The first workshop of the ESPON project BSR-TeMo took place on 21 June 2012 in Potsdam. VASAB has initiated the project and VASAB CSPD serves as a Steering Committee for the project.

BSR-TeMo promotes territorial development and cohesion in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) by developing an indicator based monitoring system. The monitoring system will measure the progress in achieving economic, social and territorial cohesion in the BSR by using indicators at different scales. This will contribute to increased knowledge and understanding of territorial cohesion processes in the BSR. Geographically the whole of the BSR, EU as well as none EU-member States, is covered.

The BSR can become a practical demonstration area for the territorial dimension of the EU Cohesion Policy and cooperation with the neighbouring countries in spatial and regional development. The EU Strategy for the BSR is foreseen to promote a stronger transnational cooperation between various actors in dealing with important issues, which transcend the administrative borders. Among them are the issues of environment, prosperity, attractiveness and accessibility, as well as safety and security challenges. The Strategy takes notice of the development opportunities related to an inflow of EU Structural Funds to the countries and regions around the Baltic Sea, and calls for harmonization of actions across the borders in order to minimize overlaps and contradictory activities.

The remains of the former political divide of Europe are still strongly reflected in the disparities between the countries in the BSR. The ministers responsible for spatial planning and development in the Baltic Sea Region at the VASAB Ministerial Conference in Vilnius 2009 declared the interest to develop the Region into a model case of concrete co-operation in spatially related cross-border and transnational spatial planning and development tasks towards territorial cohesion. Furthermore they asked for monitoring and periodical reporting of the territorial development of the BSR.

BSR-TeMo provides scientific support to the policy development:

• Illustrates and supports the understanding of territorial structures and trends at different scales for different types of regions across the BSR. Provides evidence on the regional diversity, the situation and progress on main territorial challenges of the BSR: east-west divide, north-south divide, urban-rural divide
• Uses European-level data for comparison and benchmarking purposes as well as regional/local data to focus on specific challenges most important for the BSR;
• Provides an indicator based monitoring system, complemented with some qualitative information, which allows a continuous monitoring and benchmarking of the territorial development of the BSR at European level, in relation to other macro regions and internally at regional and local scales.

Project period: February 2012 – January 2014

Project partners: Nordregio (SE, Lead Partner), University of Gdańsk (PL), Aalto University (FI), RRG Spatial Planning and Geoinformation (D), Polish Academy of Sciences (PL), BGI Consulting Ltd. (LT), Geomedia LLC (EE). More information on the project team can be found here: http://www.espon.eu/main/Menu_Projects/Menu_ScientificPlatform/bsr-temoTPG.html

More information about the project can be found here: http://www.espon.eu/main/Menu_Projects/Menu_ScientificPlatform/bsr-temo.html

This VASAB activity is part of the EUSBSR Horizontal Action “Develop and complete Land-based Spatial Planning”