This new study was commissioned by the European Parliament’s REGI Committee and was carried out between April and July 2019. On 4 December 2019, it was presented by its authors, Haris Martinos and Serafin Pazos-Vidal, and was discussed by the REGI Committee. The study highlights the crucial role of the European Parliament in supporting a […]
LD Books & Studies
The agripolitan city, the cosmopolitan village
“La ciudad agropolitana. La aldea cosmopolita” (The agripolitan city, the cosmopolitan village) is a new book by Jaime Izquierdo Vallina who has written extensively on urban-rural issues, nature conservation, and new perspectives for approaching rural areas. In his prologue to the book, Yves Champetier has highlighted that over the years, Jaime Izquierdo Vallina has deepened […]
Social Innovation Community Yearbook
The Social Innovation Community (SIC) project was funded under the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme over a three year period, from 2016 to 2019. During these three years, SIC ran a series of on and offline activities – including practical place-based experimentation, learning, policy and research. The project started from the premise that more open […]
Re-thinking local development policies in times of polarisation
This book, Regional and Local Development in Times of Polarisation, edited by Thilo Lang and Franziska Görmar, contains contributions from 32 academics on “re-thinking spatial policies in Europe”. It is part of the New Geographies of Europe series published by Palgrave. The book takes its starting point by considering a threefold polarisation within the EU: […]
Knowledge, Policymaking and Learning for European Cities and Regions: From Research to Practice
The interaction between research, policy and practice in local development is of major interest and LDnet organised a special session on this theme at the annual conference of the RSA in June 2018 in Lugano. One of the panellists in this debate Dr Nicola Francesco Dotti is the editor of a new book making a […]
Leadership in place-based development
“The role of leadership in place-based development and building institutional arrangements” is a paper by L. G. Horlings, D. Roep and W. Wellbrock published in Local Economy, the journal of the Local Economic Policy Unit. In various case studies across Europe the vital role of rural place leadership in enabling a place-based approach to local […]
Social innovation and territorial development
In his contribution to the International Seminar Social Innovation in Public Policies in Brasilia, on 7 and 8 March 2018, Robert Lukesch discusses the essence of social innovation at the micro level and highlights the importance of governance (“the very notion of social innovation requires an institutional environment which is at least not punishing deviating […]
Towards an inclusive and sustainable CLLD: lessons from neighbourhood management in Berlin
CLLD is more often associated with a rural or fisheries context. In this paper by Pietro Verga deals with ‘urban CLLD’, which builds on experiences, particularly, from the URBAN Initiatives and the LEADER programme. His research is based in Berlin and is within the policy context of the German Soziale Stadt programme (Socially Integrative City, […]
The Emergence of Social Innovation: A Translocal Perspective
This paper is an output of TRANSIT, an international research project that develops a theory of Transformative Social Innovation that is useful to both research and practice. TRANSIT is co-funded by the European Commission and runs for four years, from 2014 until 2017. The paper investigates how spaces and places play a role in the […]
Forging a Good Local Society
A new report Forging a Good Local Society: Tackling Poverty through a Local Economic Reset, makes the case for tackling poverty locally. Written by Neil McInroy and published by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), the report notes that local identities and innovation are increasingly viewed as an antidote to remote and detached national […]
Brexit: a shift towards a CLLD approach?
In a recent post in capreform.eu on the topic of UK policy towards agricultural land after Brexit, Professor Ian Hodge of the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge argues in favour of ecosystem services policy with many features akin of a CLLD approach, as in the following quotation: “There would be greater and longer […]
ESF Actions to promote Local Employment Initiatives: country review Spain
In Spain, the devolution of powers for employment and social inclusion was completed during the past ESF programming period (it was completed by 2002). LEIs developed under the umbrella and in close relationship with place-based delivery mechanisms supported by other funds such as PRODER in rural areas, or regeneration policies in deprived urban areas. In […]











