New paper "Contributing to territorial cohesion by EU cohesion policy financial instrument? The JESSICA implementation in Poland" co-authored by Piotr Idczak and Ida Musiałkowska in the "European Planning Studies" is out.
This paper looks at how a special European Union initiative JESSICA (Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas) was given out to different cities in Poland. JESSICA is a type of financial tool designed to help cities with sustainable investments. The study fills a gap in existing research by examining where this "repayable assistance" was distributed geographically. Specifically, it aimed to:
- Show where JESSICA funding went across hashtag#cities in different regions, paying close attention to smaller cities (called "secondary territorial cohesion cities" or ScTCC).
These smaller cities are seen as important for ocal development.
- Evaluate if the JESSICA projects in the smaller cities matched the spatial development plans
- Figure out what made these smaller cities appealing to receive JESSICA funding.

The results of the study confirmed several key points:
- These smaller cities were capable enough to carry out projects using this repayable funding.
- In fact, they performed better than the larger capital cities when it came to implementing JESSICA projects.
- The study concludes that these smaller cities are important contributors to urban and cohesionpolicy, but they are often not studied enough and are underrepresented in the policy discussions.

Full text link: https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2025.2550988