SPAA Methodology Toolkit

Purpose

This Place-making Toolkit (1.2Mb)  has been produced within the European Union Sustainable Promotion of Atlantic Area (SPAA) project.

The SPAA project’s core aim is “to strengthen and promote Atlantic identity by testing the impact of an integrated place marketing approach” that will offer “polycentric solutions to the disadvantages of being on the Atlantic fringe”, thereby “contributing towards sustainable regional development”.

Within this context, the Toolkit’s purpose is to help European Atlantic cities wishing to attract people to live, work, visit, study and invest in their cities. In fulfilling this purpose it aims to:

• Serve as a useful reference document and transferable marketing tool for European Atlantic cities and sub-regions, which explains the benefits of place-making and gives guidance on how to undertake place-making. (Part 1, pages 5-10)
• Record SPAA partners’ place-making “demonstration projects” and insights gained (Partners: Valimar in Portugal, Ourense in Spain, Limerick in Ireland, and Chester in England). (Part 2, pages 11-25)
• Identify international examples of good place-making practice and highlight key insights from each. (Part 3, pages 27-35)
• Provide partners with a mechanism for measuring economic impact, which they can apply to their own places.

Context

The SPAA project exists under Interreg IIIB Atlantic Area Priority D: Strengthening and Promoting the Atlantic Identity in a Context of Globalisation.

This project has developed out of a desire between partners to address some of the economic disadvantages they face as sub-regional hubs on the periphery of not only their region, but also their national hub and the EU as a whole. These subregions are vulnerable because of their scale, weak infrastructure, positioning and peripherality. In comparison to vibrant economic centres within the Atlantic area they are often marginalised and thus pose a risk to balanced harmonious development of the Atlantic Area. But the economic vibrancy of these sub-regions is essential to the performance of the Atlantic are as a whole. These small cities are characterised by their cultural distinctiveness and are at a scale that makes them attractive to residents and visitors alike.

This project offers an opportunity for these sub-regions to address these imbalances and develop robust integrated approaches to economic development at a number of levels (local, regional, inter-regional) to secure their future. Dissemination of project results to other cities is undertaken by the Conference of Atlantic Arc Cities (CAAC).

Created in 2000, the Conference of Atlantic Arc Cities ( CAAC ) now includes about 40 members - cities and urban networks - from the 5 States which comprise the European Atlantic seafront (Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal). One of CAAC ’s main objectives is to encourage synergies and partnerships between member cities in order to contribute to the emergence of an area of solidarity and the development of projects of cooperation. CAAC also intends to promote Atlantic cities' interests and cities in general at a European level, in order to favour a balanced and polycentric organisation of the European territory.

Process

The process expected of SPAA partners was to:

• Establish effective ways of developing cross-sectoral partnerships within a sub-region to address place-making. This should ideally encompass a genuinely holistic approach to engaging all relevant sectors (e.g. retail, accommodation, leisure, finance, manufacturing, property development, professional services, small medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and the public sector).
• Develop integrated place marketing strategies for each sub-region to maximise the impact of marketing activity. Partners were expected to identify shared characteristics that would help them and other cities make the most of their Atlantic-facing identity and incorporate this understanding in their marketing strategies. It was hoped that this would lead to an understanding of how their region’s particular distinctiveness could be used to market the totality of services available in each region.
• Undertake “demonstration projects” that would engage visitors, local populations and communities through the development of new initiatives and sustainable promotion of sub-regional areas. These pilot projects were expected to explore:
  • The robustness of a cross-sectoral approach
  • How distinctive features could be used to create city/sub-regional branding
  • The impact of marketing sub-regional cities in spreading economic benefit across a wider area

Themes

The SPAA project’s four key themes are:

• Place-making partnerships
• Place-making strategies
• Distinctive qualities of place as a tool for place-making - “Demonstration Projects”
• Economic impact of place-making

The role of CAAC within the SPAA project is primarily to provide dissemination and publicity for the partnership through its network through:

• CAAC newsletter: The newsletter has a circulation of 200 people, among members (councillors, mayors, technical and administrative services) CAAC partners within and outside the Atlantic area (economic and social councils, chambers of commerce, etc.) and members of EU institutions (MEPs, EU Commission, Committee of the Regions, etc.).
• Promotion of the project among CAAC members: the SPAA project has been presented to members at several occasions: General Assembly, Executive bureau and in Urban Development working groups meetings
• CAAC  website: http://www.atlanticcities.eu (external link)

Presentation of the SPAA project

The SPAA project seeks to promote the economic development of European towns, cities and regions in a sustainable and innovative way, by testing the impact of an integrated marketing approach for those places, based on their local distinctiveness.

The project is a grouping partners in Europe seeking to address some of the economic challenges they face as sub regional hubs on the periphery of not only their own regions, but also their own countries and the EU as a whole. In this project the focus is to improve economic competitiveness by working together to plan and test different ways of improving the "place marketing" of each partner.