This year’s general assembly of the LDnet association took place on Tuesday 8 October 2019 in Brussels, with teleconferencing facilities allowing members and friends not present in Brussels to participate remotely. In addition to the normal business of the general assembly, there was a wide-ranging debate covering several topics led by colleagues, including: Building bridges […]
Resilient Villages: “Vibrant rural communities are not afraid to take risks”
In his current research, LDnet board member, Alistair Adam-Hernández examines why some rural communities are able to adapt to change better than others. During the European Rural Sociology Conference 2019, “Rural Futures in a Complex World” in Trondheim (NO), an international group of social scientists discussed how this concept could enable rural communities to harness […]
Debating CLLD as experimental governance and task-specific space for policy action
The Community-Led Local Development (CLLD) instrument is one of the most interesting “territorial delivery mechanisms” of the current EU 2014-2020 programming period. Built on the former LEADER project, it attempts to overcome the sectorial (rural or maritime) approach of the previous instrument through a more integrated local-development policy agenda for ad-hoc sub-regional and urban areas. […]
Strengthening the impact of research on EU local development policies: towards a community of experts
On 6 June 2019, LDnet organised a special session at the annual conference of the RSA in Santiago de Compostela on the topic of “Strengthening the impact of research on EU local development policies”. The LDnet workshop presented the opportunities and challenges of involving the research community in designing and analysing EU local development policies, […]
Urban CLLD – The case of FatorC in Cascais, Portugal
CLLD Community Led Local Development (CLLD) is a territorial bottom-up approach, through which Local Development Strategies (LDS) are implemented. Local communities are encouraged to participate in the decisions about the implementation of community funds, by identifying the needs and challenges faced with in its area, proposing solutions and defining projects. The community is represented by […]
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 […]
A powerful contribution on the future of local development in the EU
A major contribution by Yves Champetier has been published by AEIDL entitled Europe: a major player in the development of territories. In this Yves offers a personal account and an overview of the progress that has been made over the last 40 years and the challenges facing us today. In his article he concludes: A […]
CLLD/Leader: Past, present and future
In this wide-ranging paper Robert Lukesch goes back to the precursors of Leader and looks at each stage of its evolution, highlighting the complex principles behind this approach (“more than the seven features and usual clichés”) and discussing success factors. He takes us to the current CLLD/Leader period and looks at what lies ahead. He […]
Local strategies for retaining and attracting talent
The workshop on “Local development strategies: retaining and attracting talents in the regions” took place on Thursday 11 October 2018 in the framework of the European Week of Regions and Cities. Organised by LDnet as lead-partner, in cooperation with ELARD, CIM Alto Minho and AEIDL, it offered a forum for the presentation of concrete experiences […]
CLLD post-2020: Main proposals and changes
The proposals of the European Commission regarding Community-led Local Development (CLLD) and Leader were published before the Summer. In the following note Urszula Budzich-Tabor distils the main proposals and offers a comparison with the 2014-2020 period. However, not everything is 100% settled and, as Jean-Pierre Vercruysse has commented, there are some proposals in the draft […]
Preserving the specific features of CLLD post-2020
In May 2018, the European Commission published its proposals for CLLD/LEADER in the post-2020 period. The overall impression is that these proposals, broadly speaking, amount to a continuation of the approach and rules applying to CLLD/LEADER in the current, 2014-2020 period. But as already noted by Robert Lukesch in his ‘LEADER RELOADED‘ paper, there will […]
LDnet at RSA Conference in Lugano: the debate on the interaction between research, policy and practice in local development
The RSA Annual Conference 2018 took place in Lugano, Switzerland from 3rd to 6th June on the theme of “A World of Flows: Labour Mobility, Capital and Knowledge in an Age of Global Reversal and Regional Revival”. As part of the Conference, “Policy Tuesday” on 5th June focused on issues and inputs concerned with place-based […]