Local and Regional Development * A. Pike, A. Rodriguez-Pose and J. Tomaney
本书回顾了七八十年来应对地方与区域发展问题的政策干预，指出在新自由主义全球化背景下，区域不平等加剧，并系统回答了关于发展定义、概念框架、干预手段、实践路径及规范目标等五组问题，适合本科生阅读。
Despite some 70 or 80 years of varied policy interventions to tackle local and regional development problems, they remain stubbornly with us, ingrained and embedded if not genetically encoded in the structures of contemporary economy and society. Indeed, as neo-liberal globalisation has increasingly replaced national welfare statism as the dominant framework and the prime steering and ordering mechanism in these economies and societies, the map of regional and local inequality has become more sharply etched. If it was the case that, for a while at least, the scope and extent of spatial inequality could be held within tolerable limits as a result—inter alia—of national state policy interventions, that age seems an increasingly distant one over much of the contemporary capitalist economy. This is therefore an apposite moment for the appearance of a new book dealing with issues of local and regional development, a book, that is, as its authors emphasise, intended to be an undergraduate student text book and so to be judged in that context. It seeks to answer five sets of questions, set out with exemplary clarity: first, what are the principles and values that shape definitions and strategies of local and regional development? Second, what are the conceptual frameworks capable of understanding and interpreting local and regional development? Third, what are the main interventions and instruments of local and regional development? Fourth, how do localities and regions attempt to effect development in practice? And finally, in normative terms, what kinds of local and regional development should we—although it is not entirely clear who ‘we’ are here—be pursuing? These questions shape the structure of the book, which falls into four main Parts, although the authors are keen to emphasise the links between the materials in them as the book develops.