In Northern Portugal and Galicia, European and national initiatives have become the key instruments shaping rural territories and their socio-spatial configurations. Nevertheless, these regions continue to exhibit regressive trends − including depopulation, economic marginalisation, and heightened vulnerability to wildfires − revealing uneven spatial outcomes of development interventions. Against this backdrop, several villages in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula have shown a significant revitalisation, as a result of substantial public funding, local agency, place-based innovation, and the mobilisation of endogenous resources or private enterprises direct investment. These examples underscore the spatial heterogeneity of rural trajectories and highlight how localised dynamics of resilience and adaptation can challenge broader narratives of rural decline.
This paper investigates the geography of social inequality in Portugal through a multi-scalar analysis of territorial disparities and socio-spatial segregation. Focusing on the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, it combines Population and Housing Census data from 2011 and 2021 with measures of concentration, segregation, and spatial autocorrelation, complemented by cartographic and Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) analysis.The results reveal persistent socio-spatial inequalities alongside profound metropolitan restructuring. While disadvantaged populations have historically been concentrated in peripheral and working-class territories, recent transformations have been characterised by the displacement of low-qualified groups from central neighbourhoods towards the metropolitan periphery, reflecting processes of gentrification, housing-market restructuring, and spatial polarisation.More broadly, the results suggest that metropolitan inequality is increasingly shaped not simply by residential segregation, but by the uneven territorial distribution of different forms of capital and the progressive displacement of social disadvantage towards peripheral spaces. The article contributes to contemporary debates on spatial justice, territorial cohesion, and the reproduction of inequality in European metropolitan regions.
This study develops and demonstrates an open-source, reproducible workflow for measuring the temporal (service-time) accessibility of public transport for a specific age group (university students), and translates it into an operational, planner-oriented metric. Using OpenTripPlanner, GTFS and OpenStreetMap data, campus accessibility in six Polish cities is computed at one-minute resolution over a 16-hour window, as the cumulative minutes a campus is reachable within 30 minutes. Combined with census data, this yields the share of the student-aged population with access. The results consistently link rail infrastructure to higher, more stable accessibility and reveal marked central–peripheral disparities, offering planners a transparent diagnostic tool.
Privileged transit traffic or similar railway lines illustrate Central Europe’s historical interdependence and the persistence of infrastructural anomalies. This paper analyses their contemporary role as instruments of cross-border integration through two Czech-Polish cases: the Liberec–Bogatynia–Zittau–Varnsdorf–Seifhennersdorf line in the west, which also includes German territory, and the Jeseník–Głuchołazy–Krnov line in the east. Using a qualitative comparative approach that integrates document analysis, field observation, and stakeholder interviews, the study assesses how governance density, fare regimes, and accessibility influence the dimensions of cross-border integration. The results reveal contrasting trajectories. The Zittau line, embedded in trilateral governance frameworks and supported by fare integration, enables frequent services and symbolises everyday transnational normality, except for a small section. Conversely, the Głuchołazy line remains hindered by outdated legal arrangements, low frequency, and peripheral infrastructure. These differences underscore that multilevel governance and fare harmonisation are crucial preconditions for cohesion, while regulatory fragmentation and institutional inertia exacerbate marginality. Overall, the study argues that privileged transit railway connections, if supported by regional advocacy and coordinated investment, can evolve from historical exceptions into agents of European integration.
Imagine a scientific world in which researchers everywhere have equal opportunities to publish and gain recognition. Far from being an exception, space syntax research is shaped by structural inequalities that privilege Northern institutions and epistemologies. While existing bibliometric reviews broadly map the field, they overlook how selective indexing structures global visibility. Drawing on 2,323 Web of Science–indexed space syntax articles, this review examines publication growth, citation impact, and journal landscapes across regions. The findings show that although research activity is expanding globally, particularly in Asia, citation impact remains concentrated in the United States and the United Kingdom. Elite Northern journals dominate the field, while Southern scholarship largely circulates in less visible venues, reinforcing enduring geographical imbalances in knowledge production.
