The era of globalization is creating profound changes in global relationships, changes that are manifest at international, regional, national, and sub-national levels, making traditional regional development policy obsolete and irrelevant. Traditional policy needs to be redefined and reconstructed so it can capture and articulate emerging regional trends and issues. The first of four volumes based mainly on Global Forum on Regional Development Policy organized by the United Nations Centre for Regional Development in Nagoya, Japan, this book presents a broad theoretical and trend analysis of globalization and its effects on the theory and practice of regional development. The book lays out the major components that merit consideration if there is to be new regional planning in this millennium. While contributors to the volume do not agree on the effects of globalization on economic growth, there is a consensus in the volume that globalization presents a challenge to conventional development theories. The challenge for regional planners is to examine the impact and implications of recent structural changes on regional development planning and come up with viable and pragmatic regional development strategies. This volume begins to meet that challenge by laying out the major components that merit consideration. The following volumes will present detailed case studies of current regional planning practices, focusing largely on developing countries.

Annotation Illustrates the changing context in which regional planning now occurs, using examples from transitional, industrialized, and developing economies in Asia and the Americas.

Annotation Provides a wealth of concepts and practical experience from Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, suggesting ways to implement development policies for those who are left behind.

Actors and institutions in localities and regions across the world are seeking prosperity and well-being amidst tumultuous and disruptive shifts and transitions generated by: an increasingly globalised, knowledge-intensive capitalism; global financial instability, volatility and crisis; concerns about economic, social and ecological sustainability, climate change and resource shortages; new multi-actor and multi-level systems of government and governance and a re-ordering of the international political economy; state austerity and retrenchment; and, new and reformed approaches to intervention, policy and institutions for local and regional development. Local and Regional Development provides an accessible, critical and integrated examination of local and regional development theory, institutions and policy in this changing context. Amidst its rising importance, the book addresses the fundamental issues of ‘what kind of local and regional development and for whom?’, its purposes, principles and values, frameworks of understanding, approaches and interventions, and integrated approaches to local and regional development throughout the world. The approach provides a theoretically informed, critical analysis of contemporary local and regional development in an international and multi-disciplinary context, grounded in concrete empirical analysis from experiences in the global North and South. It concludes by identifying what might constitute holistic, inclusive, progressive and sustainable local and regional development, and reflecting upon its limits and political renewal.