The main objective of the Action is to explore, assess and improve the different policy options open to small, deprived, urban communities, geared to sustainable development.
One of the most important expected results to be attained is to give information to local authorities and to create a civic society which can challenge unsustainable local development proposals. These are the two main target groups. The Action will provide a forum of exchanges among representatives of these two groups through seminars and workshops as well as by interviews between researchers and representatives of the local authorities involved. The role of academics is limited to coordination and research.
More specifically, the Action is geared to helping in the assessment of the sustainability of successful development policies either theoretical or already implemented elsewhere.
From a more specific stance, the Action seeks the following general sub-objectives:
1. To analyse the range of threats for sustainable development faced by small communities and rural areas and the planning tools developed for them.
2. To analyse and assess through appropriate indicators and parameters (planning tools, specific technical improvements, etc.) the best practice case studies already implemented in participating countries.
3. To explore the transferability of these successful stories to different institutional contexts.
4. To put forward improvements to existing case studies in order to add a sustainability dimension to their assessment.
5. To single out:
a. indicators and specific techniques to analyse the threats to sustainability and cultural heritage waste;
b. specific planning protocols and techniques in order to guarantee a correct efficacy of planning tools;
c. particular eco-engineering techniques in order to start or help the revitalisation processes.
6. To train people in small communities to play a constructive role in policy formulation and control relating to sustainable development options.
7. To advise small, deprived communities about success stories elsewhere and about theoretical development options open to them where a proper consideration of sustainability has been taken into account.
8. To provide small deprived communities with the basic tools to integrate people in decision making relating to sustainable development options. Consequently a network of small deprived communities that may share problems and solutions could be established.
9. To encourage and develop new models for partnership, especially in the framework of Local Agenda 21 fora, between local and regional authorities regarding landscape protection and economic (tourism) development.
10. To provide the elements for a Handbook of Best Practice on Sustainable Development Policies for Small Urban Communities where methodological guidance and a summary of successful case studies are included. Guidance should include ideas for pilot actions that are integrated, with a high degree of transferability, but at the same time, respectful of prevailing local planning conditions.
