Place-based development strategies: Possibilities,dilemmas and ongoing debates

Introduction

The role of place and the notion that ‘place matters’ is a vital dimension of policy debates across a broad range of fields in all corners of the world, especially when matters of local and regional development come into play. This special issue has focussed scholarly and analytical attention on the concepts, policies and practice of place-based economic development strategies. Individually and collectively, contributors have provided a (re)appraisal of this development paradigm, which has drawn on practice from around the world, including Africa, Australasia, Europe and North America.

Filippo Celata and Raffaella Coletti conceptualised place-based policies as a blend of territorial and relational imaginaries but insisted that the latter tend to be normatively downplayed in the material actualisation of conceptual policies which emphasises the importance of local and supralocal relations. Gill Bentley and Lee Pugalis outlined what are broadly perceived to be defining principles of place-based approaches, by way of a comparative analysis of current, preceding and alternative approaches to local and regional development. Based on a reading of key literature, they identified the critical elements from dominant place-based narratives: A supportive and flexible institutional framework; whereby scales of governance should reflect relational flows as well as territorial constructs; augmented by analysis of the assets and the development potentials of place(s) and networks of places; the spatial scale at which development takes place should correspond with agglomeration economies; and that it is a policy for all regions and localities, but it is not a single place-based approach but one which takes account of contextual specificity. Their critical survey also highlighted some of the similarities, disjunctures and contradistinctions that place-based modes of thinking have with alternative approaches, such as people-centred, active regional policy and space-blind variants. Bentley and Pugalis, nevertheless, drew attention to the dangers of the emergence and policy capture of a single, dominant place-based narrative. This, they argued, could undermine the philosophical values of place-based modes of practice, namely those relating to spatial particularity. In policy terms, this may be phrased as devising and moulding institutional processes, governance structures and practical strategies in a manner that is conducive to and reflective of contextual factors.

Other empirically rich contributions to the special issue tend to confirm that the place-based approach is far from an uncontested concept. Indeed, as a meta-approach, it can be asserted that it lacks conceptual clarity and operational precision. Various contributors forcefully demonstrated that the place-based meta-approach may be more accurately understood (and more efficiently practised) as an innumerable range of place-based economic strategies – each one connected by some common attributes, which could form an ideal-typical place-based policy model, although each approach to place-based development is likely to be contextually distinct. Indeed, the extent and variety of research contributions has helped to illuminate highly differentiated contexts and the uniqueness of places. This has some important theoretical and policy implications. Take, for example, the multidirectional relationships between geography and institutions, which are much more complex than present comprehensions and methodologies account for. As Brenner and Schmid (2014: 751–752) argue, the dynamic properties of sociospatial transformations -- a continuous process of reproduction – require analytical frameworks and methodologies that are themselves adaptable and dynamic. This may indicate that policy-thinking requires careful consideration of the appropriate institutional and governance responses and, moreover, as Barca et al. (2012) attest, this should consist of collaborative forms of governance, which involve diverse stakeholder collectivities.

By way of concluding the special issue, which has sought to provide a detailed (re)appraisal of place-based economic strategies, in the remainder of this article we weave together some of the key strands explored, debated and examined by each contribution. The primary findings and core arguments can be grouped in to three themes; that place matters; analysis of development potentials and the role of institutions, governance and stakeholders. We address each of these in turn before identifying aspects warranting further research and exploring potential future directions as part of the ongoing search for solutions to addressing patterns of uneven development.

Place matters: Spatial particularity and scalar sensitivity

The fundamental tenet of the place-based approach is that place matters. Bentley and Pugalis pointed out in their article that even supposedly place-neutral policies can provoke perverse spatial effects. Place-based thinking is often based on understandings of place that are socio-spatial historical products and processes. In policy terms, place-based approaches can be translated as those that take account of ‘urban hierarchies in influencing historical processes of development’ to engender development potentials and influence the crafting of strategies that are tailored to particular places (Barca et al., 2012: 135). Nonetheless, as Bentley and Pugalis pointed out, this is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach; there is a need to take account of the specificity, complexity and interconnectedness of place. These issues were raised by a number of articles in this special issue.

Indeed, Nemo Remesar and Manuel Borja lamented the approach of the Spanish government, which they argued, fails to account for spatial complexity: ‘It has been adamant in its normative/administrative stance simplifying a diverse array of realities and confronting issues simply with austerity and centralising policy’. Such criticisms arguably extend to many countries, even those that claim to reflect place-based philosophies. For example, through case study analysis of Gothenburg’s waterfront district, Jonathan Borggren and Patrik Ström demonstrated how the spatial reconfiguration of Norra Älvstranden is a symbol of global shifts and dynamics translated in a particular place. Whereas some globally framed currents may appear to be influencing places around the world, it is the unique translations in particular contexts that proponents of place-based thinking stress. Borggren and Ström argued that a narrowly crafted socio-economic place-based development strategy, such as in the case of Norra Älvstranden, would impede sustainable and inclusive notions of development and growth.

The Barca Report (2009) focuses attention on the importance of relational geographies as a means of informing scales of cooperative policy development and governance (in contrast to development approaches guided by administrative boundaries, which have tended to provide the primary units for the construction of governance structures and subsequent strategies). Notions, such as, ‘functional regions’ and ‘functional economic geographies’ are based on a widely accepted view in policy discourse that socio-economic practices, such as daily commuting patterns, transcend administrative boundaries, policy domains and specific geographies of intervention, such as Special Economic Zones in China or Urban Enterprise Zones in the US. Agglomerations of economic activity often associated with the label ‘city-regions’ are also frequently perceived to be an appropriate (and quite often, the foremost) scale for understanding development paths and marshalling intervention strategies. They are said to display patterns of internal interdependencies in the geographies of production, consumption and labour market but, also have a position in relation to the international division of labour, through, for example, external trade and investment. Shanna Ratner and Deborah Markley lent support to this contention as a basis for interventions. Concerned about rural areas, they suggested that the construction of value chains enables rural localities to produce for a regional and/or global market. They argued that economic growth and development can be achieved by strengthening connections between less developed localities and more developed localities. According to the OECD (2009), the place-based meta-approach seeks to help localities to reach a point on the production possibility boundary curve to maximise the utilisation of resources and achieve competitiveness on the global market (Garcilazo et al., 2010).

The question, however, arises about the characteristics of ‘functional regions’, often approximated to the policymakers’ notion of ‘city-regions’, and whether spatialised economic agglomerations require one or more metropolitan ‘cores’. Christian Kjær Monsson argued strongly that it does not, in his examination of a non-metropolitan region in Denmark. Monsson developed three propositions about beneficial development practices for non-metropolitan regions. First, focussing policy support on a broad set of companies with ‘capable management teams’, which is in contrast to advocates of sector-based industrial strategies or so-called ‘smart specialisation’ approaches. Second, tailoring and matching business support services to the capabilities of the management of regional firms. Third, firms in territories with low levels of education and little industrial relatedness can benefit from alternative models for learning and knowledge development based on shared challenges. This, he argued, is in ‘opposition’ to the dominant EU place-based development discourse with its focus on the city-region agglomeration scale. Hence, the implication is that supposedly functional scales, such as city-regions, and endogenous specialisations may be applicable for some places, but that these contextual elements should not be conflated with the philosophy of place-based development.

For Morgan Ndlovu and Eric Nyembezi Makoni, in writing about experience in South Africa, the functional economic geography to be targeted, as well as the focus of policy, has tended to be heavily localised. One of their primary concerns was that place-based development strategies connect citizens with regional governance rather than in relation to the global market since from a decolonial perspective this would perpetuate socio-spatial inequalities, in the South African context, which are inherent in the processes shaping the international division of labour. Thus, this further illustrates that it is necessary to interpret the primary scales of activity in a manner sensitive to the particularities of place. Unfortunately, a number of policy initiatives noticeably specify a favoured territorial scale at the outset, even those that purport to be place-based, such as English City Deals and similarly the Contrat de Ville in France (Michialino, 2010: 214). It can be noted that paying attention to the scalarity of interventions, to reflect relational sensibilities, may assist in overcoming criticisms that policy remedies prescribed for places are often inflexible and ‘artificial’, with deficient place-responsiveness resulting in under-bounded schemes that may poorly account for spatial interdependencies or spill-overs, for example. However, this is not to suggest that the proposition is an either/or situation; relational geographies are important to the place-based approach, but it can also be substantiated that they do not necessarily supersede territoriality as a unit of intervention. This is evident in the article by Grazia Brunetta and Ombretta Caldarice, who argued that place-based retail-led regeneration in Italy, which reflects relational thinking in the co-production of retail development, has led to a definition of a new form of territorial governance. Based on the specification of a commercial district, retail development has become an arena for intervention and for solving economic, social and environmental problems of a specific area.

Filippo Celata and Raffaella Coletti, however, drew attention to some weaknesses associated with territorial cooperation in Italy, such as institutional isomorphism, technocratic management and democratic deficits, but suggested that a transnational perspective could help to overcome some of these limitations and those deficiencies associated with the practical application of place-based methods. Grounded in policy-relevant research examining collaborative approaches to cross-border economic development connecting Scotland and England, Keith Shaw, Fred Robinson and Jonathan Blackie highlighted some practical opportunities. They alluded to the positive aspects of institutional churn which can create new space for collaborative endeavours ‘in particular, to consider new flexible approaches to economic development that may not have been possible under the old system and which serve to reconfigure the traditional regional or sub-regional boundaries’. Their work helps us to comprehend how the notion of ‘borders’ can be refigured to embrace connections as well as disconnections and divides. This calls for more malleable and porous borders. Indeed, for such purposes the term border could be substituted with that of ‘interface of interaction’. Shaw, Robinson and Blackie also referred to the inward-looking predisposition of some territorial-based arrangements and strategies, such as the now disbanded English Regional Development Agencies. Consistent with this critique, Filippo Celata and Raffaella Coletti, for example, highlighted what they perceive to be some of the limitations associated with implementing place-based development strategies. Based on the experience of Italy – a country that has been at the vanguard of place-based innovations – they argued that a territorial understanding of places as bounded and fixed has dominated policy proceedings, and proposed instead the adoption of a relational perspective based on ‘radical regional openness’. This, they argued, may help to better avert the risk of policy capture, territorial introversion and communitarian confinement.

Remesar and Manuel Borja argued that ‘The underlying issues behind Spain’s [economic, social, political and structural issues] are a result of its recent history, deeply rooted and complex, and will only be solved by actions that are equally profound in scope’. This has broader implications for understandings and operations of place-based methods, as Remesar and Borja suggested the need for ‘case-specific design’. The contributions showed that while some dominant place-based policy narratives emphasise the importance of accounting for relational flows and connections, and on the notion of agglomerations (especially city-regions) as a locus for analysis and intervention, this is by no means an optimal nor appropriate scale for all places. Recognition of spatial particularity requires bespoke scalar perspectives. In policy and practical terms, this may require multi-scalar interventions and multi-levels of decision making and strategy formulation. Paul Hildreth and David Bailey added a further dimension to this in contending that inappropriate institutional geographies hamper cooperation across boundaries – thus reinforcing the argument for the transcendence of territorialised governance structures via relational modes of cooperation, collaboration and decision making.

The analysis of development potentials: Constructing a place-sensitive evidence-base

In grappling with uneven patterns of spatial development, place-based philosophies tend to favour ‘unlocking’ development potentialities and endogenous assets. Nevertheless, how to go about identifying, analysing and mobilising such distinctive, actually existing capabilities is less clear.

Chris McDonald’s article drew attention to the importance of information and analytical tools that may be required to support collaborative decision making within local and regional planning and governance arrangements. The development of an information base in an Australian context may also present lessons for other jurisdictions in operationalising and delivering place-based approaches in:

Providing a research-base for an analytical framework based on contemporary evidence about the spatial growth dynamics that can support decision making within place-based economic development strategies.

The common thread running through these lessons is that policymakers and researchers recognise the complex environment within which place-based approaches to development are implemented. Martin Field, in particular, showed how it is possible to misunderstand trends in housing tenure in the UK, where it appears that the private-rented sector is growing at the expense of what is termed the owner-occupier market. He clarified a complex situation whereby what appears to be happening is an apparent shift from a pattern of individual private ownership to a pattern of institutional or investment ownership. Field pointed out that this is the outcome of a neoliberal-inspired agenda of the Coalition Government in which fiscal policy has encouraged speculation in financial markets and the demise of ‘affordable housing’ due to the retrenchment of public expenditure. He argued that the diktat of the market, in reshaping patterns of housing tenure mix, puts at risk, or overrides, previously agreed place-based planning ideals. This, Field, concluded is threatening the identity of ‘place’ across towns and cities. It teaches us that there is a need to specify the meaning of terms used as a basis in the analysis of phenomenon, in this case, or in the analysis of development potentials.

Lee Pugalis, Bob Giddings and Kelechi Anyigor studied a World Bank financed slum-upgrading programme to address poverty in Nigeria: an intervention predicated on a placeless interpretation of slum settlements and a generic definition of ‘slums’ which led to an infrastructure-led strategy intended to enhance the physical environment and improve the physical linkages between slum dwellers and the wider economy. The programme neglected, however, to consider that other methods, such as enterprise development support, may have been more appropriate to the particular characteristics of this unique community of slum dwellers to help improve prevailing socio-economic conditions. The interventionist programme also failed to consider that the development of production capability in the local economy might also provide employment opportunities which, as Ratner and Markley also demonstrated in their study, would encourage the fertilisation of local supply chains that could potentially result in local economic multipliers as well as establishing stronger links with the wider economy. These perspectives help to demonstrate that the terms in which connections are defined is important in defining the geographies of the interventions (as well as the analysis of the cause of perceived problems). This finding may imply that place-based strategies may benefit from a fuller consideration than hitherto of geographies of production and geographies of consumption in addition to labour market geographies and travel to work patterns.

Thus, as the case example of Kpirikpiri in the article by Pugalis, Giddings and Anyigor illustrated, the objectives of the intervention and the scale at which interventions are delivered are a matter for critical examination as well as the character of the interventions. Based on this analysis, there is merit in considering how the needs and potentialities of a particular place, represented through one particular scalar lens (e.g. neighbourhood scale) can be connected with institutional apparatus and policy instruments at various other interpenetrating scales (e.g. local, city-regional, regional, national, supra-national).

Place-based thinking can help to integrate policy fields that often remain disconnected, such as economic development and place branding policy initiatives that in some places, at least, have tended to remain isolated, as Evan Cleave and Godwin Arku attested. Their findings from an analysis of the marketing strategies of 402 communities in Ontario, Canada found that some notable commonalities existed, which supported the case for collaborative marketing strategies. Nevertheless, Cleave and Arku also make the case for a nuanced understanding of the multiple scales at which phenomena could be conceptualised, which could then be operationalised to influence and support collaborative decision making within local and regional planning and governance arrangements. Pugalis, Giddings and Anyigor concurred with this argument, from an African context. Their analysis revealed a mismatch between official project goals (crafted from ‘above’) and the needs and desires of inhabitants (views from ‘below’), to argue that this stems from a superficial or anyplace definition of slum settlements and, ultimately, a misleading prognosis and cure to urban poverty. They also contended that not only do the views of slum dwellers need to be taken into account and their expertise embraced, but that their full participation in the policy formulation process is a prerequisite for the maintenance and sustainability of urban change.

Institutions, governance and stakeholder roles

It is almost axiomatic that the meta-approach to place-based development embodies the aim of enabling stakeholders to develop locally owned strategies through a process of collaborative governance that involves a myriad of participants. The contributions in this special issue, however, have sought to provide a number of critiques across numerous different continents and countries which, while they are not necessarily challenging the principle of community and multi-actor engagement, have challenged the actually existing practice of such an idealised proposition. It is such empirically grounded and place-sensitive critical dispositions that can help to produce greater conceptual and operational clarity.

Marcin Dabrowski, in his article about the preparation of the EU Structural Fund programmes in the relatively new member states in Central and Eastern Europe, shone an analytical spotlight on factors that mitigate against effective collaborative governance and moreover against the formation of locally owned multi-annual strategies and place-tailored operational programmes. Significant among these factors were national electoral considerations and patronage networks in the case study member states of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Such factors may, in part, explain the reluctance of the central governments to empower sub-national authorities to devise locally tailored investment priorities. These are not unfamiliar arguments in the case of the UK where, despite the inchoate localism agenda of the Coalition Government, centralist tendencies remain prevalent, as Bailey and Hildreth suggested. Dabrowski’s research also found insufficient administrative capacity to pose a critical issue to implementing place-based strategies, which is perhaps to be expected given that these new member states had to construct new institutional architectures to manage structural funds and meet EU conditionalities in a relatively short period of time. He concluded that reforms to improve the administrative capacity and incentives to adopt the principles of place-based territorial integrative strategic planning are necessary to help synchronise development goals.

Nemo Remesar and Manuel Borja argued that the promotion of place-based development strategies establishing a subsidiary relationship between the different tiers of administration in Spain has to date been hindered, and more recently compounded by the decentralisation of austerity, which has led to a negative correlation between services provided by local governments and financing received. This is a situation that is mirrored in other nations such as the US, which can significantly hamper the implementation capacity of endogenously derived development plans. Hildreth and Bailey also exposed some serious local institutional weaknesses through their analysis of the English local growth landscape, in arguing that the conditional variant of localism restricts local innovation. They also argued that historical political rivalries lead to a failure by ‘local elites’ to act effectively, echoing a point made by Dabrowski.

Howard Elcock’s analysis of multi-level governance and peripheral places departed from the perspective of Stein Rokkan, who warned that peripheral regions are likely to see their needs and wishes neglected by centralised systems of government. Accounting for the situation where the North East is the most remote English region from the politico-economic-cultural centre of London, its peripheral location may account for why it has long suffered from low economic growth, high unemployment, together with poverty, multiple forms of deprivation and ill health. Elcock emphasised that these problems have persisted despite repeated attempts by central government (and the EU) to assuage such conditions through various rounds of purportedly place-based strategies and multi-level governance formations, albeit hampered by institutional churn. Read alongside the article by Shaw, Robinson and Blackie, it is apparent that the consequences of institutional shifts are contextually dependent. In some situations, substantive positives may be derived and/or opportunities grasped, whereas in other situations there may be serious negative consequences and limitations.

In his reflections on the development of an information base for the State of Victoria, Australia, Chris McDonald highlighted the importance of involving a broad array of actors (especially non-state actors) in this process from the outset, as he argued that embedding analytical formulations ‘in the work practices of external stakeholders within regions will be dependent on the team shifting from an analytical toward more of a capability building role’. This strikes a chord with many of the other contributions to this special issue, which is an explicit recognition of endogenous capabilities. The advantages of collaborations at supra-local scales, Cleave and Arku argued, can increase the asset-base and potential for economies of scale where each municipality is able to expand the range and strength of the place brand, while limiting resource expenditure. As a result, developing collaborations amongst communities to help engender shared place brands appears to be a strong possibility of pursuing economic promotion and development. This is especially significant in a period where Ontario’s municipalities are facing financial strains stemming from the continual downloading of social and economic development responsibilities.

Grazia Brunetta and Ombretta Caldarice considered the role of stakeholders in retail-led developments in several localities in Italy as constitutive of self-organised partnership between public authorities, private firms and civil society. They argued that the relations of reciprocity, trust and sense of belonging, characterised by a continuous and strong exchange of information, or in other words, a pattern of collaborative governance, was an essential feature. This strongly accords with some of the tenets of place-based thinking, including individual and collaborative leadership and robust partnerships and networks developed over time and anchored in place.

Brunetta and Caldarice also called attention to Italian experimentation on what they see as new forms of a variable geometry of territorial governance, and which they suggest is capable of increasing the integration between policy and territory. They also stressed the relative roles of distinct state and non-state interests and, in particular, how schemes do not necessarily require public financial inducements, which may be especially the case when institutional apparatus is propitious. This tends to accord with an emergent new orthodoxy of collaboration, whereby alliance building and cooperative mechanisms are widely deemed to be crucial, particularly so in an age of austerity, not least to enable effective marshalling of finite resources to realise development programmes. John Harrison also noted the growing trend of private sector financed place-based economic strategies, where he observed that the current conjuncture presages the growing role of the private sector in investment for economic development. While the private sector can be seen as a co-creator of the metropolitan economy, Harrison presented the case study of the Peel Group’s Atlantic Gateway Strategy in North West England, to illustrate the near-future potential for non-state actors to formulate and implement what may be seen as alternative place-based economic development strategies. Such a development poses challenges for any conception of the development of locally owned place-based strategies through processes of collaborative governance that would involve all stakeholder interests.

Etienne Nel and Teresa Stevenson highlighted the role played by entrepreneurs in the context of local development and of ‘benevolent entrepreneurs’ in particular, which draws upon the work of Wilson (2011). They found that reductions in state support for regional and local development in New Zealand, and greater openness to a competitive market environment in an era characterised by globalisation and increasing rural multi-functionalism, have led to both economic and population decline in resource-based and single industry towns, and the growth of tourism and commuting centres. They argued that local communities have frequently had to become more proactive, particularly in towns which have experienced severe economic challenges, and observed that not all ‘lagging’ towns are passively accepting their fate. Rather what appears to have happened in the case of New Zealand is that reduced state support and the urgent need to address local economic challenges has encouraged proactive action by individuals and agencies to either attempt to restore economic vitality or to take advantage of new niche opportunities. This, their research indicated, is reflective of a more localised communitarian rather than private sector entrepreneurial approach to local development.

While debates remain ongoing concerning optimal scales of activity, interventions and decision making, and the coterminousity of relational geographies of development paths with institutional architectures for collaborative governance, the article by Morgan Ndlovu and Eric Nyembezi Makoni served to remind us that the vast majority of extant literature is western-centric. They considered the spectre of coloniality – defined as the continuation of economic, socio-spatial and epistemological domination of the hitherto colonised – still looms large in the Global South. From this critical stance, they argued that place-based development strategies require a re-articulation towards what they referred to as the ‘locus of enunciation’ of the subalternised subjects within the local spaces where they are implemented. Here again, the emphasis is on the importance of an active role and involvement of local stakeholders in the process of developing strategies that are ‘locally owned’.

Research gaps, future directions and the ongoing search

At the present juncture, place-based thinking would appear to be a ‘hot’ policy topic, particularly in some parts of Europe due to some high-profile studies that have been successful in (re)introducing and (re)asserting a place-based narrative (in part a reaction to spatially blind methods). Yet, without independent, critical analytical attention, there remains a danger that some of the guiding tenets of place-based modalities are coarsely parachuted into the unique spatial constellations of existing places – those with a past, present and future shaped by and shaping particularised structural, institutional, political, economic, cultural, social and environmental matrices. As Chris McDonald reflected, ‘place-based development strategies in Australia do not seem to have the characteristics of an effective policy idea’. Guiding principles require spatial anchorage, which, we would testify, has been hitherto under-recognised. There has been a surge of research interest in city-regions, metro-regions and various other metropolitanised landscapes, but as Christian Kjær Monsson alerted us to, there remains sparse research on place-based strategies performed in non-metropolitan regions. Similarly, Shaw, Robinson and Blackie reported that cross-border terrains suffer from a lack of comparable research data, especially that concerning business networks and ties, supply chains and economic flows. In addition, Chris McDonald called for further research on how institutional factors such as the skills and capabilities of policymakers influence the implementation of the new paradigm of place-based economic development. Bentley and Pugalis made the case for a sustained exegesis of the place-based notion: sharpening its fuzzy boundaries in conceptual, methodological and analytical terms.

The place-based approach with its emphasis on collaborative management and regional differentiation, Celata and Coletti suggested, can constitute a source of inspiration for a reformed approach to territorial cooperation based on both local ownership and trans-regional openness. Nevertheless, they were also mindful that a more trans-regional orientation of both the strategic contents of development policies, and of their implementation procedures, can help to avoid some of the degenerative tendencies. Celata and Coletti concluded that the adoption of a place-based approach is a necessary condition to pursue the differentiation and targeting of place-sensitive development strategies, but that present policy articulations may not be enough. They argued that cooperation in place-based initiatives demonstrate potential for the implementation of an ‘unbounded’ or ‘transnational’ regionalism: a ‘territorial-relational’ development approach. Different development paradigms may potentially learn from each other, and a new generation of development policies may emerge which are both embedded and trans-regional, territorial and relational, and which may build upon the lessons learned from the experience of alternative local and regional development models together with possibilities and opportunities engendered by new relationships, experiences and insights.

In conclusion, as Bentley and Pugalis argued, a (re)appraisal of place-based economic strategies debates concerning what works generates further contextual questions, principally: for whom, in what ways, in what circumstances and who pays? The latter component of the ‘place-based question’ goes well beyond financing the cost of initiatives. Crucially, and perhaps most fundamentally, it is a challenge to dominant modes of practice, such as neoliberal urbanism, which externalises or dumps the social, environmental and economic costs on some places and groups, whilst the profits are internalised by an elite few. It is in this regard that the social dimensions of place-based development philosophies come to the fore. There is an ongoing need for place-based influenced modes of activity to remain open to new ideas, technologies (in the broadest sense), intelligence, innovation, creativity and endogenous capabilities. Not least to help evade policy-capture by elites or, for example, to maintain a holistic approach that evades physical renewal-driven schemes. Hence, it is worth reiterating that people are active agents in the shaping of place: place is social, just as people are also spatial beings. Thus, an explicit recognition that place matters is also an implicit recognition that people matter, which helps to remind us that place-based mechanisms are also by default people-centred approaches. The place-based paradigm reflects the continual search for solutions to address territorial, social and economic inequalities. In many ways, the search has only just begun. Theories and philosophical presuppositions will be challenged, concepts will be deconstructed and reconstructed, machineries of governance will be remodelled, policies will be recast and practice will be recalibrated. Consequently, a continued (re)appraisal of place-based endeavours will be necessary if we are to achieve a qualitative improvement in the present situation marked by an unequal and unsustainable global society.