Increasingly, endogenous factors and processes are being emphasized as drivers in regional economic development and growth. This 15 chapter book is unique in that it commences by presenting five disciplinary takes on endogenous development from the perspectives of economics, geography, sociology, planning and organizational management. Several chapters demonstrate how researchers have developed operational models to investigate the roles played by endogenous factors in regional economic development, including the role of entrepreneurial rents. Further chapters provide empirical investigations of endogenous factors in regional development at various levels of spatial scale - from the supraregion to the nation, city and small town - and in a variety of situational settings, including the European Union, Asia and Australia. The book is an invaluable up-to-date resource for researchers and students in regional science, and regional economic development and planning.
The countryside has often been marginalised in discussions of economic and societal development, in favour of the urban. This book aims to stimulate a debate and a re-evaluation of how the concepts of the rural, peripheral and marginal are treated in academia and policy. Approaching this theme from geographic, demographic and economic perspectives, Peter de Souza makes a compelling case for giving the periphery a prominent role as an integral part of a holistic and balanced society. The book carefully deconstructs the concept of the urban, and critiques the idea of urban-rural or centre-periphery comparisons, and presents an alternative approach to spark future discussions. Winner of the Regional Studies Association Best Book Award 2020, The Rural and Peripheral in Regional Development will be of interest to those studying and researching in the areas of rural economics, sustainability and development, as well as those involved in rural policymaking.
This book offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary issues of regional development. It places particular emphasis on its socio-economic and socio-political determinants which accompany the problem of existing and ever-widening differences in the level of regional development in various parts of Europe. In order to diagnose the scale of those differences and to indicate the main forces behind the divergence of development, the authors propose an original systematisation of regional development factors, drawing attention to the need to consider them within the framework of present-day socio-economic megatrends. The proposed approach to the development factors is also used for the author's operationalisation of the concept of territorial capital, which is at the centre of regional place-based policy. The wide spatial aspect of the analysis (national and local) and its extensive temporal scope (2004-2019) yields unique results and creates an important element of added value for this book, which shows the regularities of the process of regional development in Europe at three spatial levels - pan-European, national and intra-regional. Furthermore, it indicates the challenges faced by regionalists who attempt to carry out research on different territorial levels with a diverse number of units (205 EU regions, 16 Polish voivodeships, 2,478 Polish local units) and extended observation periods (2004-2017). The solutions proposed by the authors, who show the potential of overcoming the barriers resulting from limited access to complete and comparable statistical data series, should be inspiring for many researchers. The unique results of direct research carried out on a large sample of respondents and entrepreneurs via diverse field research techniques constitute a valuable source of information on local conditions that impact contemporary development processes in less developed regions. Their value is even greater because they were carried out in a unique laboratory created by the authors for testing the regularity of formation and impact of socio-economic development factors in various locally determined conditions of this process. It consists of purposefully selected test units (LAU2). Located in a less developed region, they represent all growth types and functional test units identified in the course of the research. Consequently, the results obtained may be generalised and applied to other areas showing similar features of territorial capital. The monograph is addressed primarily to a wide group of regionalists connected with economic and social sciences as well as to practitioners involved in the implementation of development policies at various levels.
Bringing together scholars from the fields of planning, economics, sociology, management studies and geography, this book examines cross-cutting issues in tourism and recreation with the aim of developing an extended view of leisure time. Focusing mainly on France with comparison to the experience of Northern and Southern European countries and North America, it combines a diverse range of case studies to address issues such as contrasting rural dynamics, changing public policies, sustainable development imperatives, evolving user behaviour and increasingly diverse recreation activities and stakeholder organization.
Regional development strategies have become the focus of attention in many countries in the 1990s. This textbook provides a conceptual, theoretical and empirical analysis of regional development strategies within a European context It examines the various regional development strategies which are currently being pursued within the regions of Europe - defined in its loosest term to include East and West. The book describes how many different European regions are attempting to reduce regional disparities by engaging themselves in coherent and focused regional development strategies, and there is also private sector approach to regional economic development. There are many case studies from Europe and from other parts of the world, including Japan, thereby providing lessons that different countries and regions can learn form each other.
In this new volume, 28 Scandinavian researchers and others who are active in arts and culture seek to answer the questions: What has been the effect of regional and local investment in arts and culture? And what positive and negative experiences have there been? This book describes and analyzes the extent to which cultural investments at local and regional levels have stimulated development and led to essential processes of change for the community in general. Of special interest is how different places manage to "turn the tide". What do their development processes involve? Which ways and means do they use to go forward in order to change their paths and start anew? These are just a few of the important questions addressed in this book. One of the most important findings is that while you can never transfer the successful renewal of one place to another like a blueprint, certain common patterns in the cultural processes are discernible. The contributors to this book show the breadth of theoretical tools that can be used to increase awareness of the significance of culture for regional development. Throughout the book readers will find a multitude of theoretical concepts, from entrepreneurship theory, organizational institutionalism and cultural economy, to cultural planning and art management. This book will appeal to scholars and practitioners of urban and regional studies, and cultural and creative economics.
Local and regional development is an increasingly global issue. For localities and regions, the challenge of enhancing prosperity, improving wellbeing and increasing living standards has become acute for localities and regions formerly considered discrete parts of the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds. Amid concern over the definitions and sustainability of ‘development’, a spectre has emerged of deepened unevenness and sharpened inequalities in the development prospects for particular social groups and territories. Local and Regional Development engages and addresses the key questions: what are the principles and values that shape definitions and strategies of local and regional development? What are the conceptual and theoretical frameworks capable of understanding and interpreting local and regional development? What are the main policy interventions and instruments? How do localities and regions attempt to effect development in practice? What kinds of local and regional development should we be pursuing? This book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, frameworks of understanding, and instruments and policies. It outlines what a holistic, progressive and sustainable local and regional development might constitute before reflecting on its limits and political renewal. With the growing international importance of local and regional development, this book is an essential student purchase, illustrated throughout with maps, figures and case studies from Asia, Europe, and Central and North America.
Regional economics – an established discipline for several decades – has undergone a period of rapid change in the last ten years resulting in the emergence of several new perspectives. At the same time the methodology of regional economics has also experienced some surprising developments. This fully revised and updated Handbook brings together contributions looking at new pathways in regional economics, written by many well-known international scholars. The aim is to present the most cutting-edge theories explaining regional growth and local development. The authors highlight the recent advances in theories, the normative potentialities of these theories and the cross-fertilization of ideas between regional and mainstream economists. It will be an essential source of reference and information for both scholars and students in the field.
Canadian regional development today involves multiple actors operating within nested scales from local to national and even international levels. Recent approaches to making sense of this complexity have drawn on concepts such as multi-level governance, relational assets, integration, innovation, and learning regions. These new regionalist concepts have become increasingly global in their formation and application, yet there has been little critical analysis of Canadian regional development policies and programs or the theories and concepts upon which many contemporary regional development strategies are implicitly based. This volume offers the results of five years of cutting-edge empirical and theoretical analysis of changes in Canadian regional development and the potential of new approaches for improving the well-being of Canadian communities and regions, with an emphasis on rural regions. It situates the Canadian approach within comparative experiences and debates, offering the opportunity for broader lessons to be learnt. This book will be of interest to policy-makers and practitioners across Canada, and in other jurisdictions where lessons from the Canadian experience may be applicable. At the same time, the volume contributes to and updates regional development theories and concepts that are taught in our universities and colleges, and upon which future research and analysis will build.
In 2008, the weight of developing and emerging economies in the global economy tipped over the 50% mark for the first time. Since then, Perspectives on Global Development has been tracking the shift in global wealth and its impact on developing countries. How much longer can the dividends of ...
