PART II CONCEPTS
6 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS 6.3 BUILDING THE EUROPEAN DIAGONAL
6.3.5 Turning the Diagonal Concept into Reality
The ESPON research on spatial scenarios46 corroborates these findings. The ESPON scenarios single out characteristics of southern Europe, such a s i ts s hared f avourable c limate w hich makes it Europe's prime tourist and second home destination, attracts talent and fosters culture; conversely t hey h ighlight s outhern Eu rope's shared c limatic c hallenges. They c onfirm i ncreased competitiveness of European cities and regions but point out immigration pressures and increased social and spatial polarisation. They underline southern Europe's common economic dynamic, strong endowment of higher education establishments and R&D clusters, but expose the deficiencies of its transportation infrastructure which hampers cross-border cooperation.
Initially, the Fundacion Metropoli had organised a number of networked projects and international planning workshops t o d evelop t he European Diagonal concept.The Diagonal Project benefited from reflections on American super-cities at the University of Pennsylvania workshops hosted by the Fundacion Metropoli.41 They concluded that large scale linkages are the key to long term global competitiveness. Influenced by t he European Spatial Development Perspective,42 the MEDOCC research cooperation on 'competitive business places in the Western Mediterranean',43 led by Sevilla, applied the cluster of excellence methodology developed by the Fundacion Metropoli and its Proyecto Cities44 partners. It identified the components of excellence and urban factors of business a ttraction in t he six participating cities45 and found that they could be harnessed more effectively with better, coherent infrastructures and economic connections throughout what would become the European Diagonal space.
Source: AENA
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Although the Trans European Ne tworks (TEN) strategy covers the whole of the EU territory, establishing high speed r ail and comprehensive highway transport connections across a m egaregion of some 2300 k m in length - t hree t imes longer than the Boston toWashington mega-region in the USA - is a major and costly ambition. The Diagonal would have to provide convincing arguments for TEN extensions, beyond corroborating EU policies of cohesion and territorial balance.47