The STATUS project is tackling the problem of incoherent urban and regional development in South Eastern European and neighbouring countries by jointly developing an approach that can help cities and regions in making integrated and sustainable urban agendas and place based strategies by participatory planning tools. It aims to enrich the pool of development, regeneration and management tools in urban settlements systems of the SEE program area. Cities in the XXI century face the challenge of being competitive and maintaining a reasonable state of welfare at the same time. Many cities in SEE area have a significant urban development deficit in terms of integrated strategies, capacity and urban implementation tools. STATUS aims at reducing the widening development gap of SEE cities in terms of quality of life and capability, compared to West European ones. STATUS prepares the partner cities to design good strategies and policies in order to pursue more balanced territorial development and ensuring global competitiveness. The scale of urban networks and clusters of cities in the STATUS territorial partnership ranges from the urban/peri-urban (metropolitan areas, systems of urban settlements) to the sub-regional and regional level. The STATUS project will collaborate in a true transnational setting to assist SEE cities authorities to develop Strategic Territorial/Urban Agendas (ST/UA), as a tool for sustainable and integrated development in line with 21st century standards. It aims, by applying a participatory planning process, to implement, together with local actors, Urban Centers (UCs) as places in where to shape cities strategic visions. This will result in shared local development scenarios. Results, practices and emerging city networks (local and inter-communal) will be archived and promoted in the SEE Web Platform (SEE-WP) which will constitute the memory of implemented plans and policies, as well as the virtual platform through which to develop innovative and smart solutions for the SEE cities of the future. The developed outputs of the project (strategic urban agendas and urban centers) will assist the participating cities in using cohesion funds in a more efficient manner and provide input for future (cohesion funded) projects. Achievements: The PlatformThis platform, a result of the SEE European STATUS Project, takes on the challenge of achieving long-term sustainability of local development processes in regions unaccustomed with citizen involvement in all stages of planning. The STATUS Project – Strategic territorial Agendas for Small Medium Sized Towns Urban Systems – represents a successful pilot action which has supported 10 cities and regions in jointly developing an approach to making integrated and sustainable urban agendas and place based strategies by means of participatory planning tools a reality.The South East European area did not, to date, present a coordinated platform for assisting the development of urban strategies for small and medium sized towns. The SEE City Platform aims at filling this gap, providing cities and regions alike with the successful methodologies already tested, with the results, practices and emerging city networks (both local and inter-communal) which have surfaced from the STATUS experience, within a virtual platform through which to further develop innovative and smart solutions for the SEE cities of the future. Our aim is to support the wider dissemination of the tools which have assisted partner cities in co-creating strategies and project portfolios for the 2014-2020 Programming Period, but also at setting up the instruments for the strategies implementation, continuation and spin-off (Urban Task Forces, Urban Centers).One of the most important lessons we have learned is that collaboration, both at the local level between stakeholders as well as at European level, between cities and regions confronted with the same development challenges, is key to achieving a more sustainable, smart and inclusive European society. Therefore, within this platform, not only do we share our experiences in integrated participatory planning, but we also welcome experiences from across the South East Europe which can represent best practices and success stories.