The project is about the medium sized cities in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). They are lagging behind the capitals and many suffer from restructuring of their basic urban functions.The challenges for peripheral regions are often forgotten in the debate about the pros and cons of increasingly globalised economy. Development and growth focus is mostly on major national and international economic centres such as Copenhagen, Berlin, Helsinki, etc. and how they can strengthen their economic positions concerning global knowledge. The project is closely related to the VASAB initiatives, first and foremost the former Interreg IIC project Urban Systems and Urban Networking in the Baltic Sea Region (USUN). USUN showed that a most crucial challenge of urban and regional development within the BSR is the development of the small and medium sized cities outside the national core areas.

The Interreg IIIB project Medium Sized Cities in Dialogue around the Baltic Sea (MECIBS) was carried out between 2002-2005 by cities and research institutions in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland in cooperation with associated partners from Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Poland. The cities met with the purpose of learning from each other and to develop new ideas within business policy, urban planning, socio-economic restructuring and other aspects of urban restructuring - and to develop recommendations for local strategies, national and Eu regional policies.

The project establishes a co-operation and exchange of experiences on the one hand between cities and on the other between practice and research. The MECIBS project ran for 3 years via 6 conferences on different locations in the BSR.

At the conferences cities present experiences on planning and development - and the researchers present comparative outlooks on planning practices and development patterns. Recommendations for local strategies as well as national and EU regional policies will be prepared.

The project focuses on how the medium sized cities are threatened by changes in their economic base and key urban functions and how they cope with the challenges of restructuring. The interplay between city and its regional hinterland is emphasised and so are the endogenous capabilities and the interplay between local and national policy measures.

Another focus is the social, demographic and environmental problems caused by urban restructuring and hence the need for sustainable strategies in urban revitalisation. Finally, the impacts and prospects of transnational networking between cities and urban regions in the BSR will be analysed taking its point of departure in a case study on industrial links between Danish and Polish/Lithuanian industrial districts within the branch of textile.

Conferences, research seminars and interview visits to cities have been activities in the MECIBS project.

Due to the conferences, research seminars and interview visits to the cities a strong project commitment and good networking relations have been established. City partners have learned from each other and exchanged experience on joint key strategic issues, e.g. reuse of obsolete industrial areas, city branding, water-front planning and education. During this process some cities have agreed to start up concrete subsidiary networking-projects.

MECIBS is proud that a project off-spring is the establishment of Baltic Sea Solutions. The aim of Baltic Sea Solutions is to develop new and innovative approaches to sustainable development for peripheral regions in the Baltic Sea Region - approaches based on our local assets they be human, natural, geographical or economic. Thus, several cities and researchers took the MECIBS recommendations into its next and vital phase - implementing concrete cross-border actions for future development and synergies among cities in the Baltic Sea region. Finally, the partners agreed to plan a follow-up conference in the summer 2006 hosted by Nakskov.

Mainly the medium sized cities of the Baltic Region.

European Regional Development Fund: 1,580,374.00.

Approximate total project budget: 2,940,748.00€. Supplementary funding obtained from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Danish Organisation for International Co-operation.

Danish Forest and Landscape Research Institute Hørsholm
Kongevej 11
DK-2970 Hørsholm
Denmark
Niels Boje Groth, tel. 0045 35 28 18 35

24/06/2002

case

Urban Policy

Economy knowledge & employment