Civil society driven innovation in a peripheral area

Smaller municipal entities (such as counties), on their own, cannot solve the problem of lagging behind metropolitan areas. Civil society actors and businesses should be encouraged to get more involved in regional development, regional policy and to pool their efforts. Grant schemes to support locally anchored development projects and social innovations should be further honed. In the region covered by the “SooNahe” brand, such projects comprise multi-generational living, developing “the village as a hotel” and revitalising villages from within - rather than new housing and commercial developments blighting their periphery.