ESPON ARISE – Adaptive Resilience and Inclusive Strategies for Europe’s Structurally Declining Territories

The project will develop a coherent framework for understanding how territorial cohesion and resilience operate under conditions of persistent low growth, demographic contraction and structural decline. Based on European-wide territorial mapping, it will elaborate typologies of territories facing persistent low growth and demographic contraction, and produce territorial maps of vulnerability, adaptive capacity and resilience. Through comparative qualitative case studies across different territorial contexts, it will document adaptive territorial practices and governance innovations. Finally, the project will offer practical policy guidance suggesting how cohesion policy, territorial governance and resilience planning frameworks may need to evolve in response to persistent low growth and structural territorial contraction.