The Small Town Networks Project is a European funded Project under the Northern Periphery Programme. It is managed by the Highland Council with partners in Sweden and Finland. The Project is designed to foster the regeneration of small towns, particularly in relation to community involvement. A key issue is the need to ensure that our town centres remain vibrant and economically active. Many small towns have already suffered as services have centralised, whether in retailing or through public agencies seeking operational specialisation and economies of scale. Where services are lost, populations stagnate or fall, leading to a continuing spiral of decline. The Project members are seeking to break out of this spiral.
One of the main aspects of the Project is the collaboration and co-operation between the various Highland towns and there partners in the Northern Periphery. Only by building links between communities can the necessary lessons for improvement be transferred. Experiences, good and bad, can be shared, developed and built upon.
The key aims of the Project are to:
- support and encourage local people to develop a vision for their own community;
- foster a network of small towns that can exchange ideas and solutions; and
- identify ways of regenerating small towns that can be utilised elsewhere in the Highlands.
The Small Town Networks Project is designed to help deliver “bottom up” development by encouraging and supporting active citizen involvement. This can be achieved in a wide variety of ways. Each community must find its own way forward, but the Project will allow for significant cross fertilisation of ideas / experiences and help develop new programmes and solutions to our common problems.