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The Centre with its activities contributes to economic, social and cultural integration in Europe. By permanent research and proposals of the solutions for optimisation of spatial structures of settlements it helps to meet the objectives of sustainable spatial development, management and planning as well as to balancing regional disparities, improving quality of life and strengthening of social equity in Europe.

There is a long and rich tradition and history in the research of spatial development in Bratislava, represented before all by the Faculty of Architecture STU and the URBION Institute. URBION, already in the times of the former CSSR, belonged to the outstanding research units in the field of urbanism and town and country planning which can be proved by missions of its professionals in the countries of Europe, Africa and Central America. Many of its staff collaborated with the FA STU, thus strengthening its research potential.

The Spectra, Centre of Excellence, is a training and research Centre, focused on generating and transfer of know-how and professional training in the field of spatial planning

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Spatial planning as a set of methods and instruments for spatial planning development regulation reflects new requirements for specific dwelling activities as well as socially acknowledged value relations. Its goal is to optimize the spatial structure systems’ developing processes in the sense of their maintenance on local, regional and even upper-regional levels within the integrity of natural sub-systems as well as dwelling sub-systems.

Personal development strategy is part of the key programming and management documents of each top research and development centre and that is why its elaboration has been included in the project PERSEUS of the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Union as one of the deliverables. Elaboration of personal development strategy itself is not understood as one of the objectives of the project but as an important step in meeting its objectives.

This QAS focuses on the evaluation of the SPECTRA Centre as a semi-autonomous research and training unit granting specific tasks in the spatial research and education housed within the Slovak University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture to which it is accountable. The major purpose of the evaluation is to bring improvements to the quality of research and education.

Efficient and successful research of the SPECTRA Centre on the main current problems in the field of spatial development in the European context will be supported not only via bilateral collaboration but via integration in the existing and establishing of new networks. This allows the integration in the common interrelated databases for information exchange in the collaboration with the partnership institutions providing information and experience with launching similar databases, virtual and real face-to-face communication via mutual participation of the experts in the research projects, participation on networking events – conferences, workshops, elaboration of joint research projects or creating the networks of excellence.

One of the basic conditions for successful integration of the SPECTRA Centre into the common European research space in accordance with the goals of the SPECTRA PERSEUS project is the assurance of the quality and efficiency of its work. That is why the elaboration of the complex quality assurance system and its implementation became a part of this project.