Dalit Harel (p), Sigal Kaplan

This study investigates the role of shared workspaces as an anchor of community resilience for low-income urban populations. To date, studies explored the role of shared workspaces from the employee and regional innovation perspective, while the effect on the community empowerment remains unraveled.
This study focuses on a new municipality owned multi-functional shared workspace serving the
variety of uses and is geared towards empowering the residents and promoting low-income young adults. Besides providing a workspace, the following activities are initiated by the management staff (all residents) in order to answer community needs: ii) lectures and community events, iii) university exam preparation courses, women empowerment, entrepreneurship events and networking opportunities; iv) a hub for learning support.
Interviews were conducted with the management staff (ten employees) and with a sample of thirty 18-21 years-old attending the workspace. We identified processes leading to behavioral change among the young adults attending the workspace. We looked at the change processes via the lens of the Trans-Theoretical model positing five stages of behavioral change: observation, preparation, change action, maintenance and assimilation, including successes and backsliding. Additionally, via the existence-relatedness-growth model we identified the layers of human need that this venue meets.
The changes undergone by attendees who spend time and engage in activities at the facility foster personal and community resilience in Jaffa. According to the management staff, 60% of the young adults assisted by the facility enroll to universities, compared to 20% enrollment rate in the surrounding neighborhood. The venue creates anchors for young people and is a major springboard in areas of crucial importance: education and employment. The facility activities are aimed at all the five stages of behavioral change. The workspace contributes to the young adults in three main areas. Firstly, the facility alleviates functional barriers by providing university preparation courses, language and academic writing courses, and information about university, enrollment, scholarships, student aid programs. Obstacles are addressed by the helpful, attentive, and closely-involved staff, who create a sense of personal connection. Secondly, the facility promotes social inclusion by providing a meeting-place and giving its users a homelike, familial atmosphere and sense of belonging. Thirdly, the facility plays a substantial role in strengthening the confidence and self-image of young Jaffa residents by offering them an experience of success helping them leave their comfort zone. All of these things help the venue's young clients achieve success in self-management.

Jacopo Sforzi (p), Cristina Burini

See extended abstract

Sune Stoustrup (p)

The proposed presentation aims to present an empirical case study of the change and negotiation of attitudes regarding rural development among local residents in an Austrian community of villages. Starting around the mid-nineties, and instigated partly by the new opportunities presented by Austria joining the EU (e.g. the LEADER programme), and partly by experiencing a downwards development spiral, the community experienced a development of a “self-help ethos” along with a focus on building up alliances and collaborative actions across village borders alongside the promotion of civil society engagement.

Here, there can be observed a process where the responsibility for the well-being of the local community was re-allocated from government and public bodies to local residents - also by the residents themselves. Furthermore, while local communities took on themselves the mantle of “rural developers”, this “new rural development discourse” has become embedded and institutionalised in the regional development framework, e.g. as public organisations that supports and promotes this way of development.

The presented research project analyses the ‘discursive construction’, or the ‘framing’ of development trajectories of the area and community, and to understand these as a context for and in relation to changes in perception, agenda-setting and troubleshooting: i.e how challenges (or opportunities) are identified and framed, and thereby influencing specific ways of taking action, i.e. ‘problem solving’. Inspired by the model of social innovation from Neumeier (2012, Sociologia ruralis, 52(1), 48-69), the process of problematisation and negotiations of perceived challenges and ideas about appropriate actions are reconstructed from: a) interviews with local and regional actors and stakeholders, b) publications from the community and regional development institutions c) newspaper coverage of the region.

Leila Kebir (p), Frédéric Wallet (p)

The concept of commons appears to be « re »emerging today in the context of territorial development. Focused on artefacts and more urban kind of resources, it seems to allow taking into account contemporary issues related to sustainability, resource management at urban scale in particular. It also seems to foster new hybrid forms of resources management. Situated somewhere between public and or private management, commons appear to be more collective and community based. Drawing on the analysis of French and European territorial common-based initiatives, this paper discusses the link between these contemporary forms of commons and territorial development. It starts by proposing to clarify what is meant today by commons. It then discusses how commons question territorial development models. It ends by questioning how contemporary commons can participate today to territorial development dynamics.