Regional development is a term often used to describe a process of building successful economies for entire regions. The goal is to bring less-developed areas up to the level of better-off parts of a country or continent, which in turn allows them to compete with other countries in the global economy. This is a major concern for citizens in multiple democratic contexts who want to ensure their governments do not promote economic growth that benefits the wealthier and more developed parts of their countries or continents at the expense of underdeveloped regions.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in noneconomic factors that influence the course of regional development. These include the cultural and material forms of organization of society and business, which are seen as historically produced (or constructed) through people’s practices. This is a common aspect of many different approaches in human geography, including evolutionary economic geography and regional innovation systems.
These perspectives have a significant impact on the study of regional development because they open completely new notions and dimensions of this phenomenon. For example, there is a growing focus on the role of small firms and the importance of their ability to innovate in less-developed regions. This is a major difference to previous top-down policies that were largely focused on larger companies and industries. The new ideas opened by these trends have the potential to improve the research in this field. This is particularly true since there is a growing awareness that the power dynamics of regional development have rarely been adequately addressed.