Social innovation is perceived as a collaborative response from civic society actors to societal challenges and as such is increasingly being recognised as a driver for sustainable development. Social innovation promotes civic values, particularly in marginalised rural areas that are often struggling with biophysical and market limits, as well as shortages of public funding. In order to identify diverging development paths (DDPs) for social innovation, in this article, we use two large sets of empirical material from the SIMRA research project. First, for meta-analyses of social innovation in diverse situations and contexts, we use 211 validated social innovation examples. Second, we rely on 11 in-depth cases to reflect on the contexts and dimensions of social innovation. The elaboration of conceptualisation and deductive analyses result in the creation of a typology of social innovation DDPs, with four DDPs identified and explained. The article provides an improved understanding of how social innovation emerges and develops and how to capture processes and resulting changes in marginalised rural areas in order to turn such areas' diversity into strengths. An important conclusion is that social innovation involves both local and external actors, yet cannot develop without specific internal local activity and local knowledge.

Social innovation (SI) impacts are long-term changes that affect different dimensions of territorial capital (i.e., economy, society, environment, governance) for the territory in which SI occurs. Yet, systematic empirical evidence and theoretically sound assessments of the impacts of SI are scarce. This paper aims to fill the gap and assess the different aspects of SI’s impacts in European and Mediterranean areas that are characterized by marginalization processes. To assess the impacts of SI in marginalized areas, we use the evaluation framework developed within the Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas (SIMRA) Horizon 2020 project and apply it to nine SI initiatives related to the fields of agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and rural development. Our findings show that SI produces cross-sectoral (societal, economic, environmental, and governmental) and multi-level impacts (on individuals, community, and society), which have improved the societal well-being, and contributed to the reduction of certain forms of marginality, mainly inside the territory in which SI occurred.

The article deals with the transformation of mountainous areas into residence places that replace older economic sectors (agriculture, manufacturing and even tourism) in the European mountains from the perspective of regional development and the influence on the regionally anchored assets, known as territorial capital. This new tendency affects the European mountains in two ways and is one element of the constitution of metropolitan regions (metro-regions) that combines metropolitan cores and leisure landscapes as new integral entities. During this process the landscape becomes a new rare commodity and becomes part of the accumulation process of capital. The article states that concepts of landscape aesthetics and amenities cannot explain these new dynamics as they hide spatio-economic processes as well as the role of landscape commodification for the new residents. The new residents are rather multi-locals than migrants. The multi-local character and the selective use of landscape commodities make it difficult to create embeddedness, which is crucial to maintaining and developing territorial capital. It may be assumed that the part-time character of the new residents may rather weaken than strengthen the existing local structures. Therefore it seems necessary to develop specific efforts for each different group of new residents to make from part-time residents (at least part-time) regional actors. Moreover, the concept of regional development based on innovative actors itself has to be questioned as long as consumptive aspects are the prevailing landscape use.
Cet article aborde la transformation de régions de montagne en lieux de résidence remplaçant des secteurs économiques plus anciens (agriculture, industrie manufacturière, tourisme) dans les montagnes européennes. Il se place dans la perspective du développement régional et de son impact sur les ressources régionales fixes, le « capital territorial ». Cette nouvelle tendance affecte les montagnes européennes de deux manières, et participe à la formation de régions métropolitaines qui combinent centres métropolitains et environnements de loisirs fondés sur les attraits du paysage pour constituer de nouvelles entités intégrées. Au cours du processus, le paysage devient un bien de consommation nouveau et rare, qui joue un rôle dans l’accumulation du capital investi. L’article établit que les concepts d’esthétique du paysage et d’agréments ne suffisent pas à expliquer cette nouvelle dynamique, car ils méconnaissent les processus spatio-économiques ainsi que le rôle de la marchandisation du paysage pour les nouveaux résidents. Ces nouveaux résidents ont un profil plus « multilocal » que migrant. La multilocalité et l’usage sélectif des produits du paysage freinent le processus d’intégration, crucial pour entretenir et développer le capital territorial. On peut poser que la présence non permanente des nouveaux résidents risque d’affaiblir et non de renforcer les structures locales existantes. Il semble donc nécessaire de déployer des efforts particuliers auprè...

This chapter presents an overview of the pattern of amenity seeking in the European Alps, where it differs from its common manifestation. It is indicated that amenity seeking in the Alps is mostly comprised of daily, intermittent or seasonal forms without losing physical contact with the larger, mostly outer towns. Because of this, attachment to social life and regional development seems to be more of an enlargement of metropolitan area into the Alps than a contribution to increasing Alpine development potential. A non peri-urbanization-driven amenity migration is still a marginal phenomenon in the Alps, and the reasons for this are outlined.

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