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

Three billion people live in rural areas in developing countries. Conditions for them are worse than for their urban counterparts when measured by almost any development indicator, from extreme poverty, to child mortality and access to electricity and sanitation.

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.

As we enter the 21st century, regional development planning takes center stage in developing countries. Issues likely to shape the form and content of future regional planning include the significance of globalization, the role of decentralization, and the planning of environmentally sustainable regions, as well as new ways of thinking about regional development. Based on a United Nations Global Forum on Regional Development Policy, these four volumes provide an overview of these challenges and the oppurtunities facing regional development in the new century.

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.