An Assessment on Evolution of Regional Development Concept

An Assessment on Evolution of Regional Development Concept

Ulu, Emriye

Associating the terms, knowledge, innovation and learning, with development is not a new process. The innovation as the primary source of competitive advantage in capitalist economies had been postulated firstly in Marx and Schumpeter’s ideas. But in parallel with evolution process of development theories and studies, addressing the concepts on regional level and within the framework of sustainability is a new process. It is seen apparently that interest in “region” concept has a considerable place in development studies from the early 1990s. Now regions are seen as opened identitites and are exposured to the effects of international competition directly. Right at this point, the development efforts of lagging regions by “cut and copy” transfer practice of the development models and policy instruments of advanced regions have lost their meanings. Prior development models which used to focus on physical infrastructure and capital endowment have been replaced with internal models emphasizing the accumulation of intellectual capital and intangible assets. Key source of competitive advantage is defined as the capacities of regions to support learning and innovation processes. To achieve and sustain the competitive development on regional level, such models and instruments are required that, they will consider the unique features and differences of regions, built on the peculiarities of different regions, , not general but customized and bottom up participatory, have ability to constitute exploitable advantages. In accordance with the saying, “think globally, act locally”; the concept of sustainability also shifted from its global understanding to such an understanding which is fed from local and regional applications.When a region starts to develop, region’s sustainability must be examined. An ecological deficit which may emerge, should also affect the neighbour developed regions inevitably. So regional development should not be thought independent from sustainability. At this point, two concepts come to the scene; “regional sustainable development” and “sustainable regional development”. The difference is that, for “regional sustainable development” enviromental objectives and targets are in the forefront, while economic goals have priority in “sustainable regional development”. But in the second one, to maintain the sustainability of regional development, some enviromental precautions and policies are considered too. This study aims to offer critics of recent studies and provide some inferences to possible directions for further research by examining the studies, particularly the ones which reconsider the innovation, knowledge and regional development relation in framework of sustainability. In the study, firstly the conditions will be underlined which led the emergence of “the new regional development approach”, focusing on the local dynamics as driving forces of regional development. And then, in relation to evolving debates about sustainability and regional development, the forefront concepts- like “learning regions”, “innovative milieux”, regional networks- will be held within its intellectual context and clarified how they are situated and conceptualized in empirical studies. In this context, new development models and the internal drivers of regional development should be revealed. And finally the reached findings will be examined in terms of common goals for sustainable development and some inferences for further research will be offered. Keywords: sustainable development, innovation, knowledge, regional development, development models, new regional development approach, sustainability.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05-31

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