Sean Markey - Böcker

Access to quality services and community infrastructure are vital parts of supporting sustainable and resilient rural and small town places. Renewing outdated infrastructure and supporting the delivery of services in rural communities present significant challenges from the constrained fiscal and policy realities of the 21st century.Drawing upon contributors from five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, this book describes innovative service delivery and community infrastructure models that are appropriate to the contemporary rural and resource-dependent regions of developed economies. The examples show that an entrepreneurial approach to service delivery and infrastructure provision by local organizations and governments is needed. Critical economic and community development supports are crucial to assist creative and innovative sets of solutions that work for small communities. Chapters in this book argue that community development foundations for resilient rural and small town communities and regions must be co-constructed and co-delivered in partnership by both local and senior government actors, in terms of both policy and committed resources. This volume will be extremely valuable for students, scholars, and community development practitioners exploring policy-making, government initiatives, and community service provision in rural and small town places.

Canadian regional development today involves multiple actors operating within nested scales from local to national and even international levels. Recent approaches to making sense of this complexity have drawn on concepts such as multi-level governance, relational assets, integration, innovation, and learning regions. These new regionalist concepts have become increasingly global in their formation and application, yet there has been little critical analysis of Canadian regional development policies and programs or the theories and concepts upon which many contemporary regional development strategies are implicitly based.This volume offers the results of five years of cutting-edge empirical and theoretical analysis of changes in Canadian regional development and the potential of new approaches for improving the well-being of Canadian communities and regions, with an emphasis on rural regions. It situates the Canadian approach within comparative experiences and debates, offering the opportunity for broader lessons to be learnt.This book will be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners across Canada, and in other jurisdictions where lessons from the Canadian experience may be applicable. At the same time, the volume contributes to and updates regional development theories and concepts that are taught in our universities and colleges, and upon which future research and analysis will build.

Community-based research (CBR) offers useful insights into the challenges associated with conducting research and ensuring that it generates both excellent scholarship and positive impacts in the communities where the research takes place. This depends on two important variables: the capacity of CBR to generate good information, and the extent to which CBR is understood and constructed as a two-way relationship that includes a set of responsibilities for both researchers and communities. Offering expert advice on the crucial relationship between communities and researchers, the authors outline the main stages of the CBR process to guide researchers and practitioners. They discuss the reasons for conducting CBR, provide tips on how to design research, and detail how researchers and communities should get to know one another, as well as how best to work in the field and how to turn fieldwork into research that counts. By focusing on the lessons learned from the use of CBR, the authors make the messages, lessons, and practices applicable to a variety of research settings. Drawing collectively from decades of community-based research experience and including vignettes from researchers from around the world who share their CBR experiences, Doing Community-Based Research is an essential book for scholars, students, practitioners, and the educated public.

Broader political and economic changes are dramatically reshaping rural and small-town communities in British Columbia and across Canada. Increasingly, however, much of the responsibility for community-based prosperity and survival is falling to communities themselves.This book is drawn from a three-year participatory research project with four communities in British Columbia: two municipalities and two Aboriginal communities. The first part of the book examines historical and contemporary forces of restructuring, linking the development of rural communities with the legacy of resource development and Aboriginal marginalization across the province. The second part of the book presents the theoretical and practical dynamics of the community economic development (CED) process and outlines a variety of strategies communities can initiate to diversify their local economies.Second Growth advances understanding of local development by addressing two important deficiencies in the CED literature. First, CED is a rapidly expanding field that requires enhanced theoretical direction and historical analysis. Second, there is a need for systematic case study analyses of CED strategies in rural, small-town conditions. As communities struggle to confront complex forces of change, sound theoretical frameworks and tested best practices are important tools in facilitating the prospects for a second growth in rural and small-town communities.The book will appeal to educators and students of rural and economic geography, policy makers, and citizens who wish to better understand the transformations taking place across the rural landscape.

The future of northern British Columbia, a vast, resource-rich region of vibrant cultures and diverse communities, could be either driven by a narrow economic agenda or guided by innovative, place-based solutions that seek to build viable communities and resilient local and regional economies.Investing in Place is about creating the foundations for renewing northern British Columbia's rural and small-town economies. Markey, Halseth, and Manson argue that renewal is not about nostalgic reliance on the policies and economic strategies of the past – rather, it is about building a pragmatic and innovative vision for development, one that acknowledges both the opportunities and the challenges posed by resource development and global and technological change.For policy-makers and residents alike the path to renewal lies in place-based development, which consists of people working together at all levels of the community and region to take advantage of local opportunities in a sustainable, responsible way.

Nature belongs in cities, but how do we put nature first without pushing people aside? Nature-First Cities reveals the false dichotomy of that question by recognizing that people and nature are indivisible. Western urbanization has meant the ongoing expulsion of nature, which is engendering biodiversity loss and inequality, thwarting economic potential, and affecting health. This volume instead applies the science and practice of nature-directed stewardship to cities. Tested through case studies, this methodology for urban ecosystem restoration is uniquely effective at revitalizing our strained cities. Nature is woven into networks, distributed equitably across neighbourhoods, and partnered with the urban density that is essential for addressing the climate crisis. Nature-First Cities offers a practical framework for urban planning that reinforces our place in nature both physically, by ensuring that cities are replete with biodiversity and intact ecosystems, and conceptually, by rebalancing our relationships with the planet and with one another

Canadian regional development today involves multiple actors operating within nested scales from local to national and even international levels. Recent approaches to making sense of this complexity have drawn on concepts such as multi-level governance, relational assets, integration, innovation, and learning regions. These new regionalist concepts have become increasingly global in their formation and application, yet there has been little critical analysis of Canadian regional development policies and programs or the theories and concepts upon which many contemporary regional development strategies are implicitly based.This volume offers the results of five years of cutting-edge empirical and theoretical analysis of changes in Canadian regional development and the potential of new approaches for improving the well-being of Canadian communities and regions, with an emphasis on rural regions. It situates the Canadian approach within comparative experiences and debates, offering the opportunity for broader lessons to be learnt.This book will be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners across Canada, and in other jurisdictions where lessons from the Canadian experience may be applicable. At the same time, the volume contributes to and updates regional development theories and concepts that are taught in our universities and colleges, and upon which future research and analysis will build.

Access to quality services and community infrastructure are vital parts of supporting sustainable and resilient rural and small town places. Renewing outdated infrastructure and supporting the delivery of services in rural communities present significant challenges from the constrained fiscal and policy realities of the 21st century.Drawing upon contributors from five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, this book describes innovative service delivery and community infrastructure models that are appropriate to the contemporary rural and resource-dependent regions of developed economies. The examples show that an entrepreneurial approach to service delivery and infrastructure provision by local organizations and governments is needed. Critical economic and community development supports are crucial to assist creative and innovative sets of solutions that work for small communities. Chapters in this book argue that community development foundations for resilient rural and small town communities and regions must be co-constructed and co-delivered in partnership by both local and senior government actors, in terms of both policy and committed resources. This volume will be extremely valuable for students, scholars, and community development practitioners exploring policy-making, government initiatives, and community service provision in rural and small town places.