ABSTRACT
Cities and regions around the world have been struggling to formulate responses and recovery plans. In fact, the notion of the “left behind” is not new. It has been used for decades in social and political discourses as a way of invoking a collective moral responsibility for helping disadvantaged. In recent years the “left behind” idea has been extended into new debates and become used as a label for a much broader variety of relatively disadvantaged and deprived places and communities. The report aligns economic success with integration and movement to cities and contrasts this with places that have failed to react to or benefit from the “gravitational” pull of cities. In Europe, the picture is broadly similar, though necessarily varied and complex because of differences between countries in economic structures, governance arrangements, varying dates of entry into the European Union, and other nationally and regionally specific factors.
