This is a brief list of links to web sites with and interest in Place. Please let us know of any others we may want to post here.
On systems thinking, here are three parts of a talk by Russell Ackoff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJxWoZJAD8k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBiXbuD1h4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrEJjT-dWU&feature=related
And a keynote speech at a conference on systems thinking
Dr. Russell Ackoff - Keynote at ICSTM2004 part A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_MDRI-Q76o&feature=related
Fritjof Capra, The Systems View of Life The introductory lecture in a course on systems thinking
http://blog.islandpress.org/322/peter-newman-the-place-based-city
Peter Newman: The place-based city is the sixth in a series of “city types” with special resiliency. Others include the Renewable Energy City, the Carbon Neutral City, the Distributed City, the Photosynthetic City, and the Eco-Efficient City. As Newman sees it place-based social capital is a powerful resource for economic development, and is also a force for sustainability.
http://www.fort.usgs.gov/resources/spotlight/place/
A place-based approach to science for land management, they note that generic rules are not enough for capable management.
This site explores foods that can be identified with Iowa. The goal is to create new markets for farm and food products. The movement to recognize and promote local foods is now growing world-wide.
A study of place-based food tourism in northeast Iowa communities
Place-based labels and branding (for food)
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/sustainable/
This site for the Center for Sustainable Destinations is devoted to protecting distinctive places through wisely managed tourism and enlightened tourism destination stewardship.
http://www.onencnaturally.org/pages/SD_Place_Based_Economic_Development.html
Place-based economic development in North Carolina develops jobs that cannot be exported from local communities. It focuses on the triple bottom line of economic, cultural, and environmental return on investment. It builds on the unique features of a particular landscape or culture.
http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/flat-or-spikyit-matters-to-pla.php
Discusses the relationship between Thomas Friedman’s notion of an increasingly flat world with Richard Florida’s observation that a lot of productivity is centering in creative places.
http://www.utne.com/1999-05-01/small-is-still-beautiful.aspx
Utne Reader, Place-based enterprises, small is still beautiful. Makes a compelling argument that many small businesses whose owners are invested in a place makes for greater economic resiliency and better social policy. Advocates for the “American belief” that the key to a healthy society is the broadest possible ownership of productive assets. And notes that government policy does not support that principle.
http://www.arc.gov/index.do?nodeId=2516
The Appalachian Regional Commission on asset-based economic development. This approach “builds on existing resources”—they speak of natural, cultural, and structural resources—“to create valued products and services that can be sustained for local benefit.”
http://civictourism.org/index.html
Civic Tourism’s stated mission is to “reframe tourism’s purpose from an end to a means; that is from an economic goal to a tool that can help the public enhance what they love about their place.”
http://www.ontariomcp.ca/files/Cultural%20Tourism%20-%20A%20Place-Based%20Approach_0.pdf
This interesting paper by Steven Thorne describes an approach to cultural tourism which begins in the unique attributes of a destination and interprets and markets a sense of place along with individual cultural experiences.
http://www.torc.on.ca/documents/REVISEDPlaceasProduct_000.pdf
Another paper by Steven Thorne which sketches out how to approach cultural tourism as a place-based (rather than attractions-based) strategy.
http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/83/buildcomm.html
The National Housing Institute discusses building communities from the inside out, meaning using local resources rather than relying on attracting outside resources. They suggest replacing the “needs map” with which communities detail their problems and ask for help, with an “assets map” which represents the knowledge, skills, resources, values, and commitments of individuals, groups, and institutions within a place.
http://www.managingwholes.com/index.php
This site is about holistic management, to create simultaneous personal, social, economic, and ecological benefit. Focuses on practical insights and real-world experience. Includes material on asset-based rather than deficiency-based policy-making.
Based out of Northwestern University, this is the center of the movement for building sustainable communities beginning with assets rather than with deficiencies. The concept is that many campaigns to improve a place begin by listing all the things that are wrong—and the more that is wrong, the more likely a place is to get help. The alternative is to begin with strengths, and build on them.
http://www.senseofplacelab.com/
An archive of projects, essays, and visualizations of “place” to encourage dialogue.
A thought-provoking site devoted to the concept of “emergence,” by which he means the notion that complex systems have a kind of distributed intelligence and the qualities of place desirable in a “fully-realized city” are created naturally by the operation of the system itself.
A website based on the work of architect Charles Moore and devoted to the notion that “good places matter.” Especially interesting is their PlaceNotes project for a different kind of travel guide.
The website of the Project for Public Spaces, an important nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public places that build communities.
http://architecture.uark.edu/487.php
This site (for the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas) discusses an approach to place-based planning which extends the principles of the New Urbanism.