The Role of Public Sector in Local Economic and Territorial Development

Support of sustainable communities’ development at the local and regional level helping people to shape better communities through participation, education, information, and the effective use of technology belongs recently to the main tasks for public authorities. Community sustainability is directly linked to the sustainable territorial development and the development of local economies that are socially responsible, economically viable, and environmentally sound. To face responsibly this task requires the participation of the whole public sector to identify community needs and potentials, to find appropriate interventions and implement innovative solutions.

The global transformation processes of the society at the edge of twentieth and twenty-first century accelerated by the transition processes in majority of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe represent huge challenge for spatial development. Moreover, they deeply concern not only the development of the physical and functional structures, functioning and qualitative and quantitative changes in the Central European cities and regions, but they represent crucial changes in the nature of the spatial development management as well. The shift from government to governance framed by the movement towards civil society development is combined with the fuzzification and softening of the borders between functional and administrative spatial units, with the multiplication of the relevant actors in spatial development and increased spatial effects of their individual decisions, with the regionalisation of local policies, as well as state policies and with the shift from ecologisation towards economisation of spatial planning (Understanding geographies of polarization and peripheralization: perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2015). Spatial development is about intensive interplay between all hierarchical levels, between different temporal dimensions, and between public and private actors. The public sector representatives are more and more diverse, going far behind the governmental and self-governmental bodies. They play specific role in the management of spatial development being more and more limited in their operational space by strong economic interests, interests expressed by broad public and responsibilities for safeguarding societal values and sustainability. The role of public authorities is changing in the development and implementation of spatial development strategies as their position among public sector representatives is changing (Multilevel governance for balanced development between core and peripheral spaces. České vysoké učení technické, Praha, 2015). The examples from Slovakia and other European Countries show the problems and challenges connected with this development as well as the whole range of creative solutions and possibilities to strengthen the quality and efficiency of public interventions towards meeting the goals of spatial development.

The provision of services of general interest (SGI) is governed by authorities at different levels. The changing role of public sector regarding SGI provision during austerity has particularly affected remote mountain and border areas, where economy, population ageing, dispersed settlements, and geomorphology hinder the SGI supply. To counter this, new integrated approaches for SGI provision should be sought. Hereby SGI integration models in 257 spatial planning and sectorial policy documents from five Alpine countries (Italy, Switzerland, Austria, France, and Slovenia) were investigated to discover if and to what extent the integration is considered, and what challenges need addressing. Analysis shows the SGI integration in the Alpine Space is moderate, mostly occurring among health, telecommunication, social care, and basic goods sectors. Adapting the existing spatial planning policies could bridge the identified gaps, as some examined documents (e.g. transport, telecommunication) do not consider the SGI provision in spatial planning context at all.

Since the Barca Report to the European Union in 2009, endogenous potentials have been firmly on the European Union agenda, streamlined by various policies related to territorial development. At the end of the current EU programming period (2012–2020), this chapter discusses how such place-based potentials are conceptualised and used, particularly in the local and regional context. In doing so, this chapter focuses on the situation of places characterised as non-agglomeration, (post-) industrial regions in Central Europe, often situated in the spatial peripheries and also outside the main academic focus. The analysis highlights governance issues and the valorisation of endogenous development potentials by different policy levels, discussing agenda setting and implementation. The cases highlight challenges in the current development of such regions, give examples for the identification and utilisation of endogenous potentials, and discuss lessons learned from this locally led development approach. Additionally, different governance modes are discussed and used to illustrate different agenda setting in regard to endogenous potentials. As a result, the authors argue that utilising potentials is streamlined top-down via various policy frameworks, which are in turn mediated by local and regional governance settings, adapting and translating these programmes into practical, regional and local actions, and thereby creating important learning effects for the regions.

By juxtaposing the research results of two recent research projects, the authors complement two perspectives on current energy sensitivity in Bulgarian spatial planning: (a) an “inside out”—energy efficiency considerations reflected in adopted municipal strategic spatial plans; and (b) an “outside in”—societal appreciation of the role of the local governance planning instruments in addressing energy-related challenges. Largely missing societal awareness about the potential of spatial planning for contributing to greater energy efficiency was identified alongside quite generally approached energy efficiency targets in the plans. The steps claimed urgent in the planning field are to: explicitly define the energy-related aspects addressed and the ways of integrating them into strategic planning documents; better communicate the topic with all the stakeholders in the urban process; and insist for broader support in building relevant institutional and expert capacity for monitoring and evaluating planning results with respect to social, economic, and environmental benefits for local communities.

Market participants need a variety of relevant market data for purchases and sales decisions. The higher the degree of information is, the more market transparency exists. Land value is one of the most important indicators and is often used to represent the location. Based on the knowledge of public valuation expert committees, information for determining land values is highly dependent on purchasing price data in Germany. Nevertheless, project developers are aware of the fact that land values represent only part of the location. Hence, land values are also affected by further representative characteristics, which reflect location within a territory. Different criteria like economic situation or social conditions are the focus of consideration. However, great difficulties are caused by the complexity of the available data. Furthermore, not all valuation experts use the same methods of calculation and weighting. A consistent method of determining land values nationwide for all locations improves market transparency. Providing a comprehensive decision-making basis for all market participants and the public sector enables the optimal management of spatial developments. The practical implication of the concept is illustrated using the case of Germany.

Territorial governance enables territorial development, moving away from sectorial approaches, towards place-based and highly adaptable models. Most territorial governance studies take a socio-institutional, or spatial planning perspective. Still, territorial governance happens in and through other policy domains, interacting among them and with the territory in various ways, to produce territorial development. The sustainability of the latter is affected by the presence of collective action and socio-ecological resilience, best seen through the study of socio-ecological interactions. As an example to unravelling territorial governance through lenses of other policy domains, this chapter examines ecosystem-based forest commons’ governance. Resilience of forest commons as resources and as institutions leads the society towards sustainable territorial development at local and global scales. The illustration of this account comes through exploring the Albanian model of forest commons within a river basin. The model embodies all ecosystem values besides the merely utilitarian ones and discusses the dimensions of territorial governance for forest commons. It does so through fit-to-context factors for robustness and adaptability. Evidences are collected through visual surveys, interviews, and focus groups systematically researching a number of commons’ variables of endurance and functionality.

Spatial planning is a set of managerial activities focused on support and protection of sustainability in spatial development across different scales. The role of planners is recently dramatically changing from the position of the designers of the future towards the mediators and leaders of the development processes as (post)modern spatial planning has to deal intensively with immaterial and qualitative variables and phenomena like community, identity, place, social behaviour, or human values. The character of planning culture is determined by the value system, which is reflected in the acting, communication, and leadership patterns. Understanding of cultural dynamics, the ability to develop a clear vision of the desired planning culture based on the democratic leadership and its active fostering should be an essential competence of any planner. Recent global development has highlighted the need for special attention dedicated to these issues especially in the context of territorial fixing of the mobile capital. It has been shown that highly profiled planning cultures based on the active leadership generating typical set of principles, values, and approaches play an important role in the spatial development of any territory. Moreover, planning culture significantly shapes not only territorial and spatial processes, but also the dynamics of the entire society. Analysis of the past has often shown that especially planning cultures based upon the authoritarian and beaurocratic leadership failed in the process of dealing with challenges of high complexity. This contribution introduces fundamental theoretical and methodological models of planning cultures and tries to investigate and define specific features and characteristics of Central European planning culture, including the field of leadership.

Many cities of Central and Eastern Europe beyond their booming metropolitan hubs are suffering from stagnation, declining populations and poor economic development. At the same time, these cities frequently possess a rich cultural heritage, which, at a time of digital transformation and congested urban centres, can be an asset in the fight to regain economic competitiveness. Often, however, existing building stock does not meet current residential or commercial needs. Coordination between the public and private sectors, as well as within the public sector, is needed to resolve the conflicting aims of preserving cultural heritage and ensuring local economic development. Currently, the city of Görlitz is striking out in a new direction by articulating and testing a matrix designed to assess both heritage preservation and urban development. The present chapter explains this tool and discusses some initial experiences.

This chapter addresses the role of bottom up innovation to support sustainable local development, in particular in local tourism development as a priority sector for economic development in Western Balkan countries. The case study presented in this chapter is about social innovation for sustainable tourism in a small town in Albania, namely Gramsh. As the findings suggest, sustainable tourism can be developed in peripheral territories with typical problems like high rate of unemployment, lack of infrastructure, emigration, lack of investments, and rather weak local government. Bottom up driven tourism innovation strengthens the endogenous development potential. Such an approach fosters local identity formation and self-identification of the citizens with their own territory and local resources. It is studied through the social network theory, analysing the processes of community organisation aimed at tourism destination development and promotion. The local authority should augment such processes through the provision of the necessary strategic framework, including a shared vision, in order to harvest all benefits. The experiment in Gramsh can now be further elaborated into a model that other small towns can adopt too. As a reflection on literature, this case study provides much needed empirical indications on doing sustainable tourism in the Western Balkans. In a context of the at times over-optimistic or rather critical literature on sustainable tourism, such empirical results should be a welcome contribution.

The chapter is focused on the public sector role in professional capacity building necessary for the improvement of energy efficiency at the national and local level. It brings the results achieved by four consecutive EU-financed projects in reforming of the outdated training practices and implementation of nearly zero-energy building (NZEB). This chapter shows the legacy of the BUILD UP Skills initiative as public interventions towards higher energy efficiency of build environment via improvement of the skills in the construction sector. Although a number of barriers are still left, the idea for establishing of a network of well-equipped training centres (Building Knowledge Hubs) has great potential to increase the capacity to deliver new buildings and renovations with the highest possible quality. However, in many EU countries there are still many challenges on the road ahead—mainly in terms of qualified trainers, up-to-date training facilities and local capacity building for the professional communities the idea gained further support by Horizon 2020. Five new such centres (in Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, Turkey and Ukraine) are established, all of them deliver training courses on specific energy efficiency related programmes and providing consultations for various stakeholders’ groups, including local authorities. Three new centres (in Greece, Croatia and Italy) have joined the network through another project, Fit-to-NZEB, looking to promote training targeted to the achievement of deep energy renovation. The idea of sharing experiences between specialized training centres has attracted support from many parties, triggering consultations for actual NZEB projects, demonstrations for policymakers and exercising positive impact on local energy planning, contributing to the overall market development. Starting in 2011 with identical projects in 30 European countries, the BUILD UP Skills initiative responded to the recognition that reaching the 2020 EU energy and climate goal represents a major challenge to the construction sector, which needs to be ready to deliver high energy performing buildings and building renovations. This goal requires a major effort to increase the number of qualified construction specialists at all levels, which is directly related to the accessibility and quality of the educational programmes. The 2-stage project in Bulgaria, coordinated by the author, succeeded in developing a National Roadmap for improvement of the qualification in the building sector; as a consequence, the NZEB standard and its impact on the construction practice is already a part of the national educational plans and programmes. Additionally, an e-learning platform for basic training of trainers was developed, currently available worldwide, and a number of train-the-trainer activities were performed in eight Bulgarian cities.

After the collapse of the socialist systems during the early 1990s, countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have been engaged in conceiving their new identity. National identities are seen as historical constructions that are constantly being reconstituted according to a presentist agenda, that is viewing the past with a somewhat limited to present-day set of attitudes and beliefs. Building new political and cultural identities was not on top of the political agenda during the early phase of the transition but developed after institutional transitions were made. This chapter presents a study of identity formation, specifically how identity in four Western Balkan countries is expressed in significant places. The alterations of central squares of capitals, regarded as tangible expressions of national identity, have been studied in four small countries; Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. The study focuses on how selective remembrance and active forgetting played a role in the development of main squares, how ambiguous spaces have been created with also banal practices and how the main squares can be seen in view of globalized identities and cultural hybridities. Additionally, attention is paid to the process of intervention. We also consider to what extent the developments can be seen as innovations. Our study shows that national governments have sought to create expressions of national identity in main squares, in Skopje and Tirana in a dramatic manner and in the cases of Priština and Podgorica in a more retained but still significant style. It is concluded that governments made efforts to wipe out expressions of the recent communist past, have replaced memories of the socialist past with historical and/or modern Western appearances, and have paid limited attention to minorities and public participation.

This chapter is focusing on the specific role of professional associations as proactive organizations in the development of public policies addressing sustainable local and regional development. This topic is demonstrated on the examples of a model for shared neighborhood development and a monitoring and evaluation standard for the urban environment of Sofia. The need for a more thorough approach in local community planning and design along with monitoring and evaluation of the urban environment has been identified through a series of actions and arenas related to Sofia. The approach of the Association of Bulgarian Urban and Regional Planners is described and argumented through the methods for studying the issue and the way in which it is addressed, including the phases of designing, texting and applying action research and standards in the decision-making process. The efforts of the ABURP try to establish further an urban culture both deep grass-roots and canopy farsighted around the tree of problems and solutions for the environment of Sofia.