100 participants in the NEW BRIDGES Final Conference


NEW BRIDGES final conference “Managing Urban Rural Interaction for Quality of Life” successfully gathered around 100 participants in Hamburg to discuss and share leading experiences about the current situation and future challenges within the work on quality of life and urban-rural interaction.

The first day of the conference included presentations from several top-level experts working in the field of urban-rural development at different levels. The presentations were followed by interactive workshops sessions offering a platform to discuss about new ways and methods to the work on quality of life, urban-rural interactions and stakeholder involvement. Second day of the conference offered the participants a chance to explore interesting development sites in the Hamburg Metropolitan area. Presentations from the first day can be found behind the name of each presenter. Please see http://www.urbanrural.net/index.php/ur:conf_programme.


Summary of the discussions:

One of the main aims of the conference was to discuss the achievements of the NEW BRIDGES project and already head forward and discuss the future developments in this field.

The key issue of the conference was the urban-rural interaction: How to strengthen cooperation between these areas? How to create a basis for partnerships between urban and rural areas? There are still many barriers that hinder the cooperation and interaction between different actors in urban and rural areas. Among the challenges are the differing goals and targets but also different policies targeted at rural and urban areas. Many times also the competition between rural and urban municipalities located within same functional area hinders the cooperation. It was stated clearly that to ensure sustainability of futures strategies and plans more planning should be done in the city-regional or functional regions perspective and the role of regional authorities should be strengthened. However, cooperation once started can open minds, bring new ideas and create basis for long lasting partnerships as has been demonstrated in the NEW BRIDGES partner city-regions. Still more concrete demonstration examples are necessary to test how to develop further urban-rural partnerships. There is also a need for networks and cooperation in form of transnational projects and platforms where a systematic sharing of experi-ences and good practices can take place.

Second main theme during the project has been Quality of Life and how to apply it to spatial planning. Presentations in the parallel session “Managing Quality of Life” gave introduction and perceptions to the concept itself but also provided two case examples how it has been applied in practice in two regions of the Baltic Sea. It was recognized that the concept is challenging as it is multi-dimensional and focuses on individual preferences. However, NEW BRIDGES project managed to introduce the concept into planning process in the different partner city- regions successfully by operationalizing it through three key elements. More ways should be sought constantly how to take it better into account in policy making and planning.

The concept of Quality of Life is strongly linked to the third overarching theme in the project - stakeholder involvement. How to encourage the participation of different groups like residents, private actors, NGOs etc. in the planning process? How to better hear individual opinions of their living environment and how to actually use those in the planning and policy making? The involvement of stakeholders and taking care that the voice of different groups is heard and opinions are noticed is many times a big responsibility of the planners. However, the policy framework allowing varies much between the countries in the Baltic Sea Region and does not always support participatory planning methods. It is a great challenge to take into account the individual perspectives in planning, but many very successful methods have been already developed that allow individuals to express their opinions the way that is the most appropriate for them. The presentations considered many interesting methods used to gather individual opinions among those the involvement of children into planning through computer based methods. These methods and approaches still need to be developed further and the good solutions must be transferred to all countries in the Baltic Sea Region.

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Launching event of the new guide for integrated regional planning


What comes next?

The NEW BRIDGES project has almost reached its end. One of the questions raised was the continua-tion of the project and the further development of the work that has been done during the project. How to sustain the process after the project period has actually ended? How to benefit from the results that have been achieved? One of the main aspects of the NEW BRIDGES project from the beginning has been that the whole planning and development process that took place in every partner city-region aimed to involve the key stakeholders from the city-region including decision makers at municipal and regional level. That forms a basis for continuation of the cooperation as mutual relations have been established between the different actors in the city-region.

It was also clear from the beginning that the Pilot Actions completed should not be detached from the planning process, but was rather essential part of the current processes focusing instead of problems on challenges and potentials. The Pilot Action was something that was seen necessary and important in each city-region. We were also delighted to hear in the last NEW BRIDGES final project meeting where partners were presenting their cases for the last time that all the partner city-regions had intentions to continue and develop further the actions initiated within the project framework. NEW BRIDGES succeed to create new urban-rural cooperation and partnerships.

What distincted this conference from the ordinary conferences was the future orientation and the clear message from the conference podium “that this is not the end but just a beginning”. Especially because NEW BRIDGES have been one of the forerunning project around the BSR for developing new methods and practically testing cross-sectoral and border co-operation models in the city-regional planning. Most clearly this message was rose up in the plenary discussions and also in Dr. Wilfried Görmar’s keynote Presentation where he made interesting proposal for future actions toward strengthened urban-rural partnership through new practical case actions in the city-regions around BSR.

On the behalf of the project we would like once again thank you all who organized, presented or partici-pated to the conference. You made it to be as excellent as it was!

On the behalf of NEW BRIDGES project,

Lauri Hooli and Maija Rusanen