The Learning Community as a Local Development Strategy

Abstract

The phenomenon of connected communities shows that the Internet can be a powerful tool in promoting cohesiveness between community actors. Since a community's capability to initiate development projects depends to a significant degree on the quality of the relational framework in which the actors operate, we maintain that it is possible to go beyond the instrumental character of Internet applications and to give a developmental character to processing for designing and developing a collective portal. A learning community is a completed form of connected community that promotes local actors to develop a creative synergy that can yield ideas, collaboration, and development projects.