The issue High-rise developments in the Baltic and Nordic capitals is a collection of articles on the theme previously published in the Journal of Nordregio No 2-2009 or No 2-2010. The theme is city centre densification and potentials conflicts. The old towns of Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius are all on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites and are challenges by new downtown developments in their vicinities. Reports from City Architects.

How are rural defined by the Nordic countries? What is the EU-definition? What are politics of Nordic rural development? The new issue of the Journal of Nordregio has as the recent development in rural policies in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. We also predict likely changes in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policies as well as Cohesion after 2013. In the last section of the issue just out we bring you updates on the debate on high-rise development in the Baltic capitals.

Diversified content; this year’s first issue of the Journal of Nordregio has just been published. The content stretches from tendencies in global urban developments to emigration from Iceland. Also contested views on the strategies for the Baltic Sea Region are discussed as well gas slowdown in the High North.

Efforts to reduce CO2-emissions have a long history on the Nordic agenda. The Nordic countries in fact introduced taxes on such emissions back in the early 1990s. It was “out” with oil and “in” with rubbish and the leftovers from the forest-industry and even the agricultural sector. The emissions taxes put in place made such changes even more profitable. A practical example of this is the small Swedish city of Växjö, which has been acclaimed as the “greenest” city in Europe. See pp 6-9 in the lastest issue of the Journal of Nordregio.

Many parts of northern Norden are forging ahead into a new mining era. Future plans included doubling production of iron-ore in Kiruna, reopening the iron-mine at Kirkenes in Norway and also opening a completely new iron-mine close to Pajala in Northern Sweden. Both Sweden and Finland are also preparing new mining ventures in respect of gold, uranium and other minerals. Including Northwest-Russia, there are currently 42 functioning mines in the region. Within a few years there could be as many as 68. The basis for these developments is the enduring richness of the Fennoscandain Shield, which provides a geological structure ripe with assets.

High buildings in Nordic capital city centres – Helsinki is most restrictive Of the five Nordic capitals, Helsinki is most restrictive with regard to allowing high buildings in the city centre. In fact, the first and only high-rise building in the Finnish capital’s city centre was completed in 1931. At the other of the scale is Oslo which is currently in the process of allowing a 350 metre long row of 10 high-rise buildings just behind the new Opera house. Oslo already has two huge buildings in the same area while in Stockholm there is significant pressure to again build ‘high’ in the city centre. The driving force behind the heavy densification policies in Oslo and Stockholm is first and foremost pressure from publicly-owned property development companies.

A new Baltic Sea Region Strategy? According to EU figures 106 million people live in the Baltic Sea Region. They constitute some 23 % of the EU’s population. The BSR’s aggregated GDP is however only 16 % of EU’s total GDP. On 14 December 2007 the EU’s decision-making body (the European Council) launched an initiative to develop the Baltic Sea Region strategy. The primary purpose is to improve the environment and increase economic growth while making the area more attractive and accessible as well as safe and secure. The fact that some 2000 ships transits the Baltic Sea daily underlines the need for continuing coordinated security-measures. The plan is that the outlines for the new BSR-strategy shall be ready by June 2009.

Bundled with this issue of the Journal of Nordregio you should also receive the publication, Climate Change Emergencies and European Municipalities—Guidelines for Adaptation and Response. Click at image to the right. Our hope is that this will be both useful and inspirational for those developing further work on climate adaptation. Most of the presentations herein are results of the Nordregio project Municipal Responses to Climate Change Emergencies (MuniRes). This is an international project with partners and associates from Denmark, Germany, Finland, Italy, Lithuania and Sweden.

For people living in sparsely populated areas like Hammerfest future job security is of the utmost importance. However, perhaps more than anything else here, the lesson of history is that there are no guarantees even if the resources are more or less just outside your door. Much of the production of oil and gas in the North Sea is offshore, and with further technological developments this can also become the case for the High North.

A key element in this issue of Journal of Nordregio is the discussion over the future of the European space, which definitively includes the megapoles of this continent. In the lead article Professor Klaus Kunzmann agues that the periphery is not only the area far or further away from the cities. In fact, the periphery can be the poor suburbs, the banlieues, as they are called in France, just outside the city centres.