Each country is bound to act according to few major strategic documents. Some of them are fundamental and do not change (like the Constitution), and some of them are long-term guidebooks to help decide on the best applicable strategies. The Comprehensive Plan of the Territory is the latter. It is aimed at setting the whole national infrastructural decision-making tree in a particular order. The importance of this project is illustrated by the fact that the Government of the Republic of Lithuania has included it in the Strategic Project Portfolio which contains priority work of all ministries.

The Comprehensive Plan of the Territory of the Republic of Lithuania (CPTRL) is expected to become the main development document of the country, the decisions made in this document will be valid until 2030, and the proposed vision will be valid up until 2050.

Decisions are also crucial to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for which each country has to devise specific measures.
The objective of the CPTRL preparation process is to analyse, evaluate, discuss with stakeholders and propose a common and integrated vision of spatial, environmental, social and economic development of the territory of the country, to formulate priorities and directions of use and protection in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Territorial Planning of the Republic of Lithuania, based on international recommendations and good practices of the integrated planning of the EU countries.

As the document itself is large in scale it requires a variety of experts to analyze and understand different domains. Our knowledge of culture and its principles, and the need for data sensemaking put us in charge of the cultural part.

Culture is more of a subjective notion than an objective fact. Therefore, it has to be abstracted enough based on common practises and patterns, yet not too much to make it difficult to measure.

Understanding the need for such a delicate approach allows to integrate a definition of culture into the overall document and, what is most important, apply measurement methods.

Culture is responsible for boosting creativity and for creating additional value within communities. Together with social justice, economic welfare, and environmental inclusion cultural vitality is the fourth pillar defining sustainable development. The cradles of culture are active stakeholders. Evaluating their impact means identifying the ratio between organizational resources and their output. To balance out the activities towards efficiency the infrastructure has to correlate with the public demands and to explore regional development potential. Currently Lithuania is lacking behind in using its creative potential as only 34% of the subjects in the cultural sector survives the first year after establishment. It shows a poor environment that has to be advanced in order for the country to move towards sustainable development.
Making sense of various indicators revealing how culture manifests itself our team found few that is in accordance with the meaning itself and should be surveyed in more depth further:
pride in the country;
citizenship and volunteering;
a sense of belonging;
trust.

The research revealed that the core for reaching potential in creativity and adding value within the country is the cooperation between regional stakeholders. Organizations have to share functional responsibilities and not duplicate them. Ensuring such behavior based on reciprocity shifts decision-making process to regions. This decentralization acts in accordance with the effective bottom-up management practise and leads closer to the welfare state.

Our team is working on further stages of development of CPTRL.

More about CPTRL2030: https://bit.ly/xwhy_LRBP2030