News.

Our new colleague, Bianka Plüschke, was selected in an international competition in the context of the International Training Network “Socio-economic and Political Responses to Regional Polarisation in Central and Eastern Europe” (RegPol²). Her main duty is to prepare a PhD thesis on “Development Perspectives for Village Communities in Rural Estonia”....

On 10th of April 2015 seminar with Geomedia and the representatives of Haapsalu city council and government took place, focusing on the topic of Haapsalu’s positioning against the backdrop of Estonia’s regional development and on possible development policies for Haapsalu. Haapsalu’s development potential was identified with the help of the local government capacity index results,...

The ITN RegPol² (Socio-economic and Political Responses to Regional Polarisation in Central and Eastern Europe) member organisations’ introductory event on “Basic understandings of core-periphery relations in Central and Eastern Europe” took place from 3-7 November 2014 in Bratislava The ITN RegPol² is funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme...

The newspaper “Postimees” (20.04.2015) has published an article by Rivo Noorkõiv and Mikk Lõhmus on the topic of “Administrative reform in Estonia – decreasing voluntary amalgamations”. The authors argue that systematic changes in Estonia’s administrative system and solutions to contemporary problems faced by local governments do not arise from voluntary...

Recently, the Statistical Bulletin on “Estonian Regional Development 2015” has been published. The volume gives an overview of development in Estonia on county and municipality level. Traditionally, the fulfillment of the objectives set out in the Estonian regional development strategy will be monitored. Moreover, local government data on key indicators...

On the 5th of December 2014 the seminar of URBACT took place in Tallinn in cooperation with URBACT Secretary in Paris and the Estonian Ministry of the Interior. The event was moderated by Geomedia's consultant Rivo Noorkõiv. The URBACT European Territorial Cooperation program was founded in 2002 and it promotes...

In April, Geomedia hosted RegPol² senior researcher Cyril Blondel. Cyril took part in the undertakings of the company and Rivo Noorkõiv, the head of Geomedia, introduced him and Bianka Plüschke, a fellow RegPol² researcher who is currently employed at Geomedia, to consultancy work in Estonia. In Cyril’s words, the visit...

On behalf of the Ministry of Education and Research, Geomedia conducted an analysis with the objective of proposing potential locations for state gymnasiums on the municipality level in Harjumaa county (incl. Tallinn city districts). This objective was approached by two scenarios: the first scenario takes into account the effectiveness and...

From September to November 2015, Aura Molodovan is visiting Geomedia as part of the ITN RegPol² project. She has studied Sociology at the BabeS-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and at the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany. Since 2014 she is a junior researcher and PhD student at the BabeS-Bolyai University....

On November 3-4, 2016 the traditional Tartu Planners’ Connference takes place. This year’s conference includes more than 60 presentations focusing on “Spatial Inequality and Planning”. The keynote lectures will be held by Prof. Marju Lauristin and the Minister of Public Administration Arto Aas. The sessions will discuss inequality in urban areas and on the...