How can we ensure sustainable neighbourhood revitalisation in disadvantaged residential areas? How to develop new planning processes, suitable to satisfy the complex needs of these areas - in a continuous cross sector activity, involving all stakeholders from the very beginning? 

This project strives to answer these questions, developing the means to meet community needs in improving living conditions, balancing the investment climate and securing cohesion in the settlement structure by encouraging disadvantaged communities in decaying urban areas to undertake responsibility for development processes, opening new opportunities for stakeholders to take part in planning, addressing a wide spectrum of complex interdependent problems, ranging from poverty to lost cultural identity.

In result of combined experience of the pilot projects in participating areas a set of guidelines - the "cookbook" - will be produced to assemble approaches and instruments, introducing a way of thinking how to cope with the problems. They will be further developed through co-operation in a trans-national network, providing education tools enabling all partners in the planning process to contribute to the search for a solution.
We do not envisage this project to be a laboratory research with a yes-no result, nor do we intend run a conveyor line producing a high-tech gadget. We rather wish to start planting a garden to grow, and we hope that many people will contribute to its flourish by adding if not a new plant then just a little water helping it sprout. 

How can we ensure sustainable neighbourhood revitalisation in disadvantaged residential areas?

How to develop new planning processes, suitable to satisfy the complex needs of these areas - in a continuous cross sector activity, involving all stakeholders from the very beginning?