22 September 2016
Orkestra researcher Edurne Magro, participated in the international workshop “Connecting RIS3 to the city, a two way bridge”, that took place in Ostrava, a Czech city on 21-22 September. Edurne participated in the session designed to reflect on the importance of multilevel governance in smart specialisation strategies. To that end, she shared experiences from eight European regions.
The program included the participation of Nora Sarasola, general director of Bilbao Ekintza, a municipal entity designed to drive the generation of social and economic wealth for Bilbao. Nora Sarasola presented the In Focus Project, led by Bilbao and framework of the international workshop, as well as the iBilbao2020 strategy for innovation and smart specialisation. Other participants were Katerina Ciampi-Stancova and Martina Pertoldi, from the European Smart Specialisation Platform and Espernaza Caro, director for Economic Development of Sevilla City Council, among other.
The Ostrava international workshop is the first of a total of 5 five thematic workshops that will run under the umbrella of InFocus and that focus on thinking about effective city to region articulation in relation to smart specialisation. By bringing together city practitioners, regional and national representatives in charge of RIS3 and experts, these workshops aim to start shaping a facilitating framework for such an interaction and alignment between both scales the region and the city.
In focus is a European project led by Bilbao and financed by the European Commission's URBACT programme in which seven other European cities participate: Bielsko-Biala (Poland), Bucharest (Romania), Frankfurt (Germany), Grenoble (France), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Plasencia (Spain) and Turin (Italy). The lessons learned from the collaboration of this network of cities will result in a methodology to develop integrated specialisation strategies between cities and regions based upon the alignment of the relevant stakeholders.
This is a pioneering project because in spite of the strategic role of cities in regional development, until now they have not been sufficiently taken into account, neither in conceptualisation, nor in the implementation of RIS3 strategies.
