A letter to Corresponding Members

Dear corresponding members,

Few words regarding our forthcoming activities.

There are two parallel conferences that the commission is involved in August 2015.

First: the IGU Regional Conference in Moscow, 17-21 August. Registration is open now.

http://www.igu2015.ru/

Second: the Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography, Oxford, 19-22 August. Registration and paper submission will open in early 2015.

http://www.gceg2015.org/

We will have our annual meeting within the Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography in Oxford. Yet, we will have at least two days of sessions in the IGU conferences in Moscow, the first two days of this meeting. On our plan a joint meeting with the "Applied Geography" commission, titled "Applied Local and Regional Development". Considering that in the 2014 Kraków, Poland, conference the commission was involved in 13 different sessions, I hope that we'll manage to squeeze a bit the number of papers and sessions for the forthcoming conference in Moscow, and invest the energy also in the annual meeting in Oxford.

We had a plan to execute a field trip to Vladivostok and Southern Primorye in 2015 going out from Moscow. This plan has changed for a special meeting of the commission in Vladivostok in 2016, the week before the major congress in Beijing. This will allow the participants to be involved in both meetings.

I am collecting material for our forthcoming newsletter. The newsletter is due next month. The newsletter is distributed to all our corresponding members – about 230 members – and is located also on the Internet sites of the commission and of the Home of Geography. I would appreciate contributions relevant to the following topics:

·        IGU CLRD matters, including updates on Programmes of  Work

·        Conference or project announcements

·        New publications on Local and Regional Development (not just in English)

·        Other events and activities which you think would be of interest to other members of the commission.

A new issue of "Rural Studies" comprising a collection of papers written by corresponding members of the commission is being at the final editorial stage. The editors are Konrad Czapiewski, Tony Sorensen and Michael Sofer.

Regards,

Michael Sofer

Chairman IGU Commission on Local and Regional Development