Dear Colleagues,
I wish every one of our members a creative and
productive time in the year ahead and I hope that the 2007 will be another
action packed year.
CONTENTS
1. Commission activities
2. Conference announcements
3. IGU President Adalberto Vallega
1. Commission
activities
In the last Newsletter we paid tribute to the successful Symposium in
Brisbane and the Tri Commission meeting in Cairns, and the great work done by
our steering committee member Tony Sorensen and his team. Tony is now editing a
set of proceedings of the Cairns meeting. I would like to thank again Tony Sorensen, our
man from down under, for organising a marvellous event.
The Commission on Local Development 2007 main activity will be the participation in The Second Global Conference on Economic
Geography in Beijing in June 25
to 28. The
Commission has been offered sufficient session slots, and the final number is depended on the number of relevant papers at the final stage. Henry
Yeung, the conference organizer, promised to take care of the organisation, but
Campolina Dinitz and myself will be involved in organising the LD sessions.
Please inform all those persons
you might think may have interest to participate in the LD commission’s
sessions in Beijing. You are still invited to offer your own papers. The
deadline has been extended.
Information on the conference
and registration form is available in the following site:
Most of you are aware that the next IGU Congress
will be held in Tunisia, with the dates of August 25-29 2008. The theme of the
Congress is "Collaboratively Building our Territories". A decision
that we need to make in the coming months is whether the Commission will hold a
pre-Congress Symposium, or whether we will participate in the Congress with both paper sessions and business meeting. I am still waiting for the
Commission to receive the name of a counterpart in Tunis with whom we will
work.
I would like to turn your attention to the proposal to have our 2009
annual meeting in Warsaw under the organisation of Jerzy Banski (see table below). Jerzy has already offered me a draft of the first circular and it
looks very promising.
The following table is the updated
timetable of the Commission activities 2007-2010
Year
|
Month
|
Place
|
Comments
|
Theme
|
|
2007
|
25-28 June
|
Beijing
|
Second
Global Conference On Economic Geography
|
The dynamics of local and regional development
|
|
2008
|
August
|
Tunis
|
IGU International Congress;
Possibly - a pre-congress meeting in Tunis
|
To be decided
|
|
2009
|
July / September
|
Warsaw
|
Commission annual meeting
|
Poverty-reduction
through local development
|
|
2010
|
July
|
Tel Aviv
|
IGU regional conference
|
To be decided
|
I am looking forward to receive comments
from members.
2. Conference announcements
Below is a
list of coming conferences that I have been asked to inform you about.
2.1 I would like to call your attention to
a message I have received regarding the Local Development International
Meeting, to be held in Naples on 1 and 2 March 2007, with AISLO
scientific advice.
…The Meeting will focus
on local development issues, thus perceiving territories not merely as
“passive” physical contexts for policies, actions, and strategies, but as a
complex, "active" system for developmental processes. On one hand,
the increasingly global economy is interfacing with local dynamics and assets
using the local context as a hub; on the other, the physical, economic, and
business characteristics of places are creating unique specific assets which
can be used for sustainable development. Political options aiming at
competitiveness, development, and local cohesion urge to think about basic
value strategies, the multiplication of governmental level and spatial scales
of intervention, the role of specific sectoral policies and the added value
provided by local synergies.
I add a couple of attachments concerned this meeting.
2.2 On
behalf of Prof Ali Toumi (General Secretary of the Tunis 2008 Congress) I
inform you of the 31st INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL CONGRESS. The
Congress is organized jointly by the Tunisian Geographers Association and the
International Geographical Union, and will take place in Tunis on 12-15 August
2008.
I add a couple of attachments concerned this congress.
2.3 Europe’s Geographical Challenges: Science Meets Policy. Amsterdam, 20-23 August 2007. EUGEO2007: call for papers open.
Conference themes: ‘Standort Europa’ at Risk; Towards Revitalized and Cohesive
Cities; The Changing Face of Rural Europe; Genuine European Values: Culture,
Identity, and Diversity; Nature Strikes Back; and Balanced Multilevel
Governance. For more information and abstract submission: www.eugeo2007.org.
3. IGU President Adalberto Vallega
On behalf of the steering committee
of the Commission on Local Development, I sent our message of condolences to the family of IGU president
Adalberto Vallega, as well as to the Home of Geography.
I have recently received the following message from the Home of
Geography
|
We have decided to dedicate the majority of our next e-Newsletter to
the memory of Adalberto Vallega. In addition to an official obituary, we
would like to include more personal tributes to him. If you would like to
write a few lines with your personal memories of him if you knew him, or your
own tribute to him if you only knew him through his work, please send them to
us for inclusion in the next issue. As it will be sent out at the end of
January, we need to receive your contributions by 15 January. Please aim to
write no more than approximately 200 words.
Best wishes,
Giuliano Bellezza & Dawn
Bissell
Dawn Bissell
Executive Secretary International Geographical Union IGU/Union Géographique Internationale Home of Geography/Maison de la Géographie Villa Celimontana Via della Navicella, 12 00184 Rome Italy Tel/Fax +39 06 7759 1183 Director: Professor G Bellezza (g.bellezza@homeofgeography.org) Executive Secretary: Dawn Bissell (d.bissell@homeofgeography.org) URL: www.homeofgeography.org |
* * *
The information in this newsletter will be uploaded to
the Commission's web site at: http://www.biu.ac.il/soc/ge/igucomld/
We look forward to receiving news
from members.
Best Wishes,
Michael Sofer
Chairman,
Commission on Local Development, IGU
