Territorial response to the virus: local development as a strategy



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## Territorial response to the virus: local development as a strategy

09/05/2020 |
SCP

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* [![ opinio-vicente-budi Vicente_Bud](/com/investigacio/arxiu/noticies/2020/5/opinio-vicente-budi/Vicente_Bud.jpg)](#)

The brutal health crisis caused by COVID-19 has as its main consequences damage to health and the loss of loved ones. Added to these catastrophic effects is the fear of the implications on the economy and on all our social relations. The virus is developing in our surrounding territory, it infects us from nearby and it spreads its effects all over the planet. Now, neither the propagation, nor its incidence, nor the de-escalation process, nor its socioeconomic effects are going to be the same in all spaces.

The depopulation of an important part of inland Castelló, with a small number of inhabitants per square kilometre, has allowed many of their municipalities to be considered safe spaces and points of refuge from the virus. The rate of infection, and hence its effects on health and daily activity, is higher in densely populated areas with greater social and economic dynamism. Consequently, it is the inland regions, the less populated ones, which are now shown to be a temporary alternative where we can establish our home and, as far as possible, our work and our whole life in society. In fact, as we have seen in the media, people have moved to second residences looking for security and more living space. These movements have brought to light the real possibility of keeping work activity from a distance.

Small towns and villages are considered a safe territory from which to confront the health and economic crisis. Moreover, the post-confinement scenarios point towards reduced labour and socio-economic mobility for the coming months, with social distance in between, but also with limitations to our movements. It is in this context of less mobility that the idea of local development, proximity as a socioeconomic context and a development strategy becomes more important. It is time to reinforce the feeling of belonging to the territory by incorporating a new vision of the working environment.

Local employment systems (LES) are defined on the basis of the productive structure of the territory and the radius of movement of workers. In the case of the province of Castelló, there are around ten LES out of the approximately forty identified in the Valencian Community, with a tendency to reduce the number of LES to date due to the increase in the distance of travel and the greater homogeneity of the local productive systems. However, the new context of proximity imposed by the coronavirus, which advises reducing our territorial mobility, poses a new scenario where daily travel for work purposes is reduced, and it is even possible to think of a change of trend and direction in favour of inland municipalities. If up to now the decision of where to live was mainly subordinated to the place of work (*People follow Jobs*), the new post-pandemic context offers us the alternative of locating work in the chosen place of residence (*Jobs follow People*), thus prioritising the qualities of the residential environment over the work aspects.

The window of opportunity opened in inland Castelló requires immediate actions to support rural areas. From the field of local development, we understand that it is time to bet on a strategy of territorial development that solves old demands of services and means, and that facilitates and equalises the opportunities of life and development of our inland regions. In the labour field, we urge the infrastructures that complete the coverage of data networks by means of fibre and 4G telephony in the whole region, as an essential element for teleworking. The latter allows us to break with the primacy of the presential workplace and reverse the current trend, thus prioritising people in a *Jobs-follow-People* behaviour model.

This change of trend has the aim of expanding the supply of jobs accessible from the rural areas as a first step towards a denser economic and social dynamic that will support the continuity of existing activities, their updating with new investments and, of course, the arrival of new commitments to the territory.

The problems of availability of basic services, both those referring to education or health, and commercial ones such as the bakery, the shop or the bar, or those referring to the housing supply, all have in common the lack of population in the local sphere, and even in the regional territory. Improving job opportunities is part of an overall strategy that favours the arrival of new residents, with actions that in some cases will be limited to the municipality itself, but must extend to the whole region, association, consortium or employment pact as reference spaces.

Small towns and villages mean a product of proximity, local resources and possibilities of creating new jobs. This will require assistance from the administration, which includes financial support and, of course, the provision of public services, but at the same level of importance, instruments for specific training of workers with courses adapted to the new opportunities offered by inland Castelló and which include tourism, production of quality food, exploitation of forest resources or renewable energy, among other alternatives. The opportunity goes through qualified employment, technical training as an essential basis for a new productive model with the necessary attraction for new job opportunities, which will become new resident families, and the beginning of the recovery of the rural areas.

**Vicente Budí, director of Institute for Local Development AVANT GVA-UJI Chair.**

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