Sustainable development and the role of inter-municipal cooperation. A case study on Lüneburg Region.

Abstract

The M1 project “Sustainable development and the role of inter-municipal cooperation. A case study on Lüneburg Region” focused on the region of Lüneburg, situated in the German state of Lower Saxony. The region consists of the city of Lüneburg and its surrounding predominantly rural areas. In 2014 the city of Lüneburg was nominated for the German sustainability award as one of the three most sustainable middle-sized cities in Germany because of its achievements in its several local sustainability initiatives. Most of the local activities currently exist within the administrative boundaries of the city of Lüneburg. The cooperation between the city and the rest of the smaller municipalities and the rural parts of the region is apparently non-suffi cient. Therefore, the focus of this project was the strengthening of the cooperation between the city of Lüneburg and its surrounding municipalities and rural parts in order to achieve the sustainable development of the whole region. Recognising the diff erent existing strengths in the focus area through the thoroughly analysis of the region, the project provides a strategy to valorise and address these emerging trends towards a sustainable model of development for the entire region. Starting from the existing and well-working bilateral cooperation models of sustainable development in the region, the focus of the strategy is in further consolidating this model and providing a new model of network cooperation for the future, involving several local non-governmental actors from diff erent fields and administrative levels in the Lüneburg Region. All in all, the developed strategy for achieving a sustainable development for the whole region is based on a bottom-up approach which is strengthened by the top-down framework of inter-municipal cooperation in the end.