Local development is multi-faceted with practitioners split between the urban and rural domains, while researchers come from different academic disciplines. A community of experts dealing with local development could help harvest lessons learnt and overcome silo mentality. LDnet and the European Commission are very keen on building bridges between research and practice and … [Read more...]
Towards a Promising Season for Local Development – Notes from Porto’s URBACT CityLab and CITIES Forum
The upcoming new season of Cohesion Policy looks to be a promising one for local development; at least for what emerged during Porto’s URBACT CityLab and CITIES Forum (29-31 January 2020). The CityLab and the Forum touched upon key topics for the future of local development, including: the objectives and priorities of the Commission for the new programming period; the … [Read more...]
A lively debate on ‘Capitalising on diversity in local development’ at EWRC2019
On 9 October 2019, as part of EWRC2019, LDnet, organised a workshop in partnership with ELARD on 'Capitalising on diversity in local development' under the theme 'A Europe Closer to Citizen'. The workshop aimed at demonstrating that bottom-up approaches to local development, like CLLD, have succeeded in engaging ‘Unusual Suspects’; people left out of mainstream development … [Read more...]
Overcoming EU Discontent in ‘Places That Don’t Matter’ through Community-Led Local Development
The past year has certainly been a particularly difficult one for the strength and cohesion of the European Union. The outcomes of local and national elections in many countries unveiled not only the emergence of new populist and nationalist movements and governments all across the Union, but also a growing disbelief in the European project and institutions. In an … [Read more...]