<p>Ispitivani su stavovi lokalne zajednice u vezi sa mogućnostima razvoja turizma kao jedne od opcija u procesu restrukturiranja industrijske oblasti.</p> / <p>We investigated the attitudes of local community related<br />to the possiibities of the tourism development as one of<br />the options in the process of restructuring of industrial<br />regions</p>

In 2015, more than 160.000 people sought asylum in Sweden, twice as many as the year before and a number that far exceeded the Swedish Migration Agency’s estimation. This event tested society’s resilience capacities, as several Swedish institutions’ had to cope and adapt to the situation. By conducting a case study analysis of the local community’s response to the “refugee crisis” in a small Swedish municipality, this thesis aims to explore the pathways of rural resilience in a small Swedish municipality in response to unforeseen events, such as the “refugee crisis”. Drawing from Stenbacka’s (2013) work on rural resilience, this thesis identifies three converging pathways that contributed to forming a resilient rural community: 1) rural ties 2) open spaces for civil society, and 3) building on best practices. The findings illustrate how rural processes of learning and adapting to prevailing challenges help communities cope and adapt to unforeseen events and demonstrate how the prevailing planning discourse can benefit from adding a rural perspective. The findings also suggest a relationship between rural resilience and emotional citizenry, as the pathway to rural resilience enables spaces that unfold feelings of inclusion and belonging through interpersonal encounters.

Community and its ties to locality have been bothering sociologists and researchers since society has abandoned its traditional organization. Many of them considered positive and negative aspects of industrial and later modern society's influence on community sense and human relationships. This thesis will walk the reader through the influential writings on the topic of community, meaning of space and human relationships. Starting with the appreciation of traditional community, through worries about its disappearance, diminishing importance of local ties and ending with complete anonymity and individualization. The empirical part of this thesis brings up results of the research conducted in neighborhoods of Žiar nad Hronom, town in central Slovakia. Findings from the interviews were confronted with ideas of New Urbanism, basically confirming role of architecture design in neighbors' relationships. Intensity, frequency and quality of interaction among neighbors are thus influenced by factors of spatial design, length of residence and busyness of residents. Nature of the relationships among neighbors is far from ideal (as in traditional community) but people look for communities in wider sense, creating networks with people from other social circles than those bounded to a place.

Tourism has significant economic, physical, and social impacts. Goyangyi Island, asmall island situated along the south west coast of Myanmar, has rapidly gainedpopularity among domestic travelers due to its distinct, pristine, and untouchednatural scenery. The development of tourism in the area has provided jobopportunities and increased income for the local community. However, therehas been no previous research conducted on the impact of tourism on thisdestination. Through the qualitative study, perception of local community on thesocio-economic and environmental impact of tourism on the destination wasexplored. The findings show that local people are supportive of the developmentof tourism in their area as they see that there is more benefit than cost to thecommunity. Meanwhile, prevailing political situation, which lacks effectivegovernance and management for the destination, also pose challenges for thelocal community in sustaining their tourism activities. Thestudy also suggests localcommunity to engage and work together with other stakeholders for thesustainable development of the destination.

Yes / In the UK there is no real time retail market, and hence no real time retail electricity pricing. Therefore domestic electricity consumers in the UK pay electricity prices that do not vary from hour to hour, but are rather some kind of average price. Real time pricing information was identified as a barrier to understanding the effectiveness of various incentives and interventions. The key question is whether we can evaluate energy management and renewable energy intervention in the behaviour of customers in real market terms. Currently only behaviour changes with respect to total consumption can be evaluated. Interventions cannot be defined for peak load behaviour. The effectiveness of the introduction of renewable energy is also hard to assess. Therefore, it is hard to justify introducing of renewable and demand side management at local community level, apart from when following government approved schemes, subsidies, and other initiatives. In this paper, a new criteria has been developed to help developers and planners of local residential communities to understand the cost of intervention, in order to evaluate where the load is when the prices are high.

Colombia's protracted civil war between Marxist insurgencies and the state has brought grave consequences for the civilian population and the prospects for constructing a viable political community in the country. With up to 5 million internally displaced people, rampant impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity and human rights and International Humanitarian Law violations, dozens of politicians and countless members of the armed forces linked to paramilitary organizations, along with increasing social injustices and inequalities, Colombia presents a troubling social-political panorama that has led to what is often referred to as a profound social and institutional 'moral crisis'. Much discussion has centred on the question of achieving some degree of minimal moral and political consensus and 'collective conscience' to humanize and slowly transform the conflict at local, regional and national levels. However, the philosophical and political parameters of this discussion have been and continue to be set firmly within variants of the liberal tradition which, it is argued, does not provide the necessary resources for adequately conceptualizing the problem and conceiving the task of addressing conflict, constructing moral consensus, and seeking social and political coexistence. The thesis argues that the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre can provide such resources. MacIntyre provides a convincing account of the philosophical problems that underlie ongoing intractable disagreement and the conflicts it breeds, offering a philosophy that can inform and underpin efforts at social transformation, resistance, and coexistence as well as aiding the necessary task of social scientific research and analysis of the conflict. The thesis analyses the moral dimensions of the conflict in light of MacIntyre's philosophy but also critically explores the adequacy of his politics of local community for the Colombian context. MacIntyre argues that a rational political community can only be constructed through the praxis of local communities engaging in shared moral-political deliberation. Through an empirical case study of a Constituent Assembly process in a rural community that has suffered the impacts of armed conflict for decades, the thesis explores an attempt at constructing peaceful social and political coexistence in light of MacIntyre's moral-sociological framework. / Economic and Social Research Council

This thesis firstly presents the exploration of an engaging user interface and navigation design for local community mobile applications. Furthermore, it seeks for the best suitable tool for both rapid prototyping and production development. The research and content is structured based on design and creation research methodology which is a user-centric and iterative process. To evaluate the suggested interface design and the selected tool, an interactive prototype was developed in this thesis. The results argues that card-based user interface and navigation design has the potential to enhance user engagement. In addition, AngularJS as the selected tool is a suitable framework for rapid prototyping as well as production development.

Politically interested individual citizens often use information and communication technology (ICT) to facilitate and augment their civic and political participation. At the local level, ICT plays an important role for communication and information sharing in order for local groups to create awareness and draw citizens into public deliberation about local issues and concerns. This research examines the interplay of individual and local group level factors in order to better understand the relationship between civic engagement and ICT, especially the internet, by using household survey data from the town of Blacksburg, Virginia and environs in 2005 and 2006. It seeks to reconcile those different levels of analysis relating to the use and impact of the internet on civic engagement in local governance. This study identifies the distinctive influences at both the individual citizen level and the group level by applying a multilevel statistical model (the Hierarchical Linear Model). First, this study found the effects of internal and external political efficacy and community collective efficacy as significant individual level influences on internet use for civic and political purposes. Second, group internet use—which includes new internet technologies—and group political discussion were revealed as key influences on citizens' perspectives on the helpfulness of the internet for civic and political purposes at the group level of analysis. Finally, in multilevel analysis, those recognized group level variables (group internet use and group political discussion and interests) led to positive agreement with the following statements: 1) the internet has helped me feel more connected with people like myself in the local area; 2) the internet has helped me feel more connected with a diversity of people in the local area; and 3) the internet has helped me become more involved in local issues that interest me when taking individual level variables into account. / Ph. D.

The aim of the study was to examine how two newspapers covered the murder of Lisa Holm. The questions examined were: How are Lisa Holm, the perpetrator and the local community represented and what are the differences and similarities between the local news paper, Skaraborgs Allehanda, and the tabloid, Aftonbladet?  We made a discourse analysis of 13 news articles from six different time periodes. The result shows that the victim is represented as an innocent, young girl who is described as good, happy and perfect. The local news paper represents her as a part of the local community and the tabloid is highlighting attributes that people can identify with. The perpetrator is represented as an evil and callous foreign in both newspapers, but Aftonbladet also represents him as a usual person. Skaraborgs Allehanda focus on his guilt of the murder. The local community is represented as a certain group with common emotions who is also the light in the darkness. They share the grief and help each other to process it. The tabloid focus on highlighting the geografic closeness between the people in the articles and the murder. In Aftonbladet, the local community is also described as a dangerous place. Our study shows that the distance between the newspaper and the crime scene affect the representations of the people involved.

Local communities encounter various problems related to the global economic system. Socio-economic challenges arise in these communities due to the disappearance of jobs and the leakage of money, this results in a diminishing of social resilience which in turn means that these communities are hampered in their move towards strategic sustainable development. According to scientific literature, a local currency could be an instrument to overcome this diminishing of social resilience. However, the role of these currencies in strategic sustainable development remains unclear. This study aims to bridge this gap in scientific knowledge. In order to do so, three different case studies of local currencies were conducted by means of semi-structured interviews. This data was compared with the theory on local currencies and assessed through the lens of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. Using this specific framework allows for a unique systems perspective on sustainable development. It becomes clear that local currencies raise awareness around sustainability challenges and incentivise social interactions; however this remains a marginal contribution towards strategic sustainable development. This research leads to the recommendation to explore enhancements to local currencies in order to address these sustainability challenges more adequately.