Leadership And Change In Sustainable Regional Development

This book shows, first of all, that leadership plays a crucial role in reinventing regions and branching out from an old path to something new in order to create more balanced and sustainable regional development. Second, it maintains that leadership is not a solo but a multi-agent and -level activity and that it needs to be discussed and studied as such. Third, as the book argues, leadership is shaped differently in various institutional and cultural contexts and on different scales. This book explores the ways leadership plays our in regional development context contributing to economically, socially and ecologically balanced sustainable future.

This book shows, first of all, that leadership plays a crucial role in reinventing regions and branching out from an old path to something new in order to create more balanced and sustainable regional development. Second, it maintains that leadership is not a solo but a multi-agent and -level activity and that it needs to be discussed and studied as such. Third, as the book argues, leadership is shaped differently in various institutional and cultural contexts and on different scales. This book explores the ways leadership plays our in regional development context contributing to economically, socially and ecologically balanced sustainable future.

Many rural regions in Europe are undergoing a dynamic transition, driven by forces of urbanisation and agricultural development, new patterns of production and consumption, and new societal demands. However, while the historical rural-urban divide is eroding, rural landscapes are becoming more important to people for leisure, recreation and personal orientation. The complex processes affecting rural areas are proving difficult for the current institutions to manage. The challenge is to find ways to create new capacity to act and get sustainable initiatives off the ground; initiatives that are now often smothered or constrained by the institutional context. This book bridges the gap between theory and practice to explore the conditions required to enable a transition towards sustainable regional development. It analyses experiences in eight regions in the Netherlands where different regional strategies have been pursued: the development of new markets, rural services and linkages between producers and consumers, spatial designs, regional branding and new alliances between agricultural sectors and other sectors. The authors argue that specific forms of networks, called vital coalitions, have the ability to foster better regional co-operation, and identify the crucial requirements for vital co-operation. These include the presence of leaders of change, agenda-setting processes, coalition building and supportive government authorities. The book is of value to all those interested or involved in rural and regional development: professionals, policy makers, scientists and students.

In this timely Handbook, people emerge at the centre of city and regional development debates from the perspective of leadership. It explores individuals and communities, not only as units that underpin aggregate measures or elements within systems, but as deliberative actors with ambitions, desires, strategies and objectives.

Smart specialisation is the new policy approach to the development of regional innovation systems across Europe and it involves fostering innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives which are well tailored to the local context. The different technologies, skills profiles, business activities, institutions and sectors which reflect a region’s economic strengths and potential are to be fostered and encouraged to diversify in ways which also exploit the region’s linkages with broader global value-chains. Yet, the ideas contained in the smart specialisation agenda have until now been primarily conceptual in nature. The Empirical and Institutional Dimensions of Smart Specialisation draws together some of the leading regional economists and scientists in Europe to analyse how smart specialisation is working in practice. This book investigates different dimensions of the agenda as it is developing across parts of Europe from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The quantitative analysis examines the nature of the diversification processes undertaken by regions and the interplay between the chosen local regional development priorities and the wider global value-chain impacts of these choices. Meanwhile, the qualitative analysis examines the institutional opportunities and challenges facing policy makers and the key elements most likely to provide the underpinnings of a workable set of policy settings. The book is aimed both at academic researchers interested in the interface between economic geography and regional innovation systems as well as at policy makers making public policy decisions related to regional development at the local, city, regional or national levels.

This textbook looks at economic development at the local, community or regional scale. It provides students with a comprehensive introduction to contemporary thinking about locally-based economic development, how growth can be planned and how that development can be realized. Globalization, Planning and Local Economic Development: • Provides students with a thorough understanding of current debates around local and regional development and how that body of work can assist them in helping communities grow; • Equips students with a ‘toolkit’ of strategies that enable them to both plan for development and deliver that development through their professional lives; • Offers a roadmap for economic development that helps students make sense of place-based development by providing a ‘meta narrative’ of how regions grow and how those processes can be enhanced. This integrating perspective will be organized around the concept of competitiveness and how that concept can be understood and operationalized in various ways; • Introduces students to a range of techniques essential to success in economic development planning. In addition to a wealth of case studies and pedagogical features in the book, this text is also complemented by online resources. In offering a full toolkit of economic development knowledge, techniques and strategies, this text will thoroughly prepare students for a career in urban planning, transport planning, human geography, applied economic analysis, geographic information systems, or work as an economic development practitioner.

This edited collection explores the challenges and opportunities presented by the transition to a low carbon economy, and outlines the different approaches taken to ensure the sustainability of such a transition. Chapters explore the nature of the transformation from a ‘brown’ to ‘green’ economy, the importance of effective carbon measurement and management methodologies, the use of behaviour economics, and the application of a growth-enabling approach. Offering valuable insights into how various stakeholders respond to the challenges of green growth and focusing in particular on the support of universities, The Low Carbon Economy covers themes of leadership, systems approach, stakeholder management, and collaborative action. This comprehensive study provides readers with constructive ideas for maximising the opportunities of transitioning to a low carbon economy, and will serve as a useful tool for practitioners and academics interested in sustainability.

In recent decades, the importance of creative cluster development has gained increasing recognition from national and regional governments. Governments have been investing in initiatives and urban development plans that aim to create or support localized creative industries. Our understanding of creative clusters is expanded with this insightful volume, which looks at issues of governance, place-making and entrepreneurship. In addition to its theoretical contributions, the book also presents a rich range of international case studies, including, among others, an analysis of coworking spaces in Toronto, business park development in MediaCityUK and mediapark.brussels and public–private partnerships in Warsaw. Creative Cluster Development will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers in urban planning, regional studies, economic geography, innovation studies and the creative and cultural industries.