Working paper on Policy Analysis

In the following, we analyse policy documents from the urban, suburban and rural localities of Aarhus, Horsens and Lemvig with a focus on analysing how territorial cohesion is articulated in the different localities. This means that there is a focus on analysing the relation between territo-rial capital, collective efficacy and territorial governance. Overall, the policy discourses are shaped by the path dependency of the Danish welfare state favouring a focus on equality and therefore a balance not only between development in urban and rural areas but also a balance be-tween growth and liveability in local areas. At the same time, Danish territorial cohesion dis-courses is like other European countries placing increased emphasis on growth and strategic de-velopment of soft and fuzzy spaces of government that facilitate such growth. However, the anal-ysis shows that history and identity together with local material conditions shape the strategic selectivities of such new forms of cross-sectoral partnerships and alliances, and that the involve-ment of community in different ways in the three localities are positioned as a strategic partner in territorial development.