Urban spaces - enhancing the attractiveness and quality of the urban environment

Some 75 per cent of the population of the Central Europe region lives in urban spaces, a figure which is likely to continue growing. Towns and cities are perceived as engines of regional development, offering a broad range of services and economic and cultural opportunities. However, urban concentrations of population bring a number of problems. The spread of urbanisation removes previously clear boundaries between settlement and surrounding landscape, putting great pressure on the natural landscape setting. In many urban spaces, the historic core is surrounded by physically separated new suburbs, which are nevertheless functionally linked to the urban centre, leading to growth in road traffic resulting in the loss of biodiversity and fragmentation of the natural environment. In this context open spaces play a vital role. They have a direct influence on the social life, on the perception of urban spaces both by inhabitants and visitors and on the identification of local people with their urban environment.  Design of high quality urban spaces, involving inputs from community groups, is also an important transnational aspect of the planning process. Such places help to define the public life of a village or town by strengthening the „local spirit“. Much attention has been devoted to such issues in larger towns and cities. Partly perhaps because of a perception that smaller settlements have easier access to landscape outside the urban area, but probably also because of the assumption that the approaches which have been developed for larger towns and cities can simply be scaled down to fit smaller settlements. There is however, no evidence that this is in fact the case.  One has to bear in mind that not more than 22 per cent live in cities of more than 200,000 inhabitants. Yet little consideration has been given to this transnational fact in the context of the planning, design and management of urban open space. The principle focus of this project is therefore on the role and management of such spaces in smaller urban and suburban areas. In this way the project will support the sustainable polycentric urban development which is characteristic for the region. It will take into consideration all aspects of urban open space and its improvement in terms of design quality, accessibility and functionality.  Urban spaces can also influence the economical prosperity of cities. Urban open spaces play a specific role in the city structure design – especially their surface, quality and accessibility. In addition to the socio-community and recreational function, the urban open spaces areas have an unsubstitable ecological and microclimatic function, mainly in connection with the global warming threats. Existence and accessibility of the main city infrastructure forms a prerequisite of the quality of life for the majority of citizens. Public green areas and open spaces (their surface, accessibility and exploitation by citizens) belong to the main indicators of urban sustainability, in parallel with health and social services, public transport, basic education, food markets and waste collection facilities.