News.

On the 20th of November 2014 a regional study seminar financed by the European territorial cooperation program ESPON took place in the Estonian Ministry of Interior. At the focus was the Estonian development in the European and Baltic Sea context. Priidu Ristkok from the Ministry of Interior introduced the Estonian...

In the Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics Estonia 1/15 an article titled „Suburbanization in Tartu“ was published by Antti Roose, Rivo Noorkõiv and Martin Gauk. In the article the authors discuss suburbanisation as geographical and functional expansion of the urban region, which should be treated as natural process. The article analyses...

In cooperation with Lääne-Nigula parish and Geomedia, development plan 2014-2022 for Lääne-Nigula was prepared and confirmed by the municipal council. This is the first time for the parish after the amalgamation. The development plan unites the data of the former Risti, Taebla and Oru municipalities and future perspectives. The objective...

Geomedia is counselling the renewal of Tallinn’s city development plan 2016-2021. In the course of this work a situation analysis is conducted, also the strategic aims and operational priorities of the capital city are updated for the four coming years. The ambition is to increase the strategic importance of the development plan in governing...

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...

In March 2015, Helme rural municipality proposed the initiation of amalgamation negotiations to its neighboring municipalities, to which Tõrva, Hummuli and Põdrala municipalities replied positively. After that, the negotiations have been continually progressing: several meetings with municipality leaders, establishment of negotiation working groups, preparation of the area’s demographic and social-economic situational analysis and...

On the 3rd of November 2016, RegPol2 Team Estonia organized a national workshop under the title “Core-Periphery Relations between Discourses and Practices: Estonia and Beyond”. In the course of this workshop, six researchers from Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada introduced local academics and practitioners to the first results of their research work on peripheralization...