Urban-rural partnerships in metropolitan areas

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The URMA-project promotes urban-rural partnerships as a tool to strengthen the potential for generation and transfer of innovation in European metropolitan areas and their surrounding hinterlands. The basis was laid during a preceding project, integrated in the action programme “Pilot Project of Spatial Planning” sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. In this project regional disparities were tackled and the effectiveness of regional development policies was improved by new governance structures for large scale urban-rural partnerships (triple helix approach). Balancing regional disparities and being competitive at the same time are challenges for all regions in Europe and therefore the project theme is of high interest to many other metropolitan areas. The project’s objective is therefore to utilize the urban-rural cooperation schemes developed and tested in the above-named project and in other partner regions in the field of innovation generation and transfer within metropolitan areas and regional urban-rural networks. The PP will identify different types of regional innovation systems, exchange experiences on urban-rural cooperation and finally help to improve the effectiveness of regional and local policies in the field of innovation. This objective enables an establishment of a regional, national and European policy agenda for a sustainable development of metropolitan areas. Moreover, it will result in lasting and balanced positive effects on the competiveness of metropolitan areas, also in global terms. The key advantage to this approach is that urban and rural areas will benefit on equal terms and that cities will not gain competitiveness on the expense of urban areas and vice-versa. The participating nine PP from five EU member states (BG,DE,IT,NL,PL) cover a wide EU area and are directly involved in the improvement of regional policies. The consortium is homogenous and diverse at the same time, comprising differently shaped urban-rural regions, from strong interconnected metropolitan areas to smaller city regions. The mix of larger and smaller, well experienced and less experienced PP will open up new possibilities of learning and knowledge transfer and creates an added value for all regions. URMA is mainly focused on the exchange of experiences through an array of conferences, public and project internal workshops, study visits in all regions and 3 pilot implementations. The cooperation will be supported by a common toolkit to identify and describe best practices, a concise dictionary and a Good Practice Guide. Furthermore recommendations for the whole project partnership with regard to regional innovation systems and for the future European cohesion policy regarding urban-rural partnerships will be developed. All in all, the project will raise the awareness for the need and potential of urban-rural partnerships – a new approach to strengthen innovation in European metropolitan areas.

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