On 11 February, 2025, VASAB hosted a webinar to exchange insights and share experiences related to national-level spatial policies around the Baltic Sea Region.

The webinar began with presentations from the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions, and Cities, highlighting spatial planning as a policy tool to tackle both current and future challenges, as well as describing complexity of spatial planning. This was followed by presentations on the national-level approaches to spatial planning from countries around the Baltic Sea Region – Poland, Germany (Capital Region Berlin-Brandenburg), Latvia, Finland, Lithuania, and Estonia.

Key highlights from the presentations included:

• Poland: An overview of the strategic and spatial planning system, with a focus on ongoing developments.
• Germany: The status of the regional state planning in Capital Region Berlin-Brandenburg.
• Latvia: Presentation of existing spatial planning system, along with lessons learned for the development of Latvia 2050 strategy.
• Finland: An emphasis on the importance of land use planning as part of development for national and regional planning.
• Lithuania: A look at national planning experiences with highlight on future challenges in Lithuania and Vilnius recovery plan.
• Estonia: The goals, key messages, and challenges involved in developing Estonia’s National Spatial Plan 2050.

Watch webinar recording on Youtube HERE.
Presentations are available HERE.

Many thanks to all speakers, participants and Estonian Chairmanship in VASAB for bringing all together!