Place-based rural development: building capacities, multi-actor collaborations and making sense of the local ‘place’

This paper studies the modalities and processes of place-based development in rural economies. Through a case study of the wine industry in Nova Scotia (Canada), it examines why place-based development is important for rural industrial revitalization, and how new economic development is achieved through capacity building, multi-actor collaborations, and local sense-making. This case study highlights the ways in which interactions among multiple actors combined with deliberate interventions to attract exogenous knowledge and connect it to the specific local circumstances of a particular place were necessary to ignite and embed a new industry. The results are of broader relevance to the rural economic development literature and policy making, since they emphasize the potential to create new industries on greenfield sites in rural settings which initially lack the endogenous capacities for emergence and development. • Place-based development requires recombination of local and external knowledge. • Revitalizing rural regions involves deliberate efforts for capacity building. • The evolution of the rural industry requires multi-actor collaboration.