The priority of Latvian presidency in VASAB is small and medium size cities. Currently national governments are rethinking the role of territorial development and managing the shift from a “one size fits all” approach to governing urban areas towards more tailored, asymmetric solutions that aim fitting institutions to specific context.

The Workshop will host experts and practitioners presenting and sharing experiences from various Baltic Sea Region areas, including examples from shrinking regions and cities. Discussions will focus on how to design and implement resilience strategies for small and medium size cities to adapt and thrive in response to the challenges of the 21^st century.

The key questions to be addressed:

• What we can and should do to keep standard of living and quality of life in areas where depopulation and de-urbanisation are becoming serious problems?
• What types of successful urban – rural co-operation exist?
• How to become resilient to major changes and challenges. What are the opportunities?
• How to enable effective coordination within the regional and local administrations?
• How to take into account future trends and uncertainties relating to political, technological, environmental, demographic and social issues?

The event will be the first of two interconnected sequential workshops organized by the Latvian presidency – Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development.

The outcomes of the workshops will be summarized in a form of policy messages and agreed at the final conference in May 2019, in Riga.