Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 9
Regions in their own right
One part of the geographer's traditional lore, set aside in the quantitative
revolution but reverted to again in the 1990s post-modern concern for
interpretations of places and for research into localities, has always been focused
on the special and separate features of each place or region. It is appropriate to
examine, therefore, to what extent localities or regions need or will pursue
separate development courses, and whether these justify a separate planning
exercise.
With some exceptions in the consideration of specific countries and local
problems, in this topic we have treated regions as parts of a whole, with the idea
of national development being distributed spatially rather than regionally, in the
sense of there being homogeneous spaces rather than individual regions to
concern ourselves with. Geographers have long argued over the issue of the
general or specific character of spaces or regions, and most of the argument has
gone in favour of spaces, because if all areas can be assumed to be the same, in
some basic sense, then they can be dealt with in a more mathematical way, and
the existence of any awkward unique features may be overlooked. But in fact
many features of regions are unique, within one country, and even where the
features are not exactly unique, the way that they combine into a whole, as
argued eloquently by Richard Hartshorne 60 years ago (Hartshorne 1939), is
itself unique for each region. Regional development theory itself was criticized
in the 1980s, for treating of space rather than specific regions (Gore 1984).
From the time of early modern industrialization, there have been reiterated
schemes for separate kinds of development, often calling for self-sufficiency and
separation (Weaver 1984). At times the voices have been muted, but following
the economism of the 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s saw a strong current in the
social sciences which sought to identify another way for regions to achieve their
own development, not forced by the centre but using their own human skills,
physical resources and local initiatives. This often came from the planners
themselves, calling for new organizations of development, such as territorial
development, rural development, Development from Below, and endogenous
development. In the 1990s there is another current, more radical because it is not
attached to any formal planning structure, which is sometimes identified as anti-
development, and sometimes as “another development” (see Ch. 2). A key point
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