BALANCED REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT: ISSUES AND INSIGHTS

Introduction: Disparities in Regional Development Across the advanced capitalist countries, marked disparities continue between the economic performance of regions (see, for example, Figures 1 and 2) and this remains an enduring conundrum for scholars in the fields of economic and territorial development. In the OECD, it is commonplace for a small number of regions to dominate national economic growth, with the rest lagging behind. For example, in 17 OECD countries in 2003, more than one-third of the national population, 38% of GDP and 57% of all patents were concentrated in only 10% of the regions. These ‘successful’ regions contribute disproportionately to national economic growth. For example, between 1998 and 2003, more than half of the employment growth and over 40% of GDP growth in the OECD occurred in this 10% of regions (OECD, 2007). For some countries, the differences are quite extreme. In the UK, for example, GDP per capita ranges from five times the national average in the richest region to just above half the national average in the poorest. There are also significant territorial disparities between regions in Turkey, France, the US, Mexico and Poland, where income per head in the richest region was at least four times that in the poorest. Of course, economic disparities between regions are not a new phenomena — it has long been recognised that regions develop differentially. Regions rise and fall and rates of regional economic growth vary within nation states as well as between them. Indeed, the OECD’s analysis suggests that disparities are often greater between regions within a nation-state than between OECD countries.