Regional Planning and Development Theories

Abstract

A historical look at the evolution of regional planning and regional development theories through four phases: early approaches based on resource development and environmental preservation, a second phase of welfare regionalism aimed at achieving efficient and equitable economic development at a national scale, the emergence after 1980 of a highly competitive entrepreneurial regionalism based on neoliberal ideas, and the contemporary development of a new regionalism as a cultural and political force and as the foundation for a new approach to regional planning and regional development theory. Particular attention is given to the close relations between the theory and practice of regional planning and the work of human geographers. Concluding the discussion of the new regionalism is the claim that the concepts of region and regionalism are today being given more serious attention than ever before in global, national, and urban politics and policy, as well as in the development of social, economic, and political theory.