Post by Steve Millington

Reporting from Regional Studies Association second session on foundational and local economies. Anne Green (City-REDI, University of Birmingham) shows local authorities frequently adopt a "pick and mix" approach to alternative frameworks, overlapping the Foundational Economy, Inclusive Growth, Community Wealth Building, the Wellbeing Economy, and Doughnut Economics. While these concepts are rhetorically endorsed, policy favours high-growth sectors. This leaves the everyday economy starved of investment and vulnerable to technological displacement. To bridge this gap, there are five key Policy Levers that place leaders must activate: * Exploiting procurement and social value within anchor-institutions * Partnering with education to deliver sector-specific training that fosters in-work progression. * Prioritising high street renewal, social infrastructure, and community asset transfers. * Establishing everyday-economy indicators that hold parity with conventional growth metrics. * Deploying devolved powers, employment standards, and targeted subsidies to improve job quality. However, a systemic lack of alignment, capacity, and incentives across prevents these levers from being fully utilised. The Horizon Europe Re-Place project (Mario Vale et al. IGOT-ULisboa - Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território) exposes a critical trap: when a "left-behind" place successfully reverses depopulation through in-migration, that recovery acts as a severe stress test. If rigid municipal budgets and the "projectification" of short-term grant funding prevent essential services and housing from scaling, "turnaround" quickly mutates into infrastructure pressure and social friction. Mathew Gilmour-Taylor (Nottingham Trent University) argues effective place-based intervention requires deep, disaggregated local knowledge. The multi-university Collaboratory Research Hub provides a blueprint for scalable co-production. By embedding researchers within civic-academic teams and letting local practitioners and residents dictate the research agenda, they bypass traditional academic gatekeeping to deliver the exact evidence base local authorities need to justify foundational interventions. Olav Veldhuizen (Eur. Regional Affairs Consultants (Erac) B.V.) argues brain drain and peripheralisation are policy-produced, not inevitable. To operationalise the EU’s focus on the "freedom to stay," we must upgrade foundational work. By intentionally directing innovation, workforce planning, and AI adoption into local services, construction, and care, we can break low-wage equilibria and allow people the choice to remain. In summary, regional resilience cannot be built on a crumbling everyday infrastructure. If we want to support vital and viable places, we must move past fragmented strategy. Place leaders must advocate for structural, long-term funding models that actively invest in, protect, and upgrade the foundational economy. Institute of Place Management