The PASCAL Observatory on Place Management, Social Capital and Learning Regions invites contributions to an international conference on the theme of ‘Lifelong Learning in the City-Region’. This fifth international conference to be hosted by PASCAL has developed from a number of research and development projects that have been carried out by partners within the Observatory and which focus on the city and the region as a context for lifelong learning. In our work, like the European Commission, we refer to a region, city, urban or rural area, regardless of whether its identity is defined in administrative, cultural, geographical, physical or political terms. As in the call for proposals within the EC’s R3L programme, our concern is simply the region or city’s capacity to encompass and mobilise the key players for the purpose of developing lifelong learning.

"This paper examines the role social capital is playing in the post-Katrina recovery process, in particular, how social capital resources are being deployed to overcome the collective action problem associated with post-disaster recovery. The usual assumption is that large-scale government response offers the only viable path towards successful recovery. Qualitative analysis presented here suggests that the resources found within civil society represent an alternative paradigm for how communities can rebound.

In 2003, partners from across North West Europe formed the Sustainable and Accessible Urban Landscapes (SAUL) Project to explore the role of socially inclusive spaces in the sustainable development of metropolitan regions. The key themes of the project are planning through partnerships leading towards a new planning culture and the transnational value of the 'learning region' approach, leading to stronger integration between regions. The project is part-funded by the European Union’s Interreg IIIB programme for North West Europe (NWE). Interreg encourages closer European co-operation and integration through transnational spatial development initiatives which promote sustainable development. (2003-2008).

"Community participation and community involvement in local governance are the hallmarks of strong communities. These are key interests of the Department for Victorian Communities. As part of that interest, the Department has developed a set of Indicators of Community Strength that measure community participation, community attitudes, and how people feel about opportunities to participate in their local areas. This report provides a theoretical framework for the indicators and shows how the work of the Department for Victorian Communities fits with a broader international literature on community strengthening.

"Published by Australia's National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER), this study examines the nature of the impact of vocational education and training (VET), and its project-based activities and partnerships, on the development of sustainable communities in regional Australia. It finds that VET plays a critical role as the entry point to learning and builds considerable social and other forms of capital in regional communities. The study points to new opportunities to integrate these assets into strategic regional development.

"This publication brings together data from various Australian Bureau of Statistics sources to present information about the way people in Australia relate to family, friends and the wider community. It also provides a background to the new information on people's networks and community participation collected in the 2006 General Social Survey.

This paper is part of Turning Ideas into Action, a themed series created in preparation for the 2006 World Urban Forum.. This paper focuses particularly on the role of universities and colleges in the learning city, examining the different dimensions of sustainability education and best practices from British Columbia, across Canada and internationally. Lessons from this are applied to envisioning a new Centre for the Learning City in Vancouver's new Great Northern Way Campus.

Lifelong learning remains an explosive policy issue. In Britain and elsewhere, governments are actively encouraging citizens to learn and to apply their learning across their lifespan. Yet governments often seem uncertain over the best means of achieving this desirable goal. John Field's book explores the background to this sudden rise of interest among policy-makers, maps existing patterns of participation, evaluates the measures being developed to promote lifelong learning, and assesses the prospects of achieving a viable learning society.

Paper from the PASCAL International Observatory Conference, "Making Knowledge Work: Building Sustainable Partnerships through Place Management, Social Capital and Lifelong Learning" October 2005, University of Stirling, Scotland This paper seeks to examine, and report on some practical research aimed at contributing to the idea of developing a Learning Region. It will first give a brief outline of the setting, the Gippsland region in the Australian state of Victoria. Then, an overview of the conceptual umbrella being utilised to tie together these studies and ideas will be outlined followed by a description of four separate studies each aimed at different elements of regional development, but based on learning as the uniting theme.