Knowledge in Small and Medium Sized Towns: Towns as a place of knowledge and diffusion

Faro, Portugal

Refereed Papers

Refereed Papers can be submitted until 15th October 2008, independently from previous abstract presentations.

Deadline for abstract submission of non-referreed papers and posters is 30th October 2008.  All the papers will be evaluated for scientifc publication.

About the Conference

The conference focuses on the possible contribution of towns to rural development by acting as a place of knowledge creation and diffusion in order to avoid processes of decline and promote a geographically balanced and sustainable development in rural areas. An important question related to this is how to take advantage of the potential of towns and rural areas and how to increase their competitiveness, encouraging their advantages over more urbanized areas. Important issues are for example the challenges created by learning and knowledge diffusion in towns and rural areas, the potential of towns in bottom-up policies such as the Leader+ approach, the importance of knowledge in rural areas and the function of towns in rural-urban (knowledge) networks.

For this conference six different fields of interest are defined:

• Networks and Public-private Partnerships
• Local Entrepreneurship and Globalization
• Technological Developments, Innovation and Knowledge Spill-overs
• Urban-rural Interdependencies
• Citizenship and Governance Models
• Future Trends for Knowledge Creation and Diffusion

For more detailed information please see attachment and visit: www.cieo.ualg.pt