‘It was my duty to change this place’: motivations of agents of change in Czech old industrial towns

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although old industrial regions (OIRs) face many development obstacles and suffer from a rather negative image, there are many examples of human agency contributing to the transformation of these regions and the creation of a new development path. When implementing change agency, individuals and groups use various resources, such as money, knowledge and social networks. However, the motives initiating these changes are diverse. This paper seeks to identify the motivations that lead agents of change to initiate transformative activities in OIRs. After conducting 49 semi-structured interviews in four case study towns in the Ústí nad Labem Region (Czechia), we found that change agency is derived from a combination of social and local embeddedness, knowledge of local characteristics and extra-regional inspiration. On the basis of these findings, the specific characteristics and shortcomings of OIR can be understood as problems that must be solved or as regionally specific opportunities that can be used in the favour of agents and regions. When enacting change agency, individuals frequently draw on their past life experiences, which makes transformative agency at least partially path dependent.