RTPI – The Local Economic Development Learning Network, run by the Local Government Information Unit and Warwick Business School and supported by IDeA, is exploring new tools and approaches to local economic assessment in the context of local authorities’ increasing responsibilities for economic development. At its meeting on 15 July 2010, Jenny Crawford from the ESPON UK Contact Pointoutlined the European context for economic assessment and explained ESPON’s contribution to testing concepts and developing analysis of the approaches to economic sustainability which were set out in the European Spatial Development Perspective in 1999 and incorporated and contested in European development policies and programmes ever since. Read More