INTRODUCTION

BRIEF OUTLINE

The BRIDGE - Lifeline Danube project has been running since the summer of 1999 as part of the Community Initiative INTERREG IIC, the Operational Programme for the Central, Adriatic, Danubian and South-Eastern Europe Space (CADSES). The project understands itself as the initial project which is to set off the sustainable development of the Danube region. INTERREG IIC is supposed to support transnational co-operation between those cities from EU member states and neighbouring MOEL states which receive funding from the PHARE-CBC programme.

THE APPROACH OF THE PROJECT

The approach of the project is based on the goals of the European Spatial Development Concept which pushed forward the need for sustainable development. It's primary aim is to save potential resources for future generations and guarantee a balanced economic and social development. For the Danube region this leads to a perspective for tasks to come which is made up of three integrated aspects:

  • a polycentrical and rather balanced system of urban regions which tries to avoid an excessive focus on some major centres and the marginalisation of suburbs
  • a network of an environment friendly and efficient infrastructure which intensifies the coherence of communal space
  • a European Open Space System serving the protection of the natural foundation of life with functionally differentiated nature reserves (1)

In the present final report of the BRIDGE - Lifeline Danube project, this three-part perspective of the European Space Development Concept has also been the basis for our work in the newly established city network. When we were looking for a guideline paying attention to the economic, social and cultural conditions of the Danube region for its future development, these three parameters were always central to out discourse about the sustainable development of regions.

The scientists, planners, students and practitioners co-operating in the new city partnership already agreed upon the following two points when the co-operation was finalised:

  • a deeper discussion of the above mentioned questions is not to be held in the face of the existing legal, organisational and financial framework of our tasks (especially in EU and MOEL states)
  • only such questions are to be dealt with which presently open up and prepare common ground for a sustainable development in the long term.

It was our higher aim to work out approaches of a model of spatial planning which is geared towards a balance of living conditions without limiting anybody´s authority in Raumordnung at a national, regional or local level. These goals were already accepted by all project participants when the project application was formulated. (2)


(1) Bundesministerium für Raumordnung, Bauwesen und Städtebau (ed.) (1995): Grundlage einer Europäischen Raumentwicklungspolitik. Bonn: Selbstverlag der Bundesforschungsanstalt für Landeskunde und Raumordnung.

(2) APPLICATION PART I and PART II