Local development initiatives as promoters of social innovation: evidence from two European rural regions

Social innovation entered the academic discourse several decades ago and has since been seen as a way of tackling existing problems in various contexts. Although an extensive body of research has been conducted into the role of social innovation in urban context, there is still a gap when it comes to studying the role of social innovation in the development of rural areas. In this paper, an attempt is made to look at the role of Local Action Groups (LAGs) and Local Development Associations (LDAs) as promoters of social innovation in rural areas in Austria and Portugal, aiming to understand the role of such organisations and the challenges faced by the latter in promoting social innovation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

From global to local creative dynamics: the location patterns of art galleries

The aim of this chapter is to analyze art galleries’ locational patterns. We successively investigate regional, city and district scales. Firstly, we show that art galleries are concentrated  within historical centers of the art market in Western Europe and North America. Nevertheless, we highlight the emergence of gallery polarities in new art market areas in Asia or Latin America. Secondly, within these regions, galleries are concentrated in a few cities such as New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Thirdly, in each of these cities, most galleries are located in a few districts, either in affluent inner-city neighborhoods or in semi-peripheral areas subject to urban transformations. We assume that these location patterns can be explained through various agglomeration forces such as wealth, urban and cultural assets, and connectivity. But the formation of art gallery districts also results from the collective endeavour of art world actors’ to differentiate from the already established art districts, and from the strategies of private or public urban developers to enhance land value

Does urban shrinkage require urban policy? The case of a post-industrial region in Poland

The problem of depopulation in towns is present in most European countries. In Central and Eastern Europe it emerged primarily after the political transformation at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Despite the often-significant demographic decline, the problem did not immediately become part of agenda-setting in towns’ local strategies. This paper discusses the above topics, focusing on the principal reasons for trivialization of depopulation in local policies of towns in the Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. In the discussion an emphasis is placed on the fact that in this region the issue of depopulation and urban shrinkage ‘vied’ with another consequence of transformation: unemployment. Because the Silesian Voivodeship is one of the largest regional labour markets in Europe, the confrontation of the two phenomena in local and regional policy took an original course characterized by phenomena such as policy taboo, trivialization, informal agenda-setting and mismatch strategies. The paper shows that while all the mentioned attributes of urban policy with respect to depopulation may be regarded as negative, considering the gigantic scale of the unemployment and depopulation phenomena and lack of experience in urban governance, they were a ‘natural’ reaction of the local authorities to the accumulated problems. It also indicates that in the studied region issues such as strongly marked morphological polycentricity and its (post)mining and (post)industrial nature were also not without significance

Main Research Directions of Spatial Management at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Analiza działalności naukowej w zakresie gospodarki przestrzennej na Uniwersytecie im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu zostanie przedstawiona w ujęciu czterech grup problemowych: 1) Instytutcjonalno-organizacyjne uwarunkowania badań naukowych. 2) Problematyka badań, najważniejsze projekty badawcze i współpraca międzynarodowa. 3) Aplikacyjny wymiar badań naukowych. 4) Integracja badań naukowych, dydaktyki i praktyki. Ze względu na ograniczoną objętość opracowania analiza obejmuje jedynie najważniejsze – w przekonaniu autora – uwarunkowania i kierunki badań, odzwierciedlające specyfikę ośrodka. Należy również w tym miejscu zwrócić uwagę, że praca nie jest przeglądem dorobku poszczególnych jednostek organizacyjnych lub pracowników Instytutu. którego wykaz znajduje się na stronie internetowej: www.igsegp.amu.edu.pl.The goal of this article is to present the scientific output of the Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in the field of spatial management. It was put into four problem groups: 1. Institutional-organisational determinants of the research. 2. Research problems, major research projects and international co-operation. 3. Application-related aspect of the research. 4. Integration of the research, didactics and practice. Special attention is paid to the research fields best developed in the Poznań centre, i.e. the theoretical and methodological foundations of spatial management, problems in regional and local development, cities and metropolitan areas, and rural development. Also presented are major research projects, including international ones (ACRE, STAREBEI, COMMIN+, CIRES, and RURACTION). Selected examples are used to highlight the synergy effect resulting from the integration of the research, didactics and practice

Anthropogenic landscape, creative spaces and tourism

Ekspansja działalności gospodarczej człowieka powoduje, że coraz większe obszary na kuli ziemskiej reprezentują typ krajobrazu antropogenicznego. Rodzi się pytanie, w jakim stopniu krajobrazy te stanowić mogą walor turystyczny lub środowisko rozwoju turystyki. W niniejszym artykule przedmiotem zainteresowania jest jeden ze składników krajobrazu antropogenicznego – tzw. przestrzenie kreatywne, związane najczęściej z unikatowymi obiektami i niestandardowymi działalnościami kulturalnymi. Przestrzenie kreatywne kształtują się poprzez zespolenie trzech elementów: obiektów, wydarzeń i ludzi twórczych. Wszystkie one wpływają na specyfikę krajobrazu antropogenicznego, tworzą niepowtarzalną atmosferę miejsc (genius loci), co w konsekwencji generuje ruch turystyczny. Artykuł prezentuje - na wybranych przykładach – związek między przeobrażeniami krajobrazów antropogenicznych a introdukcją działalności kreatywnych w odniesieniu do trzech typów krajobrazu: miejskiego, wiejskiego i przemysłowego.Human expansion results in the fact that ever greater areas of the Earth represent anthropogenic types of landscape. A question arises of the extent to which these landscapes can have a tourist value or can facilitate tourism development. This article focuses on one of the components of the anthropogenic landscape, viz. the socalled creative spaces. Creative spaces are usually connected with unique objects and non-standard cultural activities. They are shaped by a union of three elements: object, events and creative people. All of them contribute to the specificity of the anthropogenic landscape and give places their distinctive atmosphere (genius loci), which – as a result – generates tourist traffic. The article presents, using case studies, a connection between the change of anthropogenic landscapes and the introduction of creative activities in relation to three types of landscape: urban, rural and industrial