Abstract
In recent years, cooperation among nations has become a critical issue towards sustainable development of neighbor cities in border areas. In this regard, sustainable common planning approaches and policies are an increasing reality, particularly in European territories. Considering the significant amount of cross-border cooperation (CBC) projects and strategies within Europe, it is crucial to promote research approaches that are able to identify the most positive approaches towards the establishment of alliances in border territories, serving as pivotal methodologies for achieving success. Contextually, the present study considered direct and indirect research methods and tools, literature reviews, data collection, computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), all applied over two European border cities: Cieszyn (Poland) and Cesky Tesin (Czech Republic). These methods enabled the assembly of perspectives of local authorities, public and private institutions, non-governmental organizations, and entrepreneurs from the cities under study. Through the analysis of the collected data, five conditions have been identified for the success of strategic alliances in CBC projects: (i) well defining the alliance goals; (ii) ensuring participation in the alliance of various groups of stakeholders; (iii) involvement of both partners with extensive experience in CBC; (iv) ensuring the coherence of the key objective; and (v) guaranteeing the alliance benefits both sides. These conditions might effectively contribute to achieve more successful outputs in CBC projects, highlighting the relevance of previously developed strategies on the definition of future approaches.
Highlights
Because of the increasing number of cross-border cooperation (CBC) projects carried out along the borders of European territories in the past few decades [1,2,3,4,5] and the considerable amount of people influenced by such initiatives [6], the issue is gaining greater relevance
In the scope of this strategy, a set of indicators have been defined such as employment rate, investment on research and development (R&D), greenhouse gas emissions, share of renewable energy, energy efficiency, early leavers from education, tertiary educational attainment, and poverty and social exclusion, all of which should be seen as the new critical points to focus towards sustainable planning and growth, through CBC projects and strategies
Based on the analysis of project documentation and a case study, a research hypothesis was formulated, which was verified by the results of interviews. This hypothesis referred to the possibility of greater involvement in cross-border alliances of other, non-governmental, institutional entities, e.g., non-governmental organizations or entrepreneurs and the need to create a CBC strategy for both cities based on alliances in particular areas
Summary
Because of the increasing number of cross-border cooperation (CBC) projects carried out along the borders of European territories in the past few decades [1,2,3,4,5] and the considerable amount of people influenced by such initiatives [6], the issue is gaining greater relevance. Considering the large possibility of methods and sustainable planning approaches towards the success of CBC projects, each case needs to be deeply analyzed to define specific planning In this regard, the research problem concerns the strategic planning of CBC at the level of border cities. The paper shows the key activities related to the transformation of the cross-border bilateral alliance into a cross-border network alliance In this way the authors identify the fertile areas to develop sustainable CBC projects. The cross-border research results, the authors identify the key areas of possible alliances of the border cities of Cieszyn and Cesky Tesin They indicate the main stages necessary to create a CBC strategy for cross-border alliance of border cities. There are not many examples of such strategies for border cities, which is why this issue should be helpful for border cities that want to develop CBC as a way for sustainable development of borderlands
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