Bridging Place and Policy in Divisive Times Webinar

The Rural Policy Learning Commons is hosting a free online webinar titled, "Bridging Place and Policy in Divisive Times” on November 19, 2019 from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT. The webinar will feature Ashleigh Weeden, doctoral student in Rural Studies. A brief description of the webinar is listed below: 

In 2019, we face the ongoing negotiations of Brexit for the United Kingdom and Europe, a deepening sense of western alienation in Canada (or ‘Wexit’ as some are calling it), and polarizing politics in the United States and elsewhere across the world. Simmering frustrations with feeling unheard, unseen, and unrepresented by core public institutions are paired with the increasingly complex dynamics of climate change, demographic change, and economic change at all scales – global, national, and local. At the same time, research finds that we believe most Canadians are confident we can solve our differences and, across Europe, spatially oriented plans and policies are increasingly popular, directed in various ways towards cities or islands or remote regions. In contrast to visions of time-space compression put forward in the 1990s, it feels like we are experiencing the results of (sometimes fractal) tensions of grappling with place-identity expansion. How might a progressive sense of place help us address these complexity as we head into uncertain futures? This webinar will revisit Doreen Massey’s seminal work on a Global Sense of Place to consider opportunities for bridging place and policy, with particular emphasis on questions about the role of place in developing future-oriented rural policy. 

The webinar is free to attend, however, online registration is required. The School of Environmental Design and Rural Planning is a collaborator on the Rural Policy Learning Commons initiative.