Browsing by Author "Turpeinen, Tuomas"

Community-led local development is constantly strengthening and partly a new dimension in regional development. It has been seen as a bottom-up parallel regional development activity, where local actors such as area businesses, residents and organisations are closely involved. Community-led local development can be carried out using different methods, and it has been found to be effective and important in the development activities of municipalities and neighborhoods. Community-led local development has received attention at the international and national arenas. It has come up especially in the debate of the future of the European Union cohesion policy, and the Commission has brought it one of the most important questions in the future program period. At the national level, the importance of community-led local development has been seen to rise, especially when the municipalities are merged into larger units. In Finland, large part of the regional planning is in the responsibility of municipalities, and they are seen to be the key actors in community-led local development. This study examines the views of municipalities in community-led local development - at their own points of view. The purpose is to find out what kind of activities the municipalities will see as community-led local development, what kind of impacts community-led local development has had to the municipalities, and how the community-led local development has worked in municipalities. In addition, the aim is to find out what kind of role the municipalities see themselves in community-led local development, and how important they see community-led local development in securing their own vitality. Research data of this study consists of the electronic questionnaire and the interviews focused to the persons responsible of development issues of the municipalities. Research data shows that the Finnish municipalities see community-led local development working well, and that it is very important to the development of the municipality. Community-led local development was generally seen as an action, which aims to improve the municipality and it's surrounding region's vitality, competitiveness, and business operating conditions. Municipalities saw the community-led local development very important and significant in securing their vitality, and it's importance was seen to remain in the future. In smaller municipalities, it's importance was even seen to grow in the future, in the municipal reform, when municipalities are merged to larger units. Municipalities saw the community-led local development for the most part the same way all over the Finland, despite of their size. Finnish municipalities don't see community-led local development only as a bottom-up parallel regional development activity, where local actors such as areas businesses, residents and organizations are closely involved. It was seen more as a physical development of the area in which the participation of local actors and partnerships were as a complement. Among Finnish municipalities can be identified two different dimensions of community-led local development: an actor-oriented dimension, as well as a specific regions development -oriented dimension.