality its external connections, or its internal cohesion? This relates to the degree of demographic sparsity and the way it is dealt with politically.

In the wider context of Northern periphery regions relation to Europe, the challenge is to [E9] get across the message that the challenges of low accessibility cannot be summarised in maps of European peripherality. If such maps [E10] were “the problem”, the solution would be to build highways from the European core to all peripheral areas. Local and regional from the Northern periphery evidence however shows that each situation is unique: depending on the industrial profile and the geographic location, each area has specific transportation needs: cost efficient with high capacity or fast and reliable, in direction of European markets or Global ones, with a focus on passengers or on freight.

 [E1]Reference Myrdal (1957) and Hirschman (1958)

 [E2]Reference Juillard (1968)

 [E3]Reference Brunet (2002)

 [E4]Reference Keeble (1981) and Keeble (1988)

 [E5]Reference Chisholm (1995)

 [E6]Link to report, maps pages 90 and following

 [E7]Reference Copus (2001) ?

 [E10]Link to map of European peripherality.