How is the theme best defined?

For us the three words are strictly connected to our small town visual appearance, perception by others, and general attractiveness:

Planning = Urban planning: "deals with the physical, social and economic development of metropolitan regions, municipalities and neighborhoods."[1] Not only is it solving city problems through physical design, but it also includes economic development planning, community social planning and environmental planning.

Conservation = Architectural conservation: process of prolonging the lasting of architectural buildings and monuments, their preservation for future.

Heritage = Cultural/Natural Heritage: specific, unique and irreplaceable buildings, collections, monuments and natural environment qualities, natural landscape etc. worthy of preservation for future generations, and worth showing to tourists.

All of the above are important elements of the process of revitalization / town renewal.

Why is this theme important to Sustaining Small Expanding Towns?

These three areas, which are referred to in this theme, influence the attractiveness of town either to its inhabitants, tourists, or potential investors (urban planning). Assuming, that we all want our towns to be attractive places, we should investigate these issues. For example if a town wants to expand, attract new inhabitants or investments, it needs a good urban planning. To increase tourist movement a town needs to know how to expose its cultural heritage.

What are the consequences of small towns ignoring the theme?

There can be countless examples of bad consequences for small towns to ignore this theme, but generally, the long term consequences may be:

·   Diminishing attractiveness of town to inhabitants, tourists, investors (which may result with efflux of inhabitants, less tourist movement and loosing in comparison to other towns)

·   Lack of good urban planning will result in mixture of various activities on area where there should be only one purpose (e.g. housing + business +industry on one area)

·   Lack of cultural heritage preservation may be a cause of loosing town identity

What do we know about the theme already?

Some of the existing practices and experiences are documented in the Town Profiles. We should also seek for the already existing solutions or problem documentation elsewhere (e.g. academic studies, other projects supported by EU).

How 'wide' and how 'deep' does SusSET need to go with the theme?

SusSET should try to establish the methods, best practices and analyse case studies of good and bad implementation of urban planning. On this basis, the partner towns participating in this investigative theme will try to produce a model of town revitalisation strategy, incorporating such elements as urban planning & architectural planning and putting strong emphasis to the issues of cultural heritage and architecture conservation. However, the degree to which we will investigate this theme will depend on particular towns' needs and possibilities.