Background Past urban planning has not always contributed to the potential of cities and neighbourhoods to serve several functions (i.e work, shopping, leisure, living) and the meet all the needs of the people. Urban planning has to further evolve to be able to contribute to a sustainable and diverse urban environment. New methods of city rejuvenation, however, have been devised to enable cities to become lively meeting places. The expanding economic growth in eastern European countries contributes significantly to global climate change. These countries are experiencing rapid increases in the emission of greenhouse gases mainly due to ongoing urbanisation. Air pollution, urban point pollution and traffic congestion are some of the associated environmental problems. New efforts are necessary to strengthen and restore the role of Europe’s cities as places of social and cultural integration, as sources of economic prosperity and sustainable development, and as bases of democracy. Objectives The objective of the eCommunity project was to promote sustainable and democratic urban planning by using opportunities offered by information technology and the Internet. The aim was to promote the concept of e-democracy by applying innovative web-based software solutions in order to enable the exchange of opinions and information and help raise public awareness. The project meant to produce results that could be reproduced in spatial planning and policymaking processes at a local level. The final goal of the project was to demonstrate a tool for urban planning in the EU. To that end, the eCommunity project aimed to combine European companies and research institutions from different areas of technology, economy and science to create a geographical system for real-time e-democracy. Results The Project started out with innovative ideas about promoting e-democracy and internet-based tools for every-day decision-making. Unfortunately, the development of the tools nearly stopped at mid way through and has only slowly been progressing after the project's official end date. As a result, other projects have not taken up the eCommunity approach. The project has not succeeded in keeping up with European and worldwide developments, and was therefore unable to fully achieve its objectives. The main reason was the general speed of development in the IT sector, but it was also difficult to create partnership of three IT companies from three different countries for software development. Nevertheless, the eCommunity tool is now operational, though it lacks data for smooth everyday application at local level. Since it has not been used in practice to include the local community in Narva and has only been tested at the local authority level, it has yet to be successful demonstrated. Good-quality summaries about the concept of e-Democracy, e-Community in general and in the local context are included in the e-Community tool handbook which was published in English. (A Russian translation is planned). Pollution info and their visual presentation has contributed to the general awareness of environmental issues and its importance to urban planning processes at all levels. This is especially important in an area like Narva with extensive pollution issues. Lessons learnt point to the necessity of international cooperation in data management (especially spatial environmental data) and in producing effective software standards. Potential effects for achieving a more open and democratic decision-making process are undeniable and the need to test new approaches in a mixed community is self-evident. The principles of the eCommunity tool are sound and could be applied by other communities. However, issues of data compatibility, adding data layers to the system, copyright and property rights to environmental and spatial information have not been addressed by the project. The Beneficiary has demonstrated its commitment to continue developing and using the material collected, integrating it with material gained from other projects and companies in Estonia and also at a wider European level. Funds have been set aside in the town budget for the development of the database; responsible persons have been named and public tenders to provide necessary services for completing the database of the e-tool have been launched.