Enhancing the Territorial Heritage of Declining Rural Areas in Spain: Towards Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches

Abstract

<jats:p>The population of a considerable number of rural areas in the interior of Spain is in decline. Faced with this problem, various institutions are launching initiatives to enhance the territorial heritage (natural and cultural) of these areas and, starting with a minimum of economic diversification, help to reverse these depopulation processes and promote local development overall. Two specific initiatives are analysed here: the Almadén Mining Park and the Molina-Alto Tajo District Geopark, both of which are located in central-southern Spain and have been officially recognised by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. These two examples allow us to demonstrate, as our main objective, the today importance of territorial revival processes that were initiated by institutions (top-down approach) and then backed up by increasing participation by the local communities (bottom-up approach), encouraged by, among other factors, rural development programmes. In this regard, two aspects are important: the need for an interrelationship between the two approaches in terms of collaborative governance, in order to minimise the current processes of depopulation and territorial dislocation; and the use of the potential synergy between the resources in these two districts to ensure the viability of the initiatives and provide visitors with a high-quality experience.</jats:p>

Counterbalancing the Development Territorial Disparities in the Implementation of the Community-Led Local Development EU Approach in Romania

“…As stated at the beginning of this work, the revitalization of rural areas through means of economic diversification, improvement in the quality of life, inter-sectoral cooperation, and demographic stabilization are some of the core objectives of CLLD [4]. Thus LEADER aims to use its specific characteristics to complement the traditional CAP aids and even to serve as an alternative to them in the most rural and remote areas.…”

“…They point toward a territorial imbalance in the distribution of economic resources, as the more developed municipalities, with an already existing business infrastructure can attract more investment funds compared to the more economically disadvantaged areas. Thus, in the early 1990s, the EU started to look for alternative solutions in the form of participative approaches and in the development of social capital as driving forces for the revitalization of rural communities [4]. One such solution was LEADER ("Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de l'Économie Rurale"), which became one of the most important alternative bottom-up rural development methods used in the EU in the past three decades.…”

Is There Sustainable Development after Mining? A Case Study of Three Mining Areas in the Apuseni Region (Romania)

“…Successful examples all around the world have shown that former mining areas can be reused to provide social, ecological, and economic benefits [13,57]. Some mines have become touristic attraction points (Kansas, Texas, USA; Wieliczka, Poland), public parks (Konya, Turkey; Lawrence, MA, USA), stadiums (Braga, Portugal), solar power plants (Senftenberg, Germany) or UNESCO sites (Rosas mines in Sardinia-Italy, Almaden Mining Park in Spain, Falun Mine in Sweeden, Cornwall and West Devon in the UK) [13,[58][59][60][61]. But for these transformations to take place, large projects approved by authorities and supported by governments need to be considered.…”

Policy Strategies to Revive Rural Land in Peri-Metropolitan Towns: Resource Identification, Capitalization, and Financialization

“…Local governments must develop special policy strategies for attracting businesses to utilize these resources. In addition, merely depending on government-led planning is not enough [26,27]. It is necessary to introduce market forces from metropolitan regions to coordinate diversified stakeholders and to form a "growth alliance" for rural revival [28][29][30].…”