Growth Pole Strategy and Regional Development Policy: Asian Experience and Alternative Approaches focuses on theoretical and practical issues in regional policy, including analytical and strategic approaches to regional development and underdevelopment problems. The selection first offers information on Asian case studies in decentralization policy and the growth pole approach, including trends in development planning in Japan and the case study of the Mizushima industrial complex. Topics include the period of post-war reconstruction; plan formulation and implementation of Mizushima industrial complex development; and interregional dispersion of development of national economy. The text also examines the case study of the Ulsan industrial complex in Korea. The book looks at decentralization policy, growth pole approach, and resource frontier development, as well as regional structure and uneven economic development in Southeast Asia; policy responses toward regional development in Southeast Asia; and growth pole approach in Southeast Asia. The text also focuses on growth strategies and human settlement in developing countries and growth poles and regional policy in open dualistic economies. The selection is a vital reference for readers interested in the theoretical and practical approaches in regional development policy.

This book is comprised of articles and papers that have come about after years of academic and applied research endeavors of the practitioners and academicians in the field of urban and regional development planning. Most of these articles have already been presented and deliberated in national and international conferences held in different parts of the world, namely: Indianapolis, Newcastle upon Tyne, Rome, Istanbul, Cairo, Alexandria, Vienna, Stockholm, Jeddah, Riyadh, Jubail, Islamabad, Penang, and Bandung. The concepts and case studies described in this book bring home the fact that the world is undergoing a gyrational transition. Not only are developed and developing countries getting influenced by each other and transforming due to a process of circular causation, but each of the two sets of countries are also undergoing a simultaneous internal transformation due to the differential infusion of technology and indigenous entrepreneurship. As a consequence, highly diversified urban systems are getting integrated interactively, leading to the formation of a global village and achievement of a unity in diversity!