Regional and Urban Challenges and Opportunities for Data-policy Interactions: The Western Balkans and Eastern European Countries

The book is a comprehensive examination of the current state of urban and regional development in the Balkan and Eastern European region. With a focus on demographics, governance and institutions, and smart growth in cities, this book provides a detailed analysis of the key challenges and opportunities facing cities and regions in the EE and WB region. Through its coverage of these themes, Urban and Regional Challenges and Opportunities in the Balkan and Eastern European Countries offers a more holistic understanding of the complex and interrelated challenges facing the region. In addition, the book emphasizes the importance of data-driven policymaking and the role of data in shaping our understanding of the world and guiding decision-making. This book is a must-read for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners working in the fields of urban and regional development, demography, governance, and smart growth, and provides a valuable resource for those looking to better understand the current state of urban and regional development in the Balkan and Eastern European region.

The book provides insight on demographics, governance and policy, and smart growth, providing a cross-sectoral, multi-scale assessment of urban and regional development in countries such as Serbia, Poland, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria, and others.

This is an open access book.

Jelena J. Stanković, Ph.D. is a full professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Niš, Serbia, holding the chair of Mathematics and Statistics in Economics. Her field of scientific interest is in quantitative economic analysis, especially multi-criteria decision making, and the main focus is the research of local economic development issues, urban labour market analysis, and smart, sustainable, and resilient development of urban areas. She is an active member of the Committee for Economic Sciences of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts (SASA). She is the founder and head of the Laboratory for Land Economics and Urban Analytics at the Faculty of Economics, University of Niš.

Alessandro Luè, Ph.D., is the managing director of Poliedra, a consortium of Politecnico di Milano. He has over 20 years of experience in applied research for decision support and sustainable mobility, gained in several projects, funded by the European Commission or National programs.He has been research associate at the Intelligent Transportation Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and adjunct professor of “Methods and models for transport decisions” at Politecnico di Milano. His research interests includes decision support systems, multi-criteria analysis, sharing mobility, electric mobility, mobility management, intelligent transport system, smart cities and communities.

Claudia van der Laag–Yamu, Ph.D. Ph.D. is full professor of urban analytics at Oslo Metropolitan University. She an expert on transport land use planning including people`s behaviour in cities applying a wide-range of analytical techniques including method and tool development at the forefront of virtual modeling. As a former project consultant, she excels in combining theoretical innovations with practice-oriented solutions and has been involved in numerous international projects. Van der Laag–Yamu was awarded the prestigious Michael Breheny Prize in 2015 for her work on multiscale, multifractal urban planning models. She is an editorial board member for Springer`s The Urban Book Series and has been a reviewer for national research funding agencies in Europe and the Middle East. She holds a PhD in Architecture from TU Wien connecting architecture, urban planning and computer science and a PhD in Geography and Regional Planning in complexity-based modeling from Université de Franche-Comté. She dedicates her work to the development of sustainable cities and regions.