A People’s Panonomics: ‘The Who’

The panonomic model is founded on a deep and comprehensive understanding of place. Like heritage, which so often finds itself subsumed into a tourism agenda, contemporary iterations of place, and the related practice of placemaking, are rolled into an outward facing ‘place marketing’. The result can feel like something which is focussed primarily on people who are not from the place in question, rather than those who are. This dissonance with place is evident in the indistinct, ‘place-blind’ approaches to innovation development, in which ‘bandwagon’ sectors such as digital and biotechnology are claimed as specialisms, the social challenges of place are glossed over, and indigenous and tacit knowledge is routinely ignored. Panonomics proposes instead foundation on a holistic and comprehensive ‘whole spectrum’ expression of place, which embraces all characteristics, aspects and facets of places, and through which the full capacity of the people of a place can contribute toward shared goals. Rejecting GDP as a mono-centric and no longer fit-for-purpose approach to evaluation, panonomics proposes a multi-criteria framework for measuring progress which draws on the unique human experiences of place and which reflects the distinct complexities, interconnectivities and dynamics of particular places, of communities of place, and of people within those communities.