Social Space for Smart Regions

Ota Cerba, Czech Center for Science and Society (CCSS)

Map of regional attractiveness allows presenting the potential of regions from different perspectives (living conditions, tourism, sustainability, economy, regional development, agriculture and landscape, business), to compare the specifics, benefits, shortcomings and opportunities of individual regions, and to show details and overview. Maps are created for NUTS 3 from 35 input data sets. The input data is divided into 6 groups (anthropic, natural, social, economic, cultural and institutional). These groups illustrate various perspectives of regional attractiveness. The number of inputs of various groups is fixed by importance. The values of importance were stated by the users’ survey in the project meeting and social media.

The maps are the main output from the rural attractiveness mapping realised in the Polirural project. They are designed for objectives of pilot activities in the Polirural project. These activities include information about the potential of rural territories, searching common characteristics of regions, spatial patterns and similarities, which could be used in further cooperation and specific and targeted development of rural regions. For the same purposes, the maps can be used for communication and providing information about the potential of rural territories with policy- and decision-makers, media, regional development and planning studies as well as public.

The maps show values of Rural Attractiveness Index (RAI) in NUTS 3 regions in Europe. This index is calculated as average from selected 35 input data sets. The other type of assessment of rural attractiveness is acquired through hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering methods.