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Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all (SDG 8)

Topics

  1. Local Economic Development
  2. Digital transitions
  3. Entrepreneurship & SMEs

Main policy issue to be addressed in relation to the selected topics

Cities compete and collaborate. The energy, ideas and pathways that radiate from their interactions are powerful drivers to realise the potential for new sustainable local economic development. Amarante intends to lead a new project which will be a partnership of smaller cities dealing with the challenges, ideas and pathways to find their niches for sustainable economic development. In this sense, iPlace project, refers to the project actions undertaken in our small partner cities that will instigate/stimulate INNOVATION (understood as the integration of new ideas into existing practice or to develop completely new practices based on inspiring ideas). The success of the proposed project will be that each partner city will have produced a robust economic development strategy after a process of intense place and opportunity analysis using best available tools (also those developed in URBACT), while sharing and learning practices with and from partner cities, engaging with local communities as well as international expertise, followed by experimenting with beta actions to test possibilities in their own context. Each partner city will decide if their strategy will target the development of a niche specialisation for their city (i.e. in addition to their city’s existing development strategies) or if it will be a more generic approach that underpins a range of related activities (existing and planned) to strengthen their city’s economic development capabilities.

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As Project Partner

Useful Information

To ensure the best learning environment the lead partner will facilitate a process of partner selection with the following criteria in mind:

All partner will be small sized cities (population below or around 100,000). The main reason for this requirement is that the dynamic in smaller cities differ from larger cities, often because of their geography, smaller pool of resources and deeper reliance on the resourcefulness of their communities. The other reason is simple: City officials and politicians tend to listen and learn from their peers who experience similar challenges and problems compared to their own.

All partner cities will be able to demonstrate at least one good practice specific to their respective cities which will contribute to the learning opportunities in the project.

All partner cities will be willing to offer their cities as case studies for knowledge capitalisation during and after the project.

All partner cities will participate in ‘beta actions’ to test ideas and increase the creative engagement of communities, including their own local entrepreneurs, thereby experimenting with and exploring opportunities for change in their cities.

All partner cities will be committed to actively build a partnership that continues to be a resource and ideas repository after the project.

Last modified:

19 March 2019
Partnership complete
Partnership complete

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Project Partners

Candidate ID

Institution: 
Municipality of Amarante
City: 
Amarante
Country: 
Portugal
Type of region: 
Less developed