Leading local change

Place transformation – the process of reshaping a place’s trajectory and identity through bold change, improving both economic and social outcomes – is not simply about having the right economic and institutional foundations, it is about how people use them. Particularly local leadership, understood as the efforts to mobilise and maintain strategic collaboration of individuals, groups, or organisations to guide and promote positive change in a particular place, can be the catalyst that determines whether a place remains locked into a trajectory of decline or successfully reinvents itself. Yet, despite its acknowledged importance, leadership remains an underexplored dimension in the study of place transformation. Therefore, this paper explores what we know and don’t know about who leads, how they lead, and the structures that enable or constrain effective leadership. It is part of the broader Transforming Places project.