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The Future of Rural Manufacturing

image of The Future of Rural Manufacturing

The Future of Rural Manufacturing provides insights on the transformations that have occurred in manufacturing across rural regions in recent decades. It describes opportunities and challenges in this context, highlighting those relating to climate and demographic change and digitalisation, as well as shifting patterns in globalisation. With support from the European Commission, the project combines a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The former examines broad trends in manufacturing performance across OECD rural (TL3) regions between 2000 and 2019, with deeper dives that draw on more granular microdata in 14 OECD countries. Case studies were conducted across 12 regions in Slovenia, Germany, Italy, and France. They comprised interviews with over 300 local, regional, and national actors across government, private sector, universities, research institutes, NGOs and non-profit community organisations. The project also benefited from foresight and futures workshops conducted in January and July 2022 with experts and policymakers across OECD countries.

English

A forward-looking framework

This chapter provides perspectives on the development of rural manufacturing from a future-focused lens. It uses knowledge from a strategic foresight and futures literacy workshops held with policy experts in January and June 2022 that mapped rural developments against five megatrends i) global warming and biodiversity loss ii) population decline iii) digitisation iv) globalisation, and v) declining trust in government. The chapter explores the means in which altering the framing of perceptions can expand the possibilities for policy development. Specifically, it points to possibilities for the development of manufacturing in rural regions from improvements and worsening of each megatrend and provides policy direction for policy experimentation in light of these opportunities.

English

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