estonia-2030_en

Particularly in terms of international competition, cooperation is important between those cities andtowns and regions specialising in one sector (for instance, the cooperation of Viljandi, Kuressaare andHaapsalu in tourism) or supporting one another (for example, winter sports in Otepää and Haanja,cooperation of industrial cities and towns in Ida-Viru County and the like). In the border regions ofEurope, with low-density settlement and cities’ and towns’ hinterlands cut off by national borders,development has been promoted through cross-border cooperation. In Estonia, this policy may beimplemented first and foremost in the case of Valga and Valka (Latvia). Preferably, in the future thesetwin towns will function in a more coordinated and linked manner, also by coordinating their spatialplanning. Moreover, it would be good to find common ground to cooperate similarly with the otherregions in northern Latvia.3.2.3. Quality of the living environmentThe local living environment depends on the jobs and services provided both locally and in the immediatevicinity, directly linked to the role and specialisation of a given urban community within thesettlement system. It also depends on the local spatial organisation, to which the bulk of attentionwill be devoted here.The planning of cities and towns and other larger settlements needs to preserve their compactness,make their internal structure denser and restore to active use any previously unexploited land. Estonia’scities and towns are mostly small. In the urban centres at least, the focus should be on the developmentof a public urban space that is high-quality, aesthetically and architecturally enjoyable andprovided with a close network of service facilities.Bodies of water (including the sea) are an essential element in the internal structure of cities andtowns. Waterfront areas need to be valued and opened up. In order to increase opportunities for theutilisation of bodies of water, public points of access to the bodies of water may be created, and thebanks of the bodies of water may be naturally linked up to the rest of areas that are in open and publicuse.Networks of green areas within cities and towns need to be linked to the green areas, woods andother natural areas in the vicinity as well as to leisure and sports areas outside the cities and towns.This is needed above all in the vicinity of the large cities (Tallinn and Tartu). Whilst the functioning ofthe green network is not disrupted elsewhere, in the cities and towns more attention needs to befocused on valuing and preserving the integrity of the ecosystem and on preserving and improvingthe cohesiveness of the green network.21