Local Government and the Changing Urban-Rural Interplay

ended

LoGov aims to form an international and intersectoral training and research network in order to provide best-fit practices for local governments to address the changing urban-rural interplay and manage its impacts. As a global Consortium composed of eight European and nine non-European partners, we seek to (1) to identify, evaluate, compare and share practices in five major local government areas (local responsibilities, local finances, local government structure, intergovernmental relations and people’s participation); (2) to encourage the effective application of the best-fit practices by local governments; (3) to strengthen international and intersectoral collaborative research; (4) to enhance the career perspectives of the staff involved by increasing their mobility both within the academic and the non-academic sectors and between these sectors. LoGov’s methodological approach relies on a comprehensive comparative analysis that draws on findings from 15 countries or wider regions on six continents, the extensive involvement of local policy-makers through local government associations and a multi- and interdisciplinary approach that is facilitated by the Consortium’s expertise in four disciplines (public law, political science, public administration and economics). The training strategy of LoGov is based on both secondment-related and network-wide activities. The strategy combines well-established events with newly developed transferable and research skills training, including open science, communication and research transfer training. To achieve the maximum impact, LoGov’s dissemination strategy targets both the wider scientific community and local policy-makers. It does so when sharing the key training result of widening career perspectives and the main research result of providing best-fit practices for local governments. These contribute to making them more resilient in light of changing urban-rural relations, a primary societal challenge of our times.