Collaboration with Eusko Ikaskuntza. “Geroa Elkar-Ekin” project.

Bilbao Metropoli-30 is actively collaborating with its partner organisation Eusko Ikaskuntza, the Basque Studies Centre, on the processes for discussing the key issues facing the socio-economic future of Vasconia, the Basque Country, being organised through the so-called Mesas Ciudadanas [Citizens’ Platforms].

Specifically, on 17 March Bilbao has hosted a workshop on our community’s socio-economic future for the purpose of reflecting upon three broad topics that address society’s challenges and concerns in this matter and which have people and collectives at their core. The topics are as follows:

• Towards a bespoke model of social welfare
• Territorial strategies and sustainability
• Models of businesses and labour relations

The conclusions reached in this process will be included in Metropolitan Bilbao 2035 – A Strategic Review, and they can basically be summarised in several points that feature in the review’s key strategies:

• The importance of articulating the urban fabric over and above geographical and administrative boundaries
• The realisation that employment is ceasing to be a feature of social integration and that society needs to furnish itself with complementary instruments
• The need to provide a collective response to our community’s care needs
• The relative importance that our industrial sector still has
• The essential need for R&D investment and instruction
• The instruments of public-private partnerships with the basic tools of future strategies
• Models of business and labour relations that embrace a commitment to people, democratic management and engagement, as well as intergenerational solidarity

All this with certain mainstream features such as the current context of the knowledge society we are now living in, demographic challenges, technology and digitisation, and the and the crucial importance of values.