Smart Work Centres in Non-Metropolitan areas
The MICROPOL project brings together partners from non-metropolitan regions that face the EU-wide challenge of loss of human capital due to increasing unemployment. The common pattern is that qualified people move to the big cities in search for job opportunities in the knowledge economy which leaves formerly thriving communities far from metropolitan centres with problems of depopulation and little possibility for development and growth. The aim of the MICROPOL partnership is to take advantage of new developments within knowledge-based business, work culture and ICT to meet this challenge. More specifically the objective of MICROPOL is to exchange experience and good practices concerning implementation and management of so-called Smart Work Centres (SWCs) in the context of non-metropolitan areas.
SWCs are facility centres placed in rural or suburban areas offering shared flexible office spaces, state of the art ICT facilities like fibre network and videoconferencing and other resources supporting telework and flexible work forms. By stimulating entrepreneurship and allowing more people to work efficiently and physically independent of their customers and business’ headquarters SWCs thus facilitate settlement and growth in rural areas. Among the main benefits are reduced commuting time and following strain on environment, improved work/life balance, better access to an international market of knowledge-based telework and the possibility of living in rural areas while retaining challenging jobs in the knowledge economy traditionally linked to metropolitan areas. The concept of SWCs or “telework centres” has existed in more than 20 years but has until recently remained relatively unsuccessful due to technological immaturity, hesitant SMEs and lacking policies.
This situation is now changing and the MICROPOL partnership will join efforts to improve the effectiveness of policies that support the implementation of SWCs in non-metropolitan areas. Through a series of thematic seminars as well as a survey and study visits to successful SWCs the partners will improve knowledge, skills and strategies for the use of SWCs in rural development and employment policies. The output will be a case study collection, a good practice guide, an implementation plan for self-sustainable SWCs and a policy recommendation document for internal and external dissemination. Based on these tools the partners as well as policy makers all over EU will be in a better positions to create “Micropols” which are dynamic non-metropolitan communities that combine the qualities and low costs of rural life with challenging job opportunities in the knowledge economy.