Jani Kozina

Jani Kozina
Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts | ZRC SAZU · Anton Melik Geographical Institute

PhD
Interested in social and cultural manifestations of industrial and creative cities.

About

80
Publications
15,387
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
375
Citations
Citations since 2017
49 Research Items
334 Citations
2017201820192020202120222023020406080
2017201820192020202120222023020406080
2017201820192020202120222023020406080
2017201820192020202120222023020406080
Introduction
Interested in two fields of research: (1) urban and regional studies, small and medium-sized towns, polycentric spatial development, urban-rural relationships (2) industrial and post-industrial socio-economic development, cultural and creative industries, creative economy, social innovation, knowledge society
Additional affiliations
December 2016 - present
Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU
Position
  • Assistant Professor
Description
  • Assistant Professor of Cultural Geography and Economic Geography
Education
October 2008 - September 2013
University of Ljubljana
Field of study
  • Geography
October 2003 - September 2008
University of Ljubljana
Field of study
  • Geography

Publications

Publications (80)
Chapter
Full-text available
The chapter analyses the impacts of urban gardening on sustainability and focuses on its generally neglected social aspects rather than the environmental or economic components. It is based on a study of 15 non-allotment urban gardens from Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, highlighting the perspectives of often overlook...
Article
Full-text available
Financiranje kulturnih dejavnosti na državni ravni je bilo v zadnjih letih v Sloveniji razmeroma dobro preučeno. Kljub temu pa se dosedanje raziskave niso ukvarjale z vprašanjem lokalnega in regionalnega razvoja. Namen članka je prikazati prostorske vidike financiranja kulturnih dejavnosti iz javnih sredstev Republike Slovenije v obdobju 2007–2018....
Book
Full-text available
Youth as a relevant group for the development of smaller industrial towns is barely a topic of current discussions. Their population dynamics, modern lifestyles, and complex everyday needs are a special challenge for planners. The catalogue presents ten successful stories from Austria and Slovenia of how to make industrial towns a better place for...
Book
Full-text available
Youth as a relevant group for the development of smaller industrial towns is barely a topic of current discussions. Their population dynamics, modern lifestyles, and complex everyday needs are a special challenge for planners. The catalogue presents ten successful stories from Austria and Slovenia of how to make industrial towns a better place for...
Book
Full-text available
Youth out-migration and demographic changes pose significant development challenges in many regions across Europe. However, the topic of youth out-migration has hardly been discussed in the literature so far, revealing a knowledge gap that exists on both an academic and a practical, applied policy level. Thus, the YOUIND project (‘Youth in industri...
Article
Full-text available
This article examines the contemporary industrial semiotic landscape in the town of Velenje, Slovenia, to determine the (positive or negative) collective imaginaries and discourses about industry in the local community. To this end, the semiotic landscape is mapped for signs and symbols of past and present industry, 33 randomly selected short inter...
Article
Full-text available
Industrial towns are often framed as marginalized and less innovative compared with service-oriented urban agglomerations. Their specific trajectories create both opportunities and constraints for new concepts, such as social innovation. However, little is known about their innovative capacity in relation to societal and cultural norms and social c...
Article
Full-text available
This report is the result of the first phase of the SNF Project on Industrial Towns titled "Places that don't matter? Socioeconomic transformation of industrial towns in Switzerland and Slovenia", SNF grant number 192764. The report explores industrial transformation in small-and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) using six case-study towns-namely Biel/Bie...
Article
Full-text available
In the last two decades, the creative city agenda has evolved into a predominantly neoliberal policy instrument, which seems to hide rather than reduce urban inequalities characterised by gentrification, unaffordability, precariousness, and segregation. Scholars have only recently started to search for alternatives for understanding and developing...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This document explores the issue of youth outmigration and demographic change in the context of industrial small and medium-sized towns in Central Europe. It maps out the general status of research in this field, highlighting an existing knowledge gap. The text also analyses two case studies from Slovenia and Austria, the town of Idrija and the reg...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This document provides a scientific background on the topic of youth outmigration from industrial towns and regions. The empirical work encompassed a systematic review of 20 peer-reviewed articles dealing with youth challenges in industrial urban and regional settings. The focus was on eight thematic priorities, identified on the basis of internati...
Article
Full-text available
The socioeconomic performance of industrial small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) in comparison to that of non-industrial SMSTs, is subject to evaluation in this paper, to see if the presence of industry has adverse effects on socioeconomic factors. We studied 32 variables accounting for dimensions of socioeconomic performance in Slovenian SMSTs and...
Book
Full-text available
Po gospodarskih kazalnikih ima Velenje uspešno, izvozno usmerjeno gospodarstvo z visoko dodano vrednostjo na zaposlenega. A kot vsa industrijska mesta v Evropi, je Velenje zelo ranljivo. Ta knjiga želi osvetliti vidike preobrazbe Velenja v preteklosti, sedanjosti in prihodnosti ter pripraviti pregled razvojnih dejavnikov Velenja. Poudarek je na dru...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The goal of this presentation is to add new evidence on the link between industrialism and social innovations in traditional industrial communities. We employ a broad concept of industrial culture and try to establish its influence to present-day social innovations. First, we present the case study of Velenje, Slovenia. This is a peripheral industr...
Chapter
Urban gardening as an activity and a form of land use is neglected in Slovene urban policy. Only few cities a s part of their strategic planning and development pay particular attention to it. Among them is Velenje, which was planned as a »garden city« and has effectively woven green space and gardening into its development frame since its inceptio...
Chapter
Velenje was founded on the grounds of intense industrialization and stressed socialist ideology. Although this combination does not (rightly) justify the concerns of backwardness and decline, the city in many respects defies this view. The purpose of the paper is to outline Velenje’s social values in relation to industrial culture and socialist nos...
Article
Full-text available
Načrtovanje in izvedba anketne raziskave sta zelo kompleksna procesa. Spremljajo ju številni izzivi, ki pomembno vplivajo na uspešnost anketne raziskave. To velja tudi za samoanketiranje, kjer proces odgovarjanja poteka brez prisotnosti anketarja. Namen prispevka je osvetliti izbrane, doslej slabše raziskane metodološke vidike samoanketiranja: izbo...
Chapter
As of January 1, 2017, Slovenia had a population of 2,066,880. Even though only 5% of the population still makes a living with agriculture, half of the population is rural. Only the capital city of Ljubljana has a population of more than 100,000. During recent decades, suburbanization has been more characteristic than urbanization. The population i...
Chapter
Full-text available
The aim of the chapter is to assess how post-socialist cities and towns encourage the involvement of their citizens into decision-making outside electoral procedures. It presents an analysis of the structures, mechanisms, and specificities related to participatory planning in five municipalities of Central and Eastern Europe: Prague 9 (Czech Republ...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this paper is to make a typology of industrial towns according to their economic performance and to establish place-specific local factors influencing the typology and their territorial distribution. We collected 15 indicators of economic performance for 23 small industrial towns in Slovenia, and with the method of Principle Component An...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of the article was to evaluate the social sustainability of Velenje, which falls into the category of small industrial towns on the European scale. The evaluation was done by using Social Sustainability Framework, an established tool that was adjusted to the local context. It was determined that Velenje is a town with a high level of so...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This report documents a participatory process undertaken to generate context-specific social innovations in five industrial towns in Europe. It forms part of Bright Future, a European research project in association with JPI Urban Europe which is working with people in small and medium- sized industrial towns in Europe to explore their socio-econom...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This report is the final result of the AgriGo4Cities project and the second part of a two-stage evaluation process. The ex-ante evaluation assessed the pre-project effectiveness of participatory urban agriculture in 2017, while the current ex-post evaluation serves to assess the end-project effectiveness of participatory urban agriculture in 2019....
Article
Full-text available
This paper addresses the key question as to what matters more in understanding the residential location of the creative class in Slovenia: the city-region or the urban-rural framework? Our analysis shows that differences in residential concentrations of the creative class vary more within city-regions (on an urban-rural framework) than between city...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and conceptual introduction for the Special Issue on the role of green creative environments in sustainable urban and regional development. The idea is based on the assumption that concepts of creativity mostly address economic issues and to a lesser extent social issues, while green concepts predom...
Book
Full-text available
This publication is the result of a more than two years long learning process during which the eleven partners from eight countries worked together to develop and test a methodology for participatory urban agriculture. They did this to answer complex challenges and needs: The partnership tried to reduce the gap in trust between public administratio...
Book
Full-text available
The book presents urban agriculture as an innovative and effective tool for achieving wider social effects regarding the participation in decision-making processes, social inclusion, and sustainable urban development. We have determined that urban agriculture contributes to improved physical and mental health, encourages the growth of inclusive com...
Article
Full-text available
The creative economy as an alternative pathway for industrial decline was first introduced into practice in metropolitan regions of the Global North. Since then, it has gradually spread out to other highly urbanized areas of the Global South and transitional areas such as post-socialist European countries. Numerous studies tried to explain structur...
Book
Full-text available
The Good Practices Catalogue of Participatory Urban Agriculture addresses some of the main challenges related to governance systems within the Danube Region that can be associated with the decreasing capacities of public authorities to incorporate a participatory approach into planning. It offers concrete lessons on how to enhance public services,...
Presentation
Full-text available
Presentation at the 5th Global Conference on Economic Geography, which was held in Cologne from the 24th-27th of July 2018. This presentation is an analysis of industrial symbols (semiotics) and multiple narratives on industrial identity, culture and values in a industrial town (Velenje, Slovenia). The main questions are: What happens to the indus...
Article
Full-text available
This article aims to study and clearly define the terms public good, common-pool resources, and the commons. Using path dependency analysis, interviews, and workshops among the general public and experts, we highlight the perception of public goods and the commons in Slovenia as a transitional society. The analysis reveals that the general public's...
Article
Full-text available
Namen prispevka je proučiti in jasno opredeliti pojme javno dobro, skupni viri in skupno. V članku smo na podlagi prostorsko-časovne analize, intervjujev in delavnic med splošno in strokovno javnostjo osvetlili dojemanje javnega dobra in skupnega v Sloveniji kot tranzicijski družbi. Analiza je pokazala, da na razumevanje teh pojmov med splošno javn...
Article
Full-text available
The article aims to examine the dynamics of the spatial distribution of cultural workers at various spatial scales in Slovenia. The dispersion of cultural workers is studied using a quantitative analysis of their place of residence and work. The results show the level of cultural agglomeration at the regional scale corresponds proportionally to the...
Technical Report
Full-text available
To answer the question of what is the dominant narrative in the industrial town of Velenje, Slovenia, we headed there and observed the physical ‘landscape’, cultural exhibitions, places of tourist and cultural consumption. Furthermore, we observed two auxiliary semiotic elements: official symbols of the Municipality and geographical names (street n...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of the article is to present the key demographic characteristics of the creative labour force in Slovenia and bring attention to some opportunities for a more effective activation of the creative potential. We analysed data from the Statistical Register of Employment. The results indicate that creative workers in Slovenia are not only h...
Book
Full-text available
Agricultural production is not "the antithesis of the city", but an integral urban activity without which cities could not exist. Urban agriculture represents a practice that stretches back to the earliest cities. It gained a new momentum during the period of industrialisation when millions of people left their farms in the countryside in order to...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This report presents the results of the first part of the European comparative project Bright future for black towns: Reinventing European industrial towns and challenging dominant post-industrial discourses, funded by JPI Urban Europe. The main goal of this project is to go beyond economy-driven post-industrial narratives, which are primarily suit...
Technical Report
Full-text available
This report is the Slovenian national analysis of small and medium sized industrial towns (SMITs). It is a descriptive quantitative analysis, where we tried to answer on basic research questions from the BRIGHT FUTURE project. The analysis is based on the collection of 34 variables explaining employment, economic performance, demographic trajectori...
Presentation
Full-text available
State of the art and a presentation of the BRIGHT FUTURE project at the Changing cities conference III in Syros Greece
Chapter
The concept of creativity has become a core and inevitable issue in crucial current discussions about economic development, competitiveness, social cohesion, urban regeneration, and wellbeing. Even though it has spread globally in the last two decades, the discussions are still highly concentrated on a) developed countries of the western world and...
Chapter
Places of artistic production and consumption exist in a great variety of spatial forms and have received significant attention in recent decades, as many cities and towns turned to the arts as a substitute for the declining industrial base. A number of studies examined the agglomeration perspectives of the cultural and creative sector, but they ra...
Article
Full-text available
This article presents central settlements in Slovenia and their main characteristics in 2016. We defined central settlements based on services of general interest and the population of an individual settlement, and developed the analysis further by using competitiveness indicators. We defined 360 central settlements at six levels of centrality, amo...
Article
Full-text available
Triglav National Park is the only national park (NP) in Slovenia. Its protection measures have always been publicly disputed and its impact questioned. This paper identifies and assesses the impact of the park on regional development. It compares two kinds of data: the municipal development coefficient based on statistical data and residents’ attit...
Chapter
The concept of creativity has become an important issue in contemporary discussions about economic development, competitiveness and social cohesion. Current debates are still highly concentrated on metropolitan urban areas. But there have been few studies that analysed the submetropolitan level, where another type of core–periphery relations is pre...
Book
Full-text available
The book attempts to answer two key questions: where do creative people reside in Slovenia and why do they choose to live there. The findings show that creative people in Slovenia adhere to a similar percentage of the work force as in other highly developed countries; this is also the occupational group that has increased in number the most compare...
Presentation
Full-text available
Presentation of the analysis of the Slovenian urban system, focusing on two elements: its cohesiveness and its competitiveness. Key findings include consequences of the past „polycentric“ spatial policy on all levels. Presentation was carried out at the RSA Annual Conference in Graz, Austria (april 2016).
Article
Full-text available
This article assesses the ways current legislative provisions are affecting the Slovenian linguistic landscape. The authors focus on issues concerning the use of Slovenian in the naming of companies, legal entities, and natural persons operating registered businesses. It is pointed out that the relevant provisions are not necessarily in accordance...
Article
Full-text available
The central part of the article focuses on the geographical imagination of landscapes, depicted in the photographs. The research stems from the assumption that photographs play an important role in shaping and preserving individual and collective imagination of a landscape and that geography as a science is closely connected to visual representatio...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Creativity is gaining in importance as a prerequisite of economic development in the developed world, because it leads to innovation, technological and business improvements, and an added competitiveness. In the last fifteen years, more and more cities and regions have striven to accelerate the rate of their economic development and regeneration st...
Chapter
Full-text available
Rapid technological development, brought on and prompted by processes like industrialization, tertiarisation, urbanization, and globalization, has tended to increase the differences between areas in the Western world in terms of their level of social-economic development. Two groups of areas have formed: central and peripheral areas. These kinds of...
Chapter
Full-text available
Pomurje je regija, ki se po različnih značilnostih precej razlikuje od ostalih območij Slovenije. V konceptu regionalnega razvoja se jo pogosto omenja kot regijo z najizrazitejšimi družbenogospodarskimi problemi. V prispevku želimo na podlagi novejših empiričnih spoznanj v zvezi z delavskimi in bivanjskimi značilnostmi delovno aktivnega prebivalstv...
Article
Travel lectures represent one of the fundamental and the widest activities of Ljubljana Geographical Society since its inception. During the past 30 years there have been organized almost 200 travelogues in which close to 100 countries were presented to geographers, and geography and travel enthusiasts. The paper presents some basic characteristics...
Article
Full-text available
Selitve so kompleksen globalen pojav, s katerim se srečujejo praktično vse države sveta. Ljudje so se zaradi različnih dejavnikov odbijanja in privlačenja (push-pull teorija) vedno selili. V osnovi selitve delimo na priselitve in odselitve. Oba procesa za seboj navadno potegneta številne posledice tako na individualni osebnostni kot na kolektivni d...
Article
Full-text available
The article presents the basic temporal and spatial characteristics of the migration of inhabitants in creative occupations in Slovenia. While it has been already stated that educated and more creative workforce has been moving out of the country recently and that incoming migrants are mostly low-skilled workers from the former Yugoslavian republic...
Book
Full-text available
The rural areas of Europe are experiencing turbulent times. They are still largely dependent on traditional economic activities (exploiting natural resources, agriculture, forestry, etc.), which remain the main source of income and employment opportunities. They are left vulnerable in these times of climate instability and are often dependent on fi...
Chapter
Full-text available
In the years prior to joining the European Union and in particular afterwards the Slovenia has shown positive trends in economic development that have with the emergence of the global economic crisis completely decreased. There has been often argued that the main reason for this situation lays in structural imbalances, which were not addressed in t...
Technical Report
Full-text available
A study was prepared for the international project TRADOMO (European Teritorial Cooperation, Cross-border Cooperation Slovenia-Italy). Based on the geodemographic and traffic analysis there was prepared a proposal for new cross-border bus connections.
Chapter
Full-text available
Creativity is getting more and more important on the way to the knowledge society. The recent development paradigms increasingly mention it as a key driver of economic growth and development of cities, regions and the advanced market economies in general. There is a lot of discussion about creativity in relation to the people with a creative occupa...
Book
Full-text available
Studies on the knowledge society and regional innovation systems and their contribution to economic growth are already well established in research literature. This book is based on a geographical analysis of connections between technological knowledge, competitiveness factors, and economic effects. It proceeds from the hypothesis that economic eff...
Article
Full-text available
The paper presents the meaning of transport for shaping space and region as one of the most significant spatial structures on the Earth's surface. After the theoretical conceptualization of transport as a factor for shaping space and verifying of its importance for the shaping of spatial development of Slovenia, in theory we did the same for region...
Article
Full-text available
The article deals with the transport accessibility of regional centres in Slovenia, which was determined with the analytical model of transport accessibility. In this case the accessibility was defined as the travel time which the inhabitants of Slovene settlements spend driving their cars to the nearest regional centre. The results show areas of v...
Article
Full-text available
The paper presents the meaning of transport for shaping space and region as one of the most significant spatial structures on the Earth’s surface. After the theoretical conceptualization of transport as a factor for shaping space and verifying of its importance for the shaping of spatial development of Slovenia, in theory we did the same for region...
Article
Full-text available
The article deals with spatial accessibility to public transport stops in Ljubljana. To this end, we determined accessibility through two different methods (buffer analysis and the actual distance analysis), based on the use of geographical information systems. A comparison of the usefulness and reliability of both methods lies at the heart of read...
Book
Full-text available
Transport accessibility to jobs, education, supply, and public services, which are usually most concentrated in large regional centers, has an impact on lower economic costs (savings in time and energy consumption), greater social justice (better and more equal access to jobs and education), and lower pressures on the environment (reduction of harm...
Chapter
Full-text available
The article presents the main characteristics of transport accessibility in the Municipality of Idrija resulting from its location, natural conditions, transport infrastructure, and traffic volume. This was used as a basis to visualize possibilities for further transport development and to determine the strengths and weaknesses affecting the munici...
Chapter
Full-text available
The article discusses the role of traffic accessibility in the strategic planning of spatial development of Slo- venia on regional and interregional level, as is evident from the spatial strategic documents. To this end, we analyzed and compared three basic programming documents, the Strategy of Regional Development of Slovenia, the Strategy of Spa...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Goričko Landscape Park (Krajinski park Goričko – KP Goričko) was established in 2003 and is one of the youngest and covering an area of 462 km2 makes it one of the biggest protected areas in Slovenia. A survey among the local people and tourists was carried out in KPG. Potentials for development and sustainable development, basing on the results of...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The formation of provinces or the regionalization of Slovenia is an important step towards a more unanimous regional development and decentralization, both of which represent a growing urge in Slovenia. In doing so, it is extremely important to choose and apply the right criteria for regionalization. According to many, traffic accessibility belongs...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this article is to expose the ways of recognizing potentials for development in thefollowing selected protected areas: Triglav National Park (TNP), Goričko Landscape Park(KPG) and Logarska dolina Landscape Park (KPLD). Basing our results on a survey, whichwas carried out among locals and tourists, we found out that the ways in which peop...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
GIS-tools are commonly used for spatial analyses of vector and raster datasets. The presented land use changes analysis bases on old analogue (sheets of paper) and metrically poor spatial data layers. Historical maps are commonly the most important database for various spatial analyses of the land use as well as historical landscapes, urban develop...

Network

Cited By

Projects

Projects (9)
Project
Dear colleagues, there is a growing recognition that traditional development strategies and EU policies have often failed to address the challenges faced by industrial towns and regions (Capello & Cerisola, 2022), which are increasingly framed as sites of socio-economic marginalisation and political discontent (Rodríguez-Pose 2018). Oddly enough, the concept of ‘exclusion’ is often applied to whole ‘regions’, regardless of who (of its inhabitants) is excluded and in which way (MacKinnon et al. 2022). Much in line with this observation, most of recent literature on the transformation processes of old industrialised regions has focused on the role of leadership and ‘agents of change’, identifying and analysing network processes of key decision-makers and their (top-down) influence on such processes (e.g. Beer et al, 2019; Grillisch & Sotarauta, 2020). It thereby ignores to a great extent the needs and challenges of different groups within the transformation processes, from which different views, perspectives and values emerge that form the core of the under-researched informal institutions (Rodríguez-Pose, 2020). In this session, we would like to broaden the perspective of firm- and system-level ‘agents of change’ by inviting contributions formulating a ‘people-centred approach’, investigating the role and perspective of civil society, everyday activism and ‘ordinary people’ including vulnerable and marginalised groups, such as women, elderly, youth, NEET, minorities, and migrants (e.g. Nayak, 2006; Helgesen et al., 2013; Nared et al., 2013). These groups are normally ignored and under-represented in the academic debate on transformation processes (Hadjimichalis & Hudson, 2006), albeit they are usually affected most by processes of economic and social transformation and play a particularly important role in making industrial towns ‘better places’ to work, live, and play in. By fostering this ‘bottom-up’ perspective on urban and regional development, the session strives to for better understanding of the social and cultural sphere of industrial towns and regions, which form the basis of economic development (Hadjimichalis & Hudson,2016). Papers addressing the following questions are welcome: – What ‘people-centred approaches’ exist in analysing development trajectories of industrial towns and regions? – What concepts exist in regard to the role of civil society and ‘ordinary people’ in the transformation of industrial towns and regions? – Which methodological approaches exist to map out perspectives of vulnerable and marginalised groups in the transformation of industrial towns and regions? – What are the perspectives and narratives of ‘ordinary people’ and marginalised groups on transformation processes of industrial towns and regions? – How do ‘ordinary people’ and marginalised groups shape and contribute to socio-economic development in industrial towns and regions? – What kind of policies are designed and needed in for the participation of marginalised groups in industrial towns and regions? – How do and could ‘ordinary people’ and marginalised groups contribute to different path creations and path renewals in industrial towns and regions? These are just some examples of the questions that could be addressed in this session. The session invites contributions from the field of urban and regional planning, inclusive planning approaches, participation studies, governance and urban and regional development. Any other papers addressing socio-cultural notion of industrial towns and regions in connection to marginalised groups are also welcome. Please submit proposals for papers in the form of a 250-word abstract (text only) through the RSA conference portal by 28st February 2023. Proposals will be considered by the Conference Program Committee against the criteria of originality, interest and subject balance. Hope to see you in Ljubljana, Jani Kozina (ZRC-SAZU) and Jörn Harfst (University of Graz)
Project
The industrial sector accounts for a large share of employment in small and medium-sized towns (SMSTs) (see Kotzeva et al., 2016). The academic literature tends, however, to focus on industrial transformation in well-performing regions and large urban centres; making policy recommendations derived from such “best-practice models” ill-adapted to SMSTs’ contexts (see Florida et al., 2017; Miörner & Trippl, 2019). Researchers are increasingly interested in SMSTs to provide policymakers with contextualised place-based policies (see Servillo et al., 2014). Additional research must be conducted to understand how industrial and socio-institutional transformation plays out in SMSTs. Using a comparative approach, we examine industrial and socio-institutional transformation in six industrial towns in Switzerland and Slovenia. The research methodology is based on in-depth comparative case-study approaches and participatory workshops to identify the processes behind industrial and socio-institutional transformation in SMSTs. The research project will attempt to provide an explanation to favour community-level responses when tackling industrial and socio-institutional transformation and mitigate increasing populist resentment from citizens in SMSTs who “feel that they don’t matter” compared with citizens in large urban centres (Rodríguez-Pose, 2018).
Project
YOUIND deals with the issue of youth outmigration from peripheral industrial towns and regions from an industrial-cultural perspective. Central Europe is characterized by a relatively large number of industrial enterprises, which are often located in small and medium-sized towns. These places are facing new challenges, as new trends (e.g. Industry 4.0), increasingly demand for new, highly skilled workers. Nevertheless, especially younger people do not see these regions as attractive and leave, rarely to return. These developments do not only threaten industry, but also the socio-economic development of entire regions. To address this largely neglected issue, the YOUIND partnership combines academic and regional knowledge to raise institutional capacities. The project seeks to use this specific industrial culture of place as a potential for strengthening the institutional capacity on youth outmigration in order to link young people closer to their region. The aim is to promote social innovation and improve institutional capacities through pilot actions and long-term action planning. The partnership will also translate project findings to transnational policy recommendations, distributing knowledge on emerging topic. The YOUIND project is co-financed by ERDF via the SI-AT-crossborder programme of the European Union (INTERREG A, SI-AT, 2013-2020).