Creative Rural Economy & Cultural Mapping

Drs. Bob Maher and Greg Baeker conducted a one-day Workshop 29 April 2010 in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the Creative Rural Economy and Cultural Mapping. The event was supported by the Annapolis Royal 300th Group, Select Nova Scotia, AGRG (the Applied Geomatics Research Group), AuthentiCity, and HAL Consulting.

The Workshop Theme was "Rediscovering the Wealth of Places". The old economic model of attracting large businesses to create rural wealth gives your community NO competitive advantage. Quality of PLACE is what truly counts. It attracts people then businesses. Discover and map what cultural assets you have in your area, tell engaging stories about your past and present, and work together to envisage your future and brand your community. Then you have competitive advantage.

To illustrate their points, Greg Baeker used the success of Prince Edward County in Ontario as his principal case study while Bob Maher presented recent work at AGRG with GPS track-stick technology, mobile- and web- GIS, and symposium excerpts from the MIT Senseable Cities Lab.

How do we transfer the success and experience in Prince Edward County, Ontario, to rural Nova Scotia? How do we get communities working together on a common cultural mapping project? How do we apply the latest GIS and mapping tools and research to help improve our "quality of place" and attract tourists, visitors and businesses to a rural setting?

Perhaps we need a "culture team", regular educational sessions and involvement of an even larger cross-section of the region to build vibrant rural communities.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Cultural Mapping
• Creative Rural Economy
• CRE
• GIS
• Geographic Information Systems
• Annapolis Royal
• Nova Scotia
• Prince Edward County
• Tours4Geeks
• MIT
• community mapping
• cultural planning