Summary
Development studies have flourished during the last 4 decades, leading to a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches. However, one may notice only a rather marginal presence of space in major concepts associated with local/human development. This project aims to tackle this issue and, while doing that, it also delivers a conceptual and methodological solution for overcoming the rift between the World Bank view (highly focused on connectivity and economic growth) and the United Nations view (highly focused on human capabilities) on understanding, measuring and analyzing development. The case study is to be conducted on Romania, by assessing development as opportunity and development as outcome for four key moments (1890s, 1930, 1992, 2021). For current times, an additional layer of understanding will be added by surveying the stakeholders’ perception of development drivers, thus opening the possibility of exploring the trinomial relationship between existing theory (how it explains development), empirical evidence (what data unveils on its drivers) and the perception of public stakeholders (on what is important for enhancing local development). Finally, four case studies will investigate differences in the nature of local agency and stakeholders’ collaboration networks from dynamic communities situated in contexts of poor opportunities, and also from stagnating communities situated in contexts of rich opportunities.
Financing
TEPS project has been granted finance by The Romanian Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) following
The 2023 Call for Young Research Teams.
Budget: 99 980 EUR
Duration of the project
24 months
Period of implementation
January 2025 - December 2026
Host institution
Department of Geography
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași