News.

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...

In cooperation with Tartu city and the local governments bordering it, Geomedia prepared the document “Tartu urban area sustainable development strategy 2015-2020”. For the implementation of the vision of “Tartu urban area as the best urban living environment with growing population and high internal cohesion, which is recognised as a...

On the 8th of December 2015 Geomedia PhD student Bianka Plüschke-Altof held a public lecture at the Slovak Technical University (STU) in Bratislava. The lecture was held under the topic “Images of the Periphery impeding Rural Development? The concept of Peripheralization” and took place as part of a 4-months secondment...

Based on the procurement by the Ministry of Education and Research, Geomedia will conduct the analysis of Harju County school network for the establishment of state-owned secondary schools for the period 2015-2023. In the course of the analysis, the pros and cons of two scenarios will be evaluated. The first scenario takes into account...

Today’s Estonian local government model is based on a one-level municipality system that centers on the autonomy of local municipalities and a differentiation from the state level. Nowadays, this kind of a model has exhausted its possibilities. In practice, the shift towards a multi-level governance in which the growing importance of the civil society...