MP4 focuses on innovative approaches for planning and designing, maintaining and using public places. The project aim is to demonstrate how open space improvements offer positive socio-economic benefits, and how the benefits offered to key communities can be maintained in the long run (‘place-keeping'). In cooperation with key EU policymakers and networks, the project activities illustrate support for greater interaction between all those involved in the open space management process.

The project will create and promote model agreements for partnerships and social enterprises and implement 8 urban regeneration projects. As an end result the project will develop an EU-level Agenda for place-keeping and mainstream best practice across the North Sea Region.

Aim
To demonstrate how the positive socio-economic impacts of open space improvements can be maintained in the long run (‘place-keeping') by promoting innovative partnership approaches involving private enterprises, communities and government.

MP4 will mainstream best practice in place-keeping across the whole of the NSR. Through transnational cooperation, it will demonstrate how socio-economic growth can be stimulated and maintained through long-term physical improvement.

The strategic goal is to bring about a major shift in EU cohesion policy towards the long-term security of its investments.

Background
A key challenge facing communities throughout the North Sea Region (NSR) is to offer a high quality of life, in order to attract skilled employees in the global knowledge economy. This is a concern shared by areas in economic decline and in post-industrial communities, where the threat of market-failure is most acutely felt. Key EU policies supporting the Lisbon/Gothenburg process confirm the importance of providing attractive investment locations.

Making Places Profitable therefore highlights the importance of ‘place-keeping', and its delivery in partnership. It will apply the proven approach of mainstreaming best practice across the whole of NSR, showing how to maintain the positive impact of concrete actions, in perpetuity.

The challenge is to maintain the real and multiple benefits of well designed places. This project combines efforts to solve the problem that too much emphasis is being placed on ‘creation' rather than long-term upkeep. In practice, open space managers increasingly recognise the danger of cities constantly revisiting and ‘improving' previous projects, which is neither environmentally or economically sustainable.

This problem is compounded by the fact that many local authorities and public agencies face a constant struggle to obtain sufficient resources for maintenance. Place-keeping suffers from being unglamorous, whilst being important for social, economic and environmental reasons.

This is a job that no single member state can achieve alone. The challenge is of such a magnitude that it requires the critical mass of action that only transnational cooperation can deliver. The partners in Making Places Profitable are working hard together to find strategies to upgrade public and private open spaces and to provide for their long term maintenance.

• Defining, testing and implementing ‘open space' improvements offers for positive socio-economic benefits embracing private enterprises, communities and government,
• Deliver an EU Agenda for place-keeping,
• Influence cohesion policies to mainstream place-keeping best practice,
• Assess existing place-keeping experiences,
• Produce and implement model agreements,
• 8 urban regeneration projects, covering areas such as construction, green infrastructures, master planning,
• Evaluation of transnational impacts and transferability of the ‘on-ground' of ‘open space' improvements (economic, social and environmental impacts).