Forms, areas, and spatial characteristics of intermunicipal cooperation in the Ljubljana Urban Region

Abstract

This article studies the strength, forms, and areas of intermunicipal cooperation, and their advantages, disadvantages, and spatial characteristics based on the example of the Ljubljana urban region. Surveys, interviews, data analysis of joint administration and joint companies, and analysis of joint development projects show that cooperation in joint municipal administration is limited to parking authorities and the intermunicipal inspectorate, joint companies dealing with communal infrastructure and traffic, and joint projects mainly focusing on economic infrastructure, tourism, mobility, spatial and development planning, and applying for EU projects. The areas of former municipalities, the municipalities in Ljubljana Marsh Nature Park, and the municipalities that are part of the Development Partnership of the Center of Slovenia connect more often than other areas. The advantages of cooperation include better opportunities for EU funding, economizing, and joint representation of municipal interests, whereas disadvantages include problems with coordinating funding and a lengthy coordination period, which is additionally hindered by unsuitable legislation and a lack of financial incentives, human resources, time, and ideas.

From Single-Use Community Facilities Support to Integrated Sustainable Development: The Aims of Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Poland, 1990–2018

“…These findings are similar to those of LAGs studies in EU post-socialist member states [12,114]. The mono-sectoral inter-municipal cooperation in this region are most often focused on the development and modernization of infrastructure necessary for directly carrying out their tasks, for instance in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Romania [62,72,115]. However, according to Potkański [74], such an approach is short-sighted because, despite improving the quality of infrastructure and the momentary satisfaction of voters, it does not ensure long-term economic development, creating jobs or income sources for the local population.…”

“…As a result, local area-based cooperation is common, especially given that, in a purely territorial system, each community interacts much more with neighbouring units than with those who are far away [71]. In planning practice, a territory can be delimited by a grouping of dominant functions, not only by administrative division, creating a functional region [10,72]. The negative effects of local self-government fragmentation into a large number of small municipalities may encourage local authorities to pool the management of local resources, co-operation being the only practical alternative to amalgamation as a solution for this problem, especially if the many types of functional areas that overlap each other are taken into account [73].…”

“…In traditional democratic governmental systems, local authorities have carried out their responsibilities through their own sectoral cooperation, which is a common historical phenomenon given that they are typically part of the same functional local economy [71]. The empirical data shows that local authorities in many developing countries focus on infrastructural and economic issues [72,74]. However, the needs and ideas of local inhabitants may go beyond visible infrastructure investment.…”

Farm Household Income Diversification as a Survival Strategy

“…The findings can also be important for better understanding of changes in socioeconomic types of farms with part-time farming [94], which was important in the studied rural areas in the past with a combination of work in local labor-intensive factories and afternoon work on the farm. Off-farm employment and daily commuting to work [95] in the recent service economy have taken new forms with trade-offs between career development outside the farm and afternoon work on the farm. This can explain differences in spatial differentiation of farm diversification [96], which has been studied in this paper with comparisons between the two municipalities.…”

Evaluation of the urban regions of Serbia: Functional polycentricity

“…In the most recent period, the basic features of urban regions are subject of numerous scientific papers (Etherington & Jones, 2016, 2017Hennig, 2018;Lawton, 2018;Rus et al, 2018), since the city for a long time is not the subject of research without an surrounding area that gravitates to it (Andreasen et al, 2017;Yankson et al, 2017). In the last decades, in professional circles dealing with this issue, the focus of interest is shifting from the city to the city-region as the primary unit of analysis (Davoudi, 2008;Parr, 2005Parr, , 2008Nielsen, 2015;Agergaard & Ortenbjerg, 2017;Vasárus et al, 2018;Kristóf, 2018).…”