Talented young students and professionals from around the Baltic Sea are invited to join the Young Planners Contest “Livable places and spaces of tomorrow”.

VASAB has initiated a Baltic Sea Region Young Planners Contest to enhance the perspective of young students and professionals across the region in the long-term vision for Baltic Sea area. As part of VASAB senior officials responsible for spatial planning have been collaborating more than 25 years and now they have initiated a Contest that would bring together the young minds of the region and help them create the network of “new generation of VASAB”. Highlight of the Young Planners Contest will be a joint summer camp where cross-sectoral and multi-national teams will come together to create propositions for the future of the Baltic Sea Region. Approaches may differ country from country and this will be a great chance to learn more about planning systems in other countries and build a network to collaborate with in the future.

Do you want to envision life in Baltic Sea Region be in 2050? And do you want to develop these ideas together in an international interdisciplinary team and compete with other similar teams?

Then the “Livable places and spaces of tomorrow” is definitely something for you. Here contestants will be invited to dig deep in the uprising challenges of the Baltic Sea Region and provide creative, “out of the box” solutions. Students and young professionals are invited to share and develop their perspectives on how the environments in which we live and work will look and be perceived like in the future. Examples of questions that the contestants will have to considered could be:

• Will we still live in cities?
• How and where do we build our homes, work places and public space?
• What are the guidelines for shaping and connecting agglomerations?
• How are national policies shaped to support creation of high-quality living environments?

Wondering how your knowledge and profession can contribute to strategic planning in Baltic Sea Region?

Creation of balanced and dynamic places and spaces region and nation wide requires team work and diverse viewpoints. Although spatial planners are responsible for the task, they work together with regional planners, economists, landscape architects, transport planners, architects, anthropologists, artists and other professions to find the best solutions on local, regional, national and macro-regional level. If you are interested in learning, practicing and developing spatial and strategic planning skills in an inspirational setting with other inspiring people like yourself. Then you are great candidate to join the Young planners Contest!

Formal procedure to apply

Official application process will start in November, 2018. If you are at least a second year university student, younger than 35 years and interested in attending the Young Planners Contest, prepare yourself to apply in this November and December. The best applicants will be invited to join the Young Planners Summer Camp in which teams will be formed to compete and prepare propositions for the Baltic Sea Region future. Follow social media of VASAB (Twitter @vasab_org; Facebook: VASAB2030; LinkedIn: vasab) to stay tuned and find out more details.

Young Planners Contest has been made possible by Project “Baltic Sea Region Young Planners Contest” that is funded by Swedish Institute Seed funding for cooperation projects in the Baltic Sea Region. The project partnership consists of the lead partner The Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning and project partners VASAB and Institute of Socio-economic Geography and Spatial Management in Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland). Project has started in September 2018 and last till Autumn 2019.

For more information, please contact coordinator of the Young Planners Contest Ms. Liene Stikane, liene.stikane@vasab.org, + 371 26441064.