Economic Restructuring and the Art of Adaptive Resilience

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Date/Time:Tuesday, 04 Feb 2014 from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Location:262 College of Design
Cost:Free
URL:http://www.design.iastate.edu/news/1/27/...ll_lecture
Contact:Jane Rongerude
Phone:515-294-5289
Channel:College of Design
Categories:Lectures
Actions:Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder
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Margaret Cowell, assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech, will discuss selected findings from her forthcoming book, "Dealing with Deindustrialization: Adaptive Resilience in Eight Midwestern Regions" (Routledge).

Despite an increasing interest in resilience studies, there is no single agreed-upon definition of regional resilience, especially in the face of persistent challenges like deindustrialization. Using adaptive resilience as a lens, Cowell applies established theory and methods from this burgeoning body of literature to provide a more thorough understanding of how and why eight United States Rust Belt regions varied in their abilities to respond to deindustrialization.

In this lecture, Cowell will discuss selected findings from her forthcoming book, Dealing with Deindustrialization: Adaptive Resilience in Eight Midwestern Regions (Routledge). In order to gain a diverse and robust understanding of each region's response, her research utilizes current and historical economic and demographic data, archival data from planning and other public documents, and qualitative data collected through extensive interviews with former stakeholders from the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Initial conclusions about the resilience of regions in the face of deindustrialization indicate that there was no one uniform response to deindustrialization across these regions. Regions varied greatly in terms of the choices their leaders made, the paths that they followed, and the speed with which they responded to the deindustrialization challenge.

Cowell will first shed light on these differences and what they mean for resilience studies and then conclude with a discussion of how we might consider these findings in light of the more recent Great Recession.

About the Speaker
Margaret Cowell is an assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech, where she teaches courses on economic development, urban economy and public policy. She was a member of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation-funded research project, "Building Resilient Regions," and also part of a team of researchers assessing the potential of the homeland security economy for community economic development at the St. Elizabeths Hospital site in Southeast Washington, DC.

Cowell's research has been funded by the MacArthur Foundation, National Association of Counties and the United States Economic Development Administration. She obtained her doctorate from Cornell University in 2010.