News.

In the newspaper “Valgamaalane” an interview was published with Geomedia consultant Rivo Noorkõiv under the headline “Municipality amalgamation is like tailoring a custom-made suit”. At the focus of the article were general developments in the local government amalgamation reform. Above all, it concentrated on the amalgamation negotiations of Helme, Hummuli,...

Geomedia Ltd and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences of the  University of Tartu compose a general conceptual framework for the evaluation of local governments’ public services, As a result, the  designed method will be tested and data analyzed. The method offers the opportunity to evaluate the capacity of the Estonian local...

Geomedia analyses the potential for using the model of village elders in Estonian communities. The objective of the analysis is above all to get a statistical picture of the village elder dynamics throughout Estonia as well as their spatial contribution among villages and counties. These will be compared for the years 2004, 2012 and...

From 27th to 29th of September 2017 a conference on “Coping with Uneven Development: Socio-economic and political responses to regional  polarization” was organized in Leipzig by the RegPol² project, which  Geomedia Ltd is a part of. The meeting focused on policy formations that  advance social, economic and territorial cohesion in the...

On the 24th of March, Statistics Estonia acknowledged their best cooperation partners. The Best of the Year award was handed out already for the second time. Rivo Noorkõiv from the consulting and training center Geomedia received the title as statistic friendly research partner for 2015. The nomination of research partners focused on the published...

In the Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics Estonia 3/2017 an article was  published by Geomedia Ldt consultant Rivo Noorkõiv and Lääne-Nigula  municipality leader Mikk Lõhmus focusing on “The Amalgamation Reform: An overview of the events and first conclusions”. The amalgamation reform  resembles the systematic restructuration of local governments in  re-independent Estonia after...

On behalf of the local government union of Pärnu county and Pärnu county government, Geomedia conducted an analysis of local government territorial scenarios. Against the backdrop of the ongoing administrative reform, the administrative-territorial options for Pärnu county were explored on three dimensions: territorial amalgamation of local government units, the fragmentation of local government territory into...

On 26^th of September 2017 the 2^nd Estonian Municipality Day took  place, which was dedicated to the 100^th Anniversary of the Republic of  Estonia and the restoration and development of local government units and unions in the years 1989-2017. In the course of this event, an  edited volume was published that...

Applying the Village Elder Model is one way to organize rural life. Village elder based organization of local life is strongly linked to the general performance of the culture and local government. The duty of a village elder is not to fulfil orders of the municipality government, but to function as a leader for...

The third Tartu Planners‘ Conference took place on November, 2.-3. 2017. It mainly focused on the issue of planning and ethics, which was covered in the plenary speech by the Head of the Ethic Center of the University of Tartu, Prof. Margit Sutrop. However, the conference panels also discussed: planning methods, architectural planning, infrastructure...