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This is a composite paper bringing together six personal reflections on being supervised as doctoral students by Ronan Paddison. It contributes insightful and poignant voices of experience to a special issue commemorating the academic contributions – here with wider implications beyond the immediately 'academic' – of Ronan Paddison (1945–2019), the founder and for many years Editor-in-Chief of this journal, Space and Polity. The six sets of reflections have been authored independently of one another, but their cumulative effect is to demonstrate the depth of 'hidden' academic (and related) contribution made by Ronan to nurturing early career academics formally (through the doctoral supervision process) and more informally (in numerous ways and sometimes continuing well beyond the submission and award of a thesis). (Editorial abstract) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural heritage is generally regarded as something of value – but it is valued in different ways by different communities. Here we explore the value of cultural heritage for rural Scottish communities and how it is generated through social and cultural capital. Using the idea of 'gathering', we consider the process of gathering historical archives, narratives and gathering places based on local knowledge. We draw upon a study of communities in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, where a well-established cultural heritage tradition has developed and is continuing to do so with the adoption of various digital technologies. The paper argues that cultural heritage offers a real sense of cultural value for participants and communities for which digitisation offers both threats and opportunities. The paper adds to our understanding of locally generated cultural capital and the meaning of cultural value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the creation of a growth deal for North Wales (The North Wales Growth Deal – NWGD). North Wales is primarily a rural region within the UK, without a core-city or large metropolitan centre. The paper examines how this urban dynamic, fostered around a pushing of the agglomerative growth model out of the city-region, is being transferred largely across rural space and place in terms of how growth is envisioned and how policy is implemented. It contributes to regional studies knowledge by raising the importance of the non-metropolitan city-regional alternatives in the context of the (academic and policy) city-regional debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of localism and spatial delineation of the 'city region' have seen a renaissance as the de facto spatial political units of governance for economic development. One articulation of this has seen the creation of Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) to potentially enhance Wales's poor economic performance and secure democratic forms of social cohesion. City regions have been vaunted as the 'spatial imaginary' for engendering economic development, but there are considerable state spatial restructuring tensions. The paper discusses these by following the development of city-regionalism in Wales and specifically the unfolding of the 'elite-led' CCR City-Deal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview and synthesis of debates pertaining to the development of city-regions and their applicability to the UK space economy. The purpose is to make links to advance both international academic debates and realpolitik policy knowledge concerns. The paper, firstly, traces the multifarious and at times disconnected academic discussions around the concepts of regionalism, city-regionalism and localism in the UK. Secondly, it considers the contemporary academic debates on the city-region, focusing in particular on those applicable to the current UK policy context. Given that city-regions are increasingly seen as the principal (and often unquestioned) consolidating spatial scale for economic and social development, the paper, thirdly, probes on the silent and missing aspects of the prescribed city-region approach, connecting and contributing in turn to concerns with building inclusive-growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The CURIOS (Cultural Repositories and Information Systems) project has been working with community heritage groups to co-produce sustainable solutions for the production of heritage archives in digital form. This process has produced an opportunity for fascinating geographical research into the ways in which community heritage groups produce history from their own perspective. This paper will therefore begin to open up these ongoing processes to consider, through case study examples, the ways in which the production of digital archives alters the geography of community heritage production. A number of community heritage groups have been converting their ‘analogue’ collections into ‘digital’ forms and the paper will argue how this significantly alters the positionality of the archive. This will be shown by detailing the ways in which the processes of collection and preservation, conducted by community volunteers, take place. The paper will then move to consider the ways in which this historical material, representative of place, is presented back to a wider audience. In doing this, it will discuss the rationales and processes involved in these practices and how this relates to broader themes of research within geography. Whether for historical research or for theoretical positioning, geographers have, on a number of levels, engaged with archives. Yet, the digital archive has seen little attention especially in terms of thinking through the ways in which digital mediums alter perceptions of space and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports on topics including the impact of digital communications in the rural life in Great Britain, the poor connectivity in rural areas and digital divide of mobile technology, and the role of broadband access to rural areas.