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.
