POSTS

The Global Workshop & Conference on Sustainable Mountain Areas: MOUNTAINS 2018

Laurence Moss (IAMC's President) will participate in MOUNTAINS 2018 in Novo Friburgo, Brazil (10-14 December 2018). In the workshop's round table, he will discuss the impacts of amenity migrants on local agriculture and farming, and give a conference plenary address "Impacts and Implications of Continuing Quality of Life Migration to Mountain Environs." 

Posted 25 November 2018

New IAMC Director 

In September 2018, Michael Bartos (Charles University Faculty of Humanities, Prague, Czech Republic) accepted IAMC's invitation to join its Board of Directors. Dr. Bartos is a European pioneer in rural amenity migration research beginning in early 1990s and continuing until today. 

Posted 1 October 2018

Recent Publications by David Matarrita-Cascante

Matarrita-Cascante, D. (2017) Moving the amenity migration literature forward: Understanding community level factors associated with positive outcomes after amenity-driven change. Journal of Rural Studies 53: 26-34.

Matarrita-Cascante, D., Zunio, H. and Sagner-Tapia, J. (2017) Amenity/Lifestyle Migration in the Chilean Andes: Understanding the views of "The Other" and its affects on integrated community development. Sustainability 9: 16-19.

Posted 29 January 2018

IAMC's New Headquarters

In August 2017 IAMC moved its primary office to Santa Fe, NM, USA from Kaslo, BC, Canada.

Posted 29 January 2018

David Matarrita (IAMC Director) continues his research in Latin America

     Dr. David  Matarrita-Cascante, one of IAMC's Directors, is on a Fulbright Foundation funded sabbatical Sept - Dec, 2016 at University de la Frontera, Temuco, Chile. David's home base is the Dept. of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University. In Chile he is studying a small rural mountain community that is experiencing an aggressive influx of amenity migrants, principally coming from the country's capital city, Santiago. See his recent Chapter 4 in Global Amenity Migration

Posted 6 Oct 2016

Available for Download

      Introduction & Chapter 1 of the New Ecology Press' Global Amenity Migration: Transforming Rural Culture, Economy & Landscape book's are now available for at amenitymigration.org/publications.

Posted 23 Sept 2016

Continuing Longitudinal Studies of Amenity-led Change in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

     In January 2017 Laurence & Romella will return to northern New Mexico to continue with the IAMC's longitudinal study of amenity-led change in Santa Fe, New Mexico and its surrounding area. In this fieldwork they will focus on arts & cultural effects and management. An objective is to obtain information about the rural and rurban condition, as most such knowledge to date is about the arts & cultural component of urban economies.

Posted 23 Sept 2016

Romella Glorioso and Laurence Moss begin two new research projects

     Last year Romella started a research project "Harmonizing Leisure and Working Landscapes." The objective is better understanding and reducing community tensions emanating from competing land uses in the North Kootenay Lake region (southeast BC, Canada) through improving knowledge about and then harmonizing environmental and socio-economic perspectives, especially for those residents dependent on extractive and amenity-based economies and associated life ways. A regional household survey will be undertaken in Winter 2017.

      In autumn of 2016 Laurence continued with a study in the remote North Kootenay Lake bioregion (BC, Canada) on motivations, success and failure of knowledge-intensive enterprises and their impacts on local political-economy and culture.

Posted 1 Sept 2016

OLDER POSTS

      In January 2015, Laurence and Romella were guests of Filozoeska Faculteta, Department of Geography, University of Ljubjana, Slovenia, hosted by professor Barbara Lampič. They discussed with faculty members transforming rural communities and landscapes, and undertook amenity migration field trips in the Bled area of the Julian Alps and the Adriatic coast. Subsequently, they gave a departmental lecture on amenity-led change and development that attracted some 60 undergraduate and graduate students.

      In December 2014, while serving as Visiting Professor at the University of Economics-Prague, Romella Glorioso taught a block course on multiple futures analysis and planning in the Faculty of Management. Transforming rural societies and economies were used as case studies. Students from this senior and graduate course came from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Russia. Subsequently, Laurence and Romella met with Czech colleagues for discussions on amenity migration research and policy in Central and Eastern Europe.

Posted 11 February 2015

     Laurence Moss has been appointed a Distinguished Adjunct Faculty at the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok.

Posted 05 February 2015

     Mid December 2014, Romella Glorioso & Laurence Moss led a seminar on multiple scenario strategic analysis research and public policy crafting methodology at UNIDO headquarters (Vienna, Austria) in the context of especially green economic based diversification in poor countries and regions.

Posted 15 January 2015



Rapid Amenity Migration Assessment

      In early September Laurence Moss and Skip Luken* were in mid-coast Maine, USA to update the IAMC's Rapid Amenity Migration Assessment (RAMA) protocols. This tool is now available for smaller rural communities that want to know more about their amenity migration. An assessment takes 3 to 4 days of field work and 1 to 2 days of data analysis by IAMC's staff, depending on local conditions.

      * "Skip" Ralph Luken is an Environmental Economist (Ph.D., University of Michigan - Ann Arbor) and a Director of IAMC. He is a multi-local resident of Vienna, Austria, Alexandria, Virginia and Belfast, Maine, USA.

Posted 01 October 2014

British Columbia, Canada 8th Biennial Rural Communities Summit: 13-15/06/2014

       This was an important gathering of local & regional policy &  decision-makers, civil servants & concerned citizens from throughout BC to focus on change & development opportunities and issues affecting their transforming rural communities. It included presentations, workshops & lots of time for discussion.

       Laurence Moss was a member of Summit steering committee & Romella Glorioso & he presented their recent review of amenity migration's impacts on "rurality" around the world, focusing on lessons learned, best & worst practices. Also, they suggested what this knowledge can mean for BC's changing rural communities & their ecologies.

Professor Gundars Rudzitis, Sustainability Speaker Series at the Monteray Institute of International Studies: 12/03/2014

Development Theory and Reality: The Latvian Example

     Conventional development theory is “under-developed” in that it leaves out many of the important facets of life.  This has become more apparent with arguments for a more sustainable development approach.  Conventional development theory embraces the myth of limitlessness, in the process ignoring the role of nature, assuming that nature, or the environment is limitless. However, the assumption that there are no limits on nature is an illusion, a fantasy with which we continue to live even as various ecologists, ecological economists, geographers, poets, political scientists, philosophers and others try to impress upon us the physical limits of our planet, limits we must honor if we are to  survive. However, most development “experts” ignore limits, and growth-mania generally prevails as a dominant ideology in Western culture. There is a need to move in the direction of alternative culturally place-specific development models that go beyond the simplistic development models in use today.  Such geographically based theory can also lead to more democratic and socially just outcomes.

     I use the example of the Baltic countries, and in particular Latvia, to demonstrate both the potential and limitations of conventional development theory within a specific cultural and historical context.  I focus on Latvia because I have spent considerable time there, and in Estonia and Lithuania, since they declared independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.  I have witnessed the various phases of Latvia’s transitions as it welcomed and implemented various development policies impressed on it by the “experts.”  The outcome has not been pretty to watch.  I will contrast the approach Latvia and other countries have taken with an alternative approach, or “the road not taken.”  I will draw upon the earlier work of various people, ranging from economist Thorstein Veblen to philosopher Simone Weil and others to argue that we need to move away from the assumption that our objective is to maximize utility towards an approach that sustains cultures and community.  I will end with some examples of societies and cultures that are trying to take “another” road on the development highway.

Professor Gundars Rudzitis at the University of Chicago & Portland State University

      Gundars Rudzitis, Professor Emeritus (University of Idaho) recently conducted graduate/faculty seminars related to his contributions in the new book GLOBAL AMENITY MIGRATION: Transforming Rural Culture, Economy & Landscape. His seminar presentation, "Towards A Theory of Place in the American West" was at the Economics Department of the University of Chicago, while at the Portland State University Geography Department he discussed "Wilderness and the Role of Public Goods in the American West".

Posted 11 February 2014

Romella Glorioso Delivers a Lecture on Amenity Migration and Climate Change at the University of Innsbruck: 10/2013

      The lecture and seminar for first year graduate students in the Department of Geography focused on increasing awareness and understanding of the nature and scope of amenity migration, particularly in mountain ecologies. More particularly it discussed this in-migration as related to rapid changing climate. Based on two decades of research & professional planning practice, it also outlined how the use of scenario planning can provide insights and method for the management of this complex phenomenon.

 

Romella Glorioso Delivers a Lecture at the University of the Philippines: 03/2013

     Especially since the declaration of Chapter 13 Agenda 21 Sustainable Mountain Development, policy analysts and decision makers around the world seem to agree that amenity-led mountain urbanization has become a major issue in sustaining mountain ecosystems and called for formulation of new guidelines on this urbanization, one that includes the particular complexity and fragility of mountain environments.

      An amenity migration perspective is beginning to be used by mountain communities, including Baguio in the Philippines. Some people consider this migration an extension of the power of metropolitan centres, others as the diffusion of urban specialization with a new amalgam of earlier rural and urban life ways. Both are likely parts of a larger, dynamic and variegated pattern.  

     Adjustment to these changes is creating a range of challenges: affordability of housing, public services and infrastructure; shifting population and wealth profiles within a region; reduced access to amenities that were previously considered local; loss of valued landscape and habitat and changes in community values & behaviour, local governance issues and priorities. Addressing these challenges is largely in the hands of local and regional governments and their planners and managers.

    This lecture was presented to graduate students in the School of Urban & Regional Planning, University of the Philippines. Its primary intent was to increase awareness and understanding of the nature and scope of amenity-led mountain urbanization, and how the use of scenario planning can provide insights and method for the management of this complex phenomenon.

  IAMC's Gundars Rudzitis current research and lecturing 

     Gundars' current research is focused on modeling changes in wilderness counties in the American West with a particular focus on parcelization of land, uneven development, and increases in  inequality. His partner in this research is Portland State University (PSU) geographer Dr. Rose Keller. On November 23rd, he gave a talk in the Geography Department at PSU "The Consequences of Neoliberal Austerity Policies in Latvia 2008-2015." For discussion of amenity migration in the context of neoliberalism, see: G. Rudzitis, Ch. 7, "Toward a Radical Theory of Place in the American West", and G. Rudzitis, P.E. Graves & L.A.G. Moss, Ch. 3, "Amenities, Public Goods & Community" in Global Amenity Migration.

Posted 16 December 2015

IAMC welcomes Dr. David Matarrita-Cascante as a new member of its Board of Directors    

       David is an Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism Sciences,Texas A&M University. He has a B.Sc. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Costa Rica and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Rural Sociology from the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is interested in rural communities experiencing rapid community change. His work seeks to better understand, from a sociological perspective, local processes that minimize the negative effects of rapid change while enhancing sustainable livelihoods. He is also interested in understanding the role the natural world plays in defining human behavior as well as people's values and actions associated with its management and protection. His work, conducted through quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research methods, sits at the intersection of the above interests and various literatures including community and international development, amenity migration, tourism, protected areas, natural events, and community health. 

Posted 28 August 2015

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