Objective
The SUSPLACE approach will provide insight into how to utilize the full potential of places and communities for development and help to build capacities of people to engage in place-shaping processes and thus strengthen connectivity between policy-makers, academics, businesses and civil society.
Methodology
Sustainable place-shaping is framed within a relational approach to place. Places are seen as the time and space differentiated outcomes, shaped at the intersection of unbound ecological, political-economic and socio-cultural ordering processes. Places are mutually shaped, reshaped and interconnected by these (trans)formation processes. Transformation processes have so far provoked many unsustainabilities in and across places, such as inequalities, exclusion, poverty, economic shrinkage, resource depletion, ecological hazards and food insecurity. Nowadays, innumerous citizens initiatives are developing sustainable practices and building the capacities to transform their place according to their ideas, needs and demands. This transformative capacity of sustainable place-shaping practices entails a well-balanced: -socio-cultural re-appreciation of respective places; -ecological re-grounding of practices in place-specific assets and resources; -political-economic re-positioning towards dominant markets, technology and policies.
