Erblin Berisha is a researcher at POLITO, the Polytechnic institute of Torino – the Italian partner in the GOVQoL project. As a researcher, Erblin studies the territorial governance of spatial planning through the analysis of related policies, from the local to the EU level (and he takes his work very seriously, he has visited almost every region in Italy and will tick the last one off the list this summer!). He is particularly interested in the Western Balkans and in small to medium sized rural communities.
Erblin, what would your personal definition of « Quality of life » ?
For me, it is a combination of what I desire as an individual and of what our society can provide i.e. access to an average level of services. To reformulate, quality of life is a mix of subjective and objective criteria. Among the objective criteria, I can think of health services, transport options, educational facilities, a clean environment, childcare services, etc.
In your own words, what is your rôle in the GOVQoL project ?
POLITO is in charge of coordinating the organisation of local workshops in each partner country. Five Alpine countries are involved in the project (Austria, France, Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland). A series of 3 workshops will be organised in 2 pilot territories in each country. To put it simply, our aim is to offer a platform of discussion to local municipalities, about their quality of life, and guide them through their local knowledge.
What does GOVQoL have to offer to local municipalities as pilot territories of our project ?
Truthfully, local knowledge matters more than what we can give them : local municipalities have the power to decide what they want to be. But in almost 100% of cases, they are not aware, they don’t have the comparative perspective because they lack of time/information to join discussion spaces where they can meet and discuss with their peers. Some municipalities can feel alone in facing challenges (ageing population, declining demography, …). We aim at showing them that they can deal with some challenges at the local with their own means. Each different municipality has an asset to have to improve their quality of life.
Furthermore, these local workshops will feed European policy-making as GOVQoL is a EU-funded project (through the Alpine Space program). I believe you cannot understand the big machine if you don’t look at the details i.e. local municipalities. I hope we can bring some recognition of local work and some visibility of their work to improve local quality of life.
Thanks Erblin!
To know more about the work Erblin does at POLITO, please visit www.polito.it/personale?p=erblin.berisha
