Local Action Groups as Territorial Development Polities

On 11 December 2024, Miriam de Oliveira Gonçalves presented her research on urban CLLD Local Action Groups (LAGs) in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area as part of the EPRC webinar series. Her talk gave an overview of her ongoing PhD work at URBinLAB – Urbanism & Territorial Dynamics in Lisbon. EU-funded LAGs were lauded for their ability to engage local stakeholders, promote proactivity, and build capacity for designing and implementing Local Development Strategies (LDS) and starting from 2014, the rural LEADER model has been opened up to urban territories. Portugal was one of the early adopters of urban CLLD, making extensive use of it in its metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto, as well as in towns in the Algarve region.

However, the EU funding contribution to urban CLLD was discontinued in 2021-27, mainly for political reasons, but it also has been difficult to demonstrate the added value of urban CLLD. The way in which effectiveness of Cohesion Policy-funded interventions is typically assessed is based strongly on quantitative aspects and economic growth, less so on qualitative and soft outcomes. Yet, the latter aspects are those in which CLLD excels.

An important aspect that Miriam’s presentation emphasised is that CLLD is able to give access to funding for projects that would otherwise not have been supported. On the basis of a survey with 300 respondents, she was able to estimate that 95% of the CLLD projects would not have been funded otherwise. This shows that CLLD is an effective way of getting local communities not only to participate in but also to directly benefit from EU funding.

The recording the webinar is available here.