On June the 29th, the COHSMO project had its first review meeting i Kaunas, Lithuania.
The scientific progress of the COHSMO project was introduced and discussed on the first review meeting in Kaunas, Vytautas Magnus University on June 29th.
To support the on-going debates with territorial cohesion evidence COHSMO team leaders from Greece (George Marvromatis, Panagiotis Artelaris), Poland (Pawel Swianiewicz), Denmark (Anna-Grethe Bloch, Hans Thor Andersen) and Lithuania (Jurga Bucaite-Vilke) have introduced the theoretical and statistical evidence on territorial and spatial inequality, locally-based policies and life-chances.
Two external experts from the University of Amsterdam and Ecole Normale Supérieure – Paris were rising a range of key project challenges such as the relationship between territorial inequality and economic re-distribution structures, ambiguity of territorial cohesion conception and its measurement in further methodological stages of the project, connectivity among the conceptions and access to empirical evidence. The discussion offered insights as to how these challenges manifest themselves in territorial inequality patterns and contributes to the next stages of COHSMO project.
Other tasks such as management, administration and finances, scientific coordination of Work Package flow, risk management, mediation of conflicts, communication and dissemination of knowledge, ethics and data management were also introduced by Anna-Grethe Bloch and Hans Thor Andersen.
The external experts articulated the conclusion that COHSMO’s progress is significant and more attention should be emphasized on public policy impact. Project officer from the European Commission, Rodrigo Martin-Galan, referred to the need to make contributions working with practitioners in local and national policies, cross-border and macro-regional contexts combining the governance, economic performance and urban regeneration initiatives.
