Regional development seeks to elevate local economies and promote quality of life by leveraging the area’s assets, opportunities, and resources. The term encompasses a wide range of solutions including environmental conservation, job creation and advancement, and the integration of innovative technologies. Increasingly, communities prioritize sustainability as part of their regional development initiatives to balance economic growth with environmental stewardship.
Research in Development Geography explores a broad spectrum of regional development ideas. Its scope encompasses traditional location and agglomeration theories, new findings from global production networks perspectives, and elements of endogenous growth theory. A key tenet of this research is that general structural factors are often ill-equipped to explain regional development and that the region’s specific combination of conditions and relations can result in unique and unexpected growth trajectories.
Regions are fundamentally open systems subject to inflows and outflows of individuals, firms, and capital that shape development. International trade and investments are critical to a region’s overall competitiveness, while knowledge flows through migration allow regions access to diverse skills, new perspectives, and international personal and professional networks. These flows of capital and knowledge have profound implications for a region’s ability to innovate, enter global value chains, compete with larger markets, and adapt to change.