Editor: Dorota Wlodarczyk
Technical University of Gdansk,
Ul. Narutowicza 11/12
80-952 Gdansk, Poland
Tel/fax +48 58 621 45 37
dwlod@pg.gda.pl

For an archive of previous newsletters click here.

SUPERBS homepage is updated and thanks to the student from our course - Mike Karzynski, it has a new graphic design.

Two seminars are already completed, thanks to the involvement of their organisers’ they were successful and it was a pleasure to participate. Sometimes weather caused small problems, but everywhere we were kindly welcomed by the model sites’ hosts ..

THE FIRST SEMINAR "Urban Development and the Role of the Municipality" took place between the 13th - 18th of April, 2000. SWEDEN and FINLAND were hosting some 40 participants from municipalities and universities from seven countries. The seminar was organized as days of Uppsala, Hagaby (just outside Uppsala), Hällefors (in central Sweden), and Abo/Turku. These places - selected cases of vibrant cities and neighbourhoods - illustrated practical applications of different sustainability principles. Urban planning experts, scientists and municipality decision-makers discussed, while travelling on bus and boat, the promoted solutions in each of these places, and found inspiration for working towards the idea of the sustainable city.

THE SECOND POLISH - GERMAN - LITHUANIAN SEMINAR took place on September 7-12, 2000 in Sopot, Suchy Dwor, Berlin, Hanover and Hamburg. During the Polish part we were invited to Suchy Dwor and Sopot’s residential areas, characterised by urban spaces strengthening social bonds. We had the chance to experienced history as well as the newest achievements of civilisation. The Norman Foster’s dome and the Expo 2000 exhibition, to mention a few, impressed everybody. Thank you, Joy, Per-Arne and Walter. At Hannover Kronsberg and Karlshöhe in Hamburg we had the possibility to get familiar with already implemented sustainable building technical solutions. The Lithuanian presentations of the Kaunas case were arranged in Sopot, but all participants were invited to visit Kaunas at the conference "City Environment 2000" on September 28-30, 2000.

Only about 10 of Superbs People us could come to Lithuania our friend, architect and researcher at the University of Örebro - Gunnar Persson is reporting about the event for you:

“In 28-30 of September 2000 the International Conference "City Environment 2000" was arranged in Kaunas, Lithuania. About 50 participants were gathered to discuss and listen to lectures about environmental and sustainability issues especially in the context of Lithuania but there were also contributions from USA, Russia, Latvia and Estonia. Researchers and "practitioners" from different projects like Superbs, Beids had the possibility to discuss "new Environmental Governance", "Environment Quality Indicators", "Traffic Noise". One part of

the conference was devoted to planning coming events. In the Superbs’ project especially the forthcoming university courses were prepared. My impression from the conference is that there are a lot of advanced research and development studies going on not least in Kaunas and the interesting and maybe very open question is how it will be implemented in the city policy. A special attention was given to the air monitoring stations around Kaunas. (For me who is living in a "bicycle city" I looked for bicycles on our roundtrip but found only one outside the university. After coming home I read that Kaunas will increase their bicycle road net from 30 km to 180 km.) The organizers had created an excellent program which gave us among other things a broad and deep picture of the situation in Kaunas.

Within the Superbs project this was the third seminar in our "journey" around the Baltic Sea and we were this time a bit happy that the conference took place in only one place so we could "rest" a bit before the last one which will take place in Russia, Latvia and Estonia next spring.

We had also the possibility to celebrate Prof. Lars Rydén´s 60 Birthday and it was done in a very nice atmosphere in an old restaurant in Kaunas.”

The next ESTONIAN – RUSSIAN - LATVIAN seminar is scheduled for April 6-12, 2001 and is now being prepared. Please register as soon as you can to help the hosts to organize it properly. To register click here.

THE SECOND BALTIC MEETING POINT CONFERENCE on Sustainable Community Development is to be held here in Uppsala on May 6-9, 2001. Superbs Projects prepares workshops at the conference. All are invited to register www.balticmeetingpoint.com

On January 10th our friend Roland Gustavsson celebrated his 50 Birthday. He spent that special day in Lanzarote in Spain. Happy Birthday, dear Roland, SUPERB Birthday to you – from all of us!!!

Dorota Wlodarczyk