Research on plant closure and redundancies has provided insights into the negative effects on the health status of workers, on tax payments towards regions and municipalities, on the procurement of local goods and services, on house prices, on social cohesion of local communities, etc. Impact I of the RIS4Danu project will be the mitigation of the negative socio-economic effects of plant closure in the 21 selected regions in the Danube Macro-Region.
The revitalisation of industrial ecosystems also represents an opportunity to shift previous paths of economic development towards the direction of green growth by promoting the establishment of a robust and more sustainable economy. While the most popular new functions of post-industrial sites are community areas, culture and services, the space and facilities can, for example, be used for the bundling of breakthrough technology and expertise in the area of green and other new energy forms. Impact II of the RIS4Danu project will be the establishment of new sustainable and inclusive regional industrial ecosystems along the Danube River and the provision of new impetus for green transition.
Plant closures and downsizing often have significant economic impacts with large-scale closures having the potential to significantly reduce economic output and value added in an economy. Municipalities and regions undergoing structural change often suffer not only from reduced economic output from the closed plant itself and from flow-on-effects in the wider economy but also from reduced tax revenues, the loss of talent and increased demand for income support arising from an increase in unemployment. Impact III of the RIS4Danu project will be a positive contribution to added value, productivity and competitiveness of the 21 selected regions in the Danube Macro-Region.
The RIS4Danu project contributes to emerging academic and policy debates on ‘Smart Specialisation Strategies for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth’ (S4). S4 builds on the established conceptualisation and methodology of S3, but takes a major step to its further development, integrating directionality towards sustainability as core element of regional innovation strategies to anchor the European Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the ground. Impact IV of the RIS4Danu project will thus be the advancement of debates on the design and implementation of S4 in the scientific community in economic geography, regional science, innovation studies and policy studies.
