From Economic to Emotional Geography: Understanding the Importance of the Mezzo-Level in Community Development

Problem is that “hyper localism ”, “devolution”, community “empowerment” etc. mostly defined within neo-liberal economic context: economic geography. To understand how a community relates to place we also need to consider emotional geographies. Emotional geography already exists in policy e.g., Conservative Government’s Levelling Up policy underpinned by “Pride-in-Place” but policy situates “pride-in-place” in neoliberal context, based on a deficit model. Pride in place is prosaically reduced to differentiating metrically “left behind” economies from “steaming ahead” ones. Pride becomes a metric (Bennett Institute, 2021), a conceptually flawed, crude metrication of feelings. This conceptual approach does not understand how pride (and other feelings) about place are often hidden and are not necessarily economic. It largely ignores other “values” associated with pride in environment, heritage, cultural, arts, sports etc. and does nothing to connect these feelings to macro level policy (and top-down competitive funding).