Attractiveness as policy dimension (original) (raw)

The concept of attractiveness refers to how a place is perceived and what types of assets it has to offer to (different types of) residents and visitors. The growing importance of these issues has coincided with an increasing emphasis on spatial issues, in particular concerning European development policy. Over the last two decades, an emerging message in the EU policy debate has been that territory matters (ESPON, 2006b). Yet the extent to which this has actually been absorbed into and structured sectorial policies is debatable.