UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta/Communication coordinator/New bridges kick off 4th March 2009 NEW BRIDGES – Strenghtening of Quality of Life through Improved Management of Urban Rural Interaction

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU under priority ”Attractive and competitive cities and regions” - sub priority ”Cooperation between metropolitan regions, cities and rural areas” funding for 3 years (36 months) : February 2009-January 2010 Project approved in the 1st call of BSR Programme Background

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU Baltic 21 Working group on urban and rural development (WGURD) -Lighthouse project status UBC network and member cities How was the project developed? Background

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU The project demonstrates: good relevance to the BSR programme objectives sufficient durability and transferability of outputs well established partnership Why was NEW BRIDGES succesful in the 1st call? Quality criteria

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU Who are we? Originally 15 partners, covering 9 BSR countries: UBC EnvCom (Lead partner, WP1, WP2, WP5) Nordregio –Nordic Centre for Spatial Development (WP 3) ECAT-Lithuania –Environmental Centre for Administration and Technology (WP 4) FI / Regional Council of Southwest Finland FI/City of Turku DE / Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg PO / Region of Lower Silesia LT/ Municipality of Kaunas district LV/ Zemgale Planning region SE/ Örebro municipality DK/Triangle region EST/Hiiumaa County Government RU/ City of Kaliningrad RU/ NGO “Regional strategy” -Foundation for socio-economic and political studies RU/Pskov oblast Partners

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU Who are our supporters? Associated partners: Finnish Ministry of Environment Latvian Ministry of Environment Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication Federal State Schleswig-Holstein German Federal Office for Building and Regional planning Baltic Sea States Sub-regional cooperation (BSSSC) Baltic 21 Urban Studies Network – Centre for Urban and Regional Studies and Department of Architechture. Helsinki University of Technology Hafencity University, Hamburg Germany Ludwigslust County (Germany) City of Salo (Southwest Finland) Kaliningrad Regional Duma (Russia) Project is part financed by the European Union and by the Finnish Ministry of Environment Associated partners

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How will NEW BRIDGES contribute to making cities and regions more attractive and competitive? Social and physical environments influence on the well-being of people. To be more specific, there are certain main elements within urban-rural interactions that: influence the quality of people's life and thus the attractiveness of particular region as a place to live and work in These three elements are: 1) Residential preferences 2) Mobility and accessibility 3) Provision of services In addition, urban-rural interactions are dependent on developments, actions, behaviour and perspectives in two parallel levels: Individuals = People living and working in the region Planners and policy makers = People responsible for planning, implementation and management of regional and urban-rural development These both have their own understanding of attractive region. This understanding and perspectives vary also within these two groups! Starting point

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How will NEW BRIDGES contribute to making cities and regions more attractive and competitive? Our aims in the project are to: improve the management of the urban-rural interactions and to strengthen the quality of life within these interactions link together the individual perspective and the planning and policymaking =better meet the needs of the people living and working in the particular region Introduce the concept of quality of life in urban-rural planning and management =going beyond the standard of living focus on new potentials, not only on solving urban-rural problems build up new urban-rural partnerships in the city-regions implement pilot actions systematically involve different stakeholder groups in the planning and management of urban- rural interactions Objectives

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How will we achieve our goals? By working together! Transnational cooperation means: Exchange of experiences and knowledge Learning from each other Joint development of new Joint implementation The project is divided into 5 thematic work packages… Transnational cooperation

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How will we achieve our goals? 5 thematic work packages: WP 1 = Project management (UBC EnvCom) WP 2 = Communication and information (UBC EnvCom) WP 3 = Potentials for quality of life in BSR city-regions (Nordregio) WP 4 = Piloting actions for improved management of urban-rural interactions (ECAT-Lithuania) WP 5 = Multilevel cooperation for quality of life in BSR (UBC EnvCom) Project structure

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How does it all look like? Project timeline

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How will we work together? Project teams meet with each other altogether 5 times during the project. These meetings include: Kick off event in Turku project work shops hosted by our partners Final conference in Hamburg, late 2011 Meetings

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How will we work together? Each partner organizes 5 local stakeholder meetings during the project in their own city-region These public meetings are the keystone for: project implementation establishment of new urban-rural partnerships strengthening the quality of life in urban-rural planning First meetings are coming soon in spring 2009! Meetings

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU What will we achieve? Results: concept of quality of life introduced to regional planning increased capacity of policy makers and planners to better manage the urban-rural interactions +to promote interactions that meet the needs of people increased potentials for development of more attractive and competitive cities and regions new working models and methods created and piloted new urban-rural partnerships established Results and outputs

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU What will we achieve? Outputs: Conceptual report on quality of life and its 3 elements Final reports after work package 3 and 4 Integrated management plans for urban-rural interactions in the city- regions Methodological guide for city-regions throughout the BSR (training package) Set of Policy and practice recommendations: coherent planning, implementation and management of urban-rural interactions in BSR Results and outputs

UBC Environment and Sustainable Development Secretariat / Eija Eloranta / Communication coordinator / New Bridges Part financed by the EU How to find out more? Mr. Sakari Saarinen Project coordinator Tel Mob sakari.saarinen(at)ubc.net Ms. Eija Eloranta Communication coordinator Tel Mob eija.eloranta(at)ubc.net Contacts