Accessibility and local development: interaction between cross-border accessibility and local development in Portugal and Spain

Abstract

The main objective in this work is to understand road infrastructure’s impact on development, especially in the EU-context and in the border areas between Portugal and Spain. In these areas, a new road infrastructure was built in the last decades, changing completely the accessibility panorama, while the development variables seem to get worst in most of the cross border regions. Some links are still missing, but some already exist and are not having the expected development impact. The analysis is to be done at the municipality level in order to evaluate the regional differences within the cross border area, which is not possible at the higher NUTIII level.