Actes du colloque Marché de la recherche regiosuisse & Colloque ...

Spatial Planning in Vorarlberg, Austria 87lishing the organizational structures and procedures, the conference of the 21mayors and the regional representatives in the federal parliament decided to start theproject phase with three core areas to be executed with different measures: (1) Toenhance the regional identity, (2) to foster the cooperation between local communitiesand (3) to learn from each other.After two and a half years the process shifts its focal point from concrete projects toenhance and inspire the idea of cooperation towards permanent organisational structuresand basics for future planning. One decision is to continue the process whichmeans that the mayors decided to autonomously finance the working structure afterthe pilot phase which has been funded by the federal state level. Another decision isto develop a regional strategy consisting of different elements:Figure 5Approach to compile a regional development strategyAfter two years of analyses and a lot of workshops, public panels and working groupson very different issues, compared by a lot of face-to-face interviews and discussions,the main problems and potentials of the region’s development emerged. At thispoint a cybernetic system model of the regional development has been generated bythe Mayors and – in parallel as a 'control group' – by a group of engaged citizens andentrepreneurs.The system model tries to identify the influencing factors connecting different topicsand goals. It also takes into account the levers (which means the opportunity for theregion to successfully influence the development with own measures), the commandvariables (what the actors want to reach) and the external parameters (developmentswhich cannot be steered by the region but have to be observed).