Partner Profile

The City of Varberg, Office for Sustainable and Strategic Planning

Areas of Expertise

Creativity, innovation and social and cultural aspects of sustainability are foremost in the plans to develop the City of Varberg, and for it to become the ‘creative hot spot’ of the Swedish west coast by 2025. With this desire, our expertise in city and cultural planning are devoted to finding and implementing methods for bridging the gap between public service and the various partners in society (e.g. commerce, business, industry, development, conservation, culture, etc.).

Innovative thinking, knowledge and courage are key elements identified as essential to achieve our envisioned goal. Further, new methods for local government and authorities for making it easier for people in their everyday life, are encouraged. The municipality should also act as a good inspiration for people to strive for their own dreams and goals.

The strategy for Varberg 2025 builds on two central approaches – sustainability and empowerment – where the needs of today must be supported by not jeopardising the needs for generations to come, and where society needs to have an open climate, be tolerant, welcoming, inclusive and caring. It also emphasises that people need to be engaged in important decisions at the local level, building a sense of empowerment.

Through Campus Varberg and the Alexanderson Institute we have two networks in which various projects along our areas of expertise are channelled – CRED (Creative Destination Halland), and EMC (Coalition for Energy and Environment). These are explained in more detail in our recent publications.

Recent Publications

• Profile in Pan European Networks Government – Issue 7
• Profile in Pan European Networks Government – Issue 8
• Profile in Horizon2020 projects portal – issue 1
• Profile on Horizon2020projects.com – August 2013