The intended activities of our project went off in four stages:

STAGE 1: SCIENTIFIC AND ORGANISATIONAL PREPARATION

• This project was prepared from February 1999 until the kick-off meeting in October 1999. Contact was established with several participating Danube cities and co-operation agreements were made. (1) Negotiations with representatives of the City of Regensburg were held twice. The project management was unanimously set up at the Institute of Open Space Design and landscape management of the University of Agricultural Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna. The preparations regarding contents and organisation of the kick-off meeting took place at the IFL in Vienna.
  

• Development of a data collection (this aspect was only pursued further with regard to the web site)
  

  In the course of the scientific preliminary work, intensive talks were held with the project partners in eight Danube cities as from 1998. Questions for our common project were to be found as well as partners from universities and the administration possibly with a broad scientific spectrum of knowledge. The project management eventually won over representatives from the humanities as well as the natural, social and technical sci-ences to cooperation.
  

• Preparation of a kick-off meeting in the form of a "future search conference"
  

  Furthermore, on 9 Aug. 1999 a first talk with the project coordinators from the four par-ticipating countries (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary) was held in Linz and the project team was constituted. (2) The form of a future search conference was chosen by the project team for this first event.
  

STAGE 2: ANALYSIS AND DIAGNOSIS (MILESTONE 1 + 2)

• Holding of a seminar to define the key issues of sustainable development
  

  In the monastery of UND near Krems on the Danube, the first meeting of the partner cities took place from 4 to 7 Oct. 1999. This kick-off meeting was held in the form of a future search conference (theme: Visions for the Danube region) as it had been developed in the USA by Marvin R. Weisbord (3) and introduced into the German speaking world as Zukunftskonferenz by Matthias zur Bonsen. This event which should point our way ahead was coorganised by the City of Krems, the IFL and the Planning Department of the City of Linz. Representatives of planning departments, the administration and universities from eight cities and four states participated in that conference.
  

• Interpretation of the data and the facts (analysis and diagnosis) and prepara-tion of more questions
  

  The start-up event of the BRIDGE - Lifeline Danube project was an unusual challenge to win over people to a common vision who are endowed with different interests, modes of working, cultures of enterprise, national characteristics and languages; moreover and efficient network of personal relationships and cooperation could be established. (4)
  
  The central principle of the future search conference is to bring the entire open system into one room. This is necessary to get a complete picture in a complex world such as ours. Consequently, a comprehensive view of the system and its surroundings emerges. Since a future search conference is supported by participants from various occupational groups the chance of realising its ideas and goals in the future is in-creased. Our future search conference in fact intensified cooperation between the cit-ies and has set the course for future cooperation in order to take measures designed to build trust.
  
  Through discourse we could draw visions of a common future, present our ideas and plans and sort out key issues of our cooperation in the BRIDGE project (analysis). It is a point in the conference's (5) favour that our first ideas have already taken shape in the meantime and that cooperation across various borders has evolved due to the power of its visions and the dedication of its participants.
  
  During three days, six groups with diverging interests were discussing their ideas and views and finally arrived at a new level of cooperation. (6) The upcoming challenges for the Danube region were worked out through mind mapping. In a landscape of thoughts, which had been devised together, the participants collected all the relevant themes and arranged them in a clear form. In a second step, these themes were evaluated with the help of stickers (diagnosis). This method allows all the participants to quickly gain an overview of the complexity of the issue. Such an overview is an important tool of information and orientation in the process of developing one's opinion and intentions.
  
  As a first result of the future search conference in Krems (milestone 1) from 4 to 7 Oct. 1999 - on a scientific and organisational level - attractive project ideas were selected by several interest groups which were worked on in the subsequent months by representatives of universities and the administration. (7)
  

• Suggestions of good practices
  

  During the winter term 1999/2000, the coordination team (8) was in regular contact with the universities and the city councils. At the Bratislava seminar (milestone 2) from 12 to 14 April 2000 (in cooperation with the House of Europe and the Austrian embassy), the aim was to discuss how things stood and to record that state (see 2nd report of meeting).
  

• exchange and feedback on the status quo of projects
  
• continuation and specification of our project work in the subprojects
  
• clarification of the BRIDGE network as a metaproject and corroboration of its consistency during the remaining course of the project and for the time after the official end of project.
  
  

STAGE 3: DEVELOPMENT OF MODELS* PREPARATION AND
REALISATION OF A FINAL CONFERENCE

• Development of best practices
  

  At the Seminar in Bratislava the project groups with partners from the universities and representatives from the municipalities were working on various best practice models.
  

• Preparation and realisation of a final conference to summarise the project results (milestone 3)
  

  At this conference, it was our objective to let the individual project groups present the contents and solutions of their work and then, in the course of guided group work, interconnect the various topics of their work with the goals of the conference to become a whole. The point was to present models of good practices for each topic. Moreover, it was attempted to structure and revise the experience of present achievements so as to gain a perspective for future developments. This involves coming to agreements for the future which could become part of the new INTERREG IIIB programme in the course of further co-operation and a continuation of the BRIDGE project.

STAGE 4: POST-PROJECT WORK: ASSESSMENT

• publication of the results in a final report
  

  In addition to the final report in front of you, the various subprojects will be published in a book entitled Vision for the Danube Region which will incorporate lectures that were given by representatives of the project groups as well as scientific articles from the participating cities and the project leaders.

(2) Cf. Tagesordnung 9.8.99 Linz.

(3) Cf. WEISBORD, Marvin R. (1993): Discovering Common Ground. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers

(4) RASCH; Johanna (2000): Brücken schlagen - Netze knüpfen. Zukunftskonferenz als Einstieg in das
Projekt BRIDGE. In: Umwelt & Bildung, Heft 2, Wien: Forum Umweltbildung, p. 36.

(5) The method of the future search conference is described in more detail in the first Tagungsbericht.
BRIDGE - Lifeline Danube. Kick-off Meeting. 4.10.-6.10.1999 in Krems. Schriftenreihe Freiraum.
Institut für Freiraumgestaltung und Landschaftspflege. Universität für Bodenkultur. Bd. 19. Wien:
BOKU-IFL.

(6) See 1. Tagungsbericht, p. 7.

(7) Cf. BRIDGE LIFELINE DANUBE. Kick-off Meeting. 4.-6.10.1999 in Krems. Schriftenreihe Freiraum.
Institut für Freiraumgestaltung und Landschaftspflege. Universität für Bodenkultur. Band 19. Wien:
BOKU-IFL.

(8) Co-ordination talk 4.2.2000

(9) Cf. BRIDGE-AT-0900.DOC