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PURPLE has continued its involvement in the development of a CoR Opinion "Small urban areas as key actors to manage a just transition",  and in particular in its ongoing liaison with the relevant CoR Rapporteur - Kieran McCarthy.

The text of the Opinion itself has now reached the stage of having being approved by the CoR COTER Commission at its meeting held in mid July and will next be submitted to the October CoR plenary for full and formal adoption.

Prior to the July submission date, PURPLE prepared an updated version of its previous position paper on small urban areas (SUAs) emphasising that although SUAs and peri-urban territory is in no way synonymous, in many cases we will be referring to the same geographies, especially in the instance of complex polycentric settlement patterns common in many parts of Europe.

The PURPLE paper suggests that: "Locations such as those focused upon within the Opinion play a unique role, and have a unique potential as places where the urban and rural actors and interests are  interdependent, where they overlap and indeed combine to form a distinct type of geography and sense of place. This role is valuable, often overlooked, ignored, or misunderstood, and has the potential to make a particular type of contribution that extends across both urban and rural policy agendas".

The July 2022 version also includes a number of relevant textual extracts drawn from the Policy Recommendations and Policy Manifesto documents which PURPLE had authored as part of the Horizon 2020 project ROBUST.

The latest PURPLE paper can be obtained on request: info@purple-eu.org