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Evolutionary economic geography has sought to understand the development of regional industrial pathways but tended to neglect both the multiscalarity of economic development and the role of institutional change. The concept of coevolution seeks to bridge this gap but is still too vague for empirical application. Understanding the interactions between path development and institutional change in regional economies and on higher spatial scales requires retheorizing coevolution along the dimensions of institutional–industrial coevolution, path multiplicity and multiscalarity. The article proposes such a retheorized concept of coevolution by integrating concepts of path development, institutions, institutional change, institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work and nestedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'financialization of real estate' (FoRE) refers to the method of connecting financial markets with the geographical location of real estate assets. Therefore, the unevenness of regional development is closely tied to FoRE. In Japan, FoRE's initial focus was Tokyo; however, the interest has recently spread to the periphery. This shift occurred owing to changes in investment actors and their strategies, which also changed the impact of the penetration of FoRE on regional economies. This article will elucidate the factors that constitute the FoRE core–periphery structure, focusing on regional real estate market characteristics and investment actors' attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reflects more than 25 years of experience in regional governance. The argumentation centres on North Rhine-Westphalia and the Ruhr area. The Ruhr area worked as a "laboratory" in experimenting with new modes of regional governance in the 1990s and 2000s. In a nutshell, four streams of regionalization have been implemented: Integrated regional development strategies, the International Building Exhibition IBA Emscher Park, Cluster policy, and Innovation City Bottrop and Rebuilding 21 - Digitalization in the Emscher Region as an example for real laboratories. The paper concludes with a hypothesis about different modes of regional governance, their strengths and weaknesses and asks for possibilities to improve the governance of smart specialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial and accompanying themed issue reflect on the centrality of cities to regional development. Focusing on the role and function of cities in processes of innovation, production, distribution and consumption as both individual sites and networks of sites of production, the papers examine classic questions in economic geography about concentration, diffusion, and flows of labour and capital and the policy regimes that govern that movement. They also contribute empirically and theoretically to opening up broader conversations from a global perspective regarding how cities serve as nodes in global networks both anchoring and ultimately locating global and regional flows of capital and labour. Finally, they identify what is at stake in debates over cities and regional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many localities are able to survive without competitive export industries. The economic base of regional development rests upon various wage and non-wage external incomes. However, suitable regional data are often unavailable, and particularly those related to external consumer spending in urban regions and short-stay tourism. Three geo-localized databases are here combined into a circular-flow template from former consumer spending to the final wage income. By doing so, the paper contributes to identifying ‘transient custom’ as a new inflow driving local development and it provides a first estimate of its magnitude, using the Paris Region as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This aim of this study was to determine the extent of any convergence in house prices across China, using a regional panel data set. The results showed little evidence of convergence across the regions, although there is evidence of a ripple effect starting in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, although only the former two regions are affected by the distance from them to the respective cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades creative and cultural activities have had modest opportunity to develop and grow in Algarve (Portugal) due to the tourism specialization in 'sun and sand'. The regional dynamics based in this specific tourism product created path dependencies and limited opportunities for expansion and consolidation of the cultural and creative sector. Using the model of three Ts -- talent, technology, tolerance -- this short article presents the relative creative potential of Algarve, and opportunities to diversify the tourism offer attracting talented people and breaking the regional economic lock-in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years or so, mainstream economists have become more interested in spatial economics and have introduced largely neoclassical economic concepts and tools to explain phenomena that were previously the preserve of economic geographers. One of these concepts is the aggregate production function, which is also central to much of regional growth theory. However, the estimates obtained cannot be regarded as providing evidence of the underlying technological structure of the spatial economy, including the aggregate elasticity of substitution, the degree of returns to scale, or the rate of technical progress. RÉSUMÉ Depuis une vingtaine d'années, les économistes traditionnels font preuve d'un intérêt supérieur pour l’économie spatiale, et ont introduit des concepts et des outils en grande partie néoclassiques pour expliquer des phénomènes qui étaient, jusqu'alors, réservés aux spécialistes de l’économie géographique. Un de ces concepts est la fonction de production globale, qui est également au cæur même d'une grande partie de la théorie de croissance régionale. Toutefois, on ne peut considérer que les évaluations obtenues démontrent la structure technologique sous-jacente de l’économie spatiale, y compris l’élasticité globale de la substitution, le degré de rendement à l’échelle, ou le taux de progrès technique. EXTRACTO Durante los últimos veinte años, los economistas establecidos han desarrollado mayor interés en la economía espacial y han introducido conceptos y herramientas económicos mayormente neoclásicos para explicar fenómenos que anteriormente pertenecían al campo de los geógrafos económicos. Uno de estos conceptos es la función de producción agregada, que también es una parte central de mucha de la teoría del crecimiento regional. No obstante, no se puede considerar que las estimaciones obtenidas proporcionen evidencia de la estructura tecnológica subyacente de la economía espacial, incluyendo la elasticidad agregada de sustitución, el grado de retornos a escala, o el índice de progreso técnico. 聚集经济、区域经济增长和总量生产函数 摘要： 近二十年来 , 主流经济学家对空间经济学日渐热衷，引入了大量新古典主义的经 济学概念和工具来解释以前经济地理学家束手无策的现象。这些概念之一就是总量生产函数，它对大部分区域经济增长理论也很重要。但是，得到的估计量并不能作为空间经济学内部技术结构的证据，包括替代的总估算、规模报酬比例或者技术进度速率。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses an article on regional policies that support regional economies, territorial knowledge dynamics (TKD), and regional development.

Income derived from nonemployment sources (i.e., investment income and government transfers) is of increasing importance in rural areas. Knowing the extent and characteristics of a community's nonemployment income dependence can guide regional economic development and diversification strategies. This article explores nonemployment income dependence in Canada and compares social and economic characteristics of these communities to communities dependent on natural resources. Our findings suggest that the number of highly nonemployment income-dependent communities in rural Canada is relatively large, ranking second only to the number of highly agriculture-dependent communities. The prevalence of nonemployment income dependence in Canada varies by region, and social and economic characteristics in nonemployment income-dependent places are mixed. Nevertheless, a goal to attract private pension- and investment income-dependent households may be a sound economic diversification strategy for single-resource-dependent communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the economical, geopolitical, and biophysical dimensions in defining the Mekong River basin as a region. It demonstrates that the integral processes in the framing of the Mekong River as a region of international cooperation and economic integration differs from a region of highly connected biophysical processes. Moreover, the approaches within other academic disciplines and geography can be used for other transboundary river-basin regions in Eurasia.

This paper studies why some clusters in a certain region are more dynamic than others, even though they all operate within the same basic innovative regional environment. We first established which variables were to be used to measure the dynamics of a regional cluster. We included both inputs and outputs of the innovative regional environment and also cluster development-related variables. We then applied this to two clusters located in the Valencian Region, Spain. The first cluster is involved in the footwear industry, while the other is involved in the ceramic tile industry. The evolution of the variables which had an influence on their dynamics was studied to determine which variables had similar behaviours and how their evolution was related to the clusters' life cycle and to the evolution of regional income. The results show that regional innovation impacts on clusters’ productivity and that when clusters lose their dynamism, employment, sales and exports are the most affected variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the impact that the growth of the service sector has had on the economic growth of the Spanish regions. Thus, the study tries to define regional groupings in order to identify different modalities of regional growth. As a result of the cluster analysis, we propose the groupings and analyse the beta-convergence in per capita GDP and in terms of the degree of tertiarization in the Spanish regions. Taking these groups as our starting point, a data panel model with fixed effects is applied and the study concludes that mainly capital stock and capital productivity in market services explain to a great extent the growth in per capita GDP in the Spanish regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a declining periphery, tourism is often considered as a vehicle for regional development due to the positive economic impacts of the industry. However, tourism is not automatically the best saviour for all peripheral areas, because it can also cause some negative impacts. Therefore, sustainable planning is needed to balance the benefits and costs of tourism. The aim of this review is to discuss how to develop the tourism industry in order to create positive regional development in the peripheral areas in the Nordic context. The paper presents two approaches to the tourism planning and regional development nexus: the tourism-centred and regional development-centred. However, the structure of the regional economy and the tourism resources of the area set limitations for the application of these basic approaches in practice. In this respect, the proposed spatio-functional model would be an option to increase the positive regional development at the local level in a sustainable way. The model emphasizes a functional collaboration between industries in the core-periphery framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a stylized, supply-side model to estimate the permanent effects of the Community Support Framework (CSF) programmes on a regional economy and use it to estimate the impact of the 1994-1999 and 2000-2006 CSF programmes on the Spanish region of Galicia. The evolution of the economy is simulated under two scenarios, with and without CSF funds, studying the contribution of the European regional policy to the output, employment and different categories of capital. Our results suggest that the contribution of the Structural Funds to the growth of the Galician economy is remarkable and that the impacts of the European programmes extend well beyond the end of the aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lee Y.-S. Balanced development in globalizing regional development? Unpacking the new regional policy of South Korea, Regional Studies. This paper critically examines South Korea's adoption of 'new regionalism' as a basis for its regional policy initiatives. It is argued that this new regional policy poses dualism between endogenism and exogenism, and as such fails to reformulate and re-articulate theoretical and policy views on the globalization of regional development. Instead of dualism, a concept of 'multi-scalar governance' has been developed as an analytical lens through which regional development in the era of globalization can be analysed... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural resources are today the object of considerable attention in regional economics. Ground for new forms of innovation these resources have given rise to numerous works aiming at understanding the emergence and organisation of culture based economic activities and at identifying the role of these activities in regional development and urban planning. The objective of this article is to explore the way in which resources, and in particular cultural resources, are incorporated into production processes on the one hand, and the consequences on the resources of doing so on the other hand. Becoming an economic resource, a cultural “object” (symbol, image, cultural heritage, traditional know-how, etc.) becomes embedded within commercial relationships. The question we address here is what are the causes and consequences of this commodification of culture for the production systems, the customers and for the local communities which put a certain number of their constitutive elements into play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, the south-eastern part of North-Brabant (also known as the Greater Eindhoven region) in the Netherlands has enjoyed a major turn in its economic position and outlook. From a more or less traditional industrial region in decline, it has become a “cradle of innovation” with a key position in the wider “knowledge-based” economy. This paper sheds light on this transformation by referring to the recent literature on territoriality and relationality, and how it has informed post-Marshallian accounts of clustering. In particular, we discuss the context and scope for regional strategy-making in light of selectivities stemming from state and firm activities. The success of the Eindhoven region cannot be understood without seeing how it was structurally privileged by agents and processes largely external to the region. Part of its success, however, can be attributed to strategic action undertaken within the region itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hudson R. (2007) Regions and regional uneven development forever? Some reflective comments upon theory and practice, Regional Studies 41, 1149-1160. In recent years, for a variety of reasons, there has been a resurgence of interest in 'the region' from a variety of both intellectual and practical perspectives, with the somewhat surprising result that regional studies have come to be of central concern and the region has come to occupy a central place in social scientific discourse and political debates. In this, questions of power loom large. This paper examines four, to a degree inter-weaving, sets of key questions, framed by a concern with who has the power of decision, in both intellectual debates about regions and regional policy and practice. First, how is the region to be defined? Secondly, how can the concept of governmentality deepen one's understanding of regions? Thirdly, how are 'the region's interests' to be defined? And finally, how is regional economic development to be defined? Problematizing what is meant by the terms 'region' and 'development' in these ways and posing and exploring questions such as these will allow the study of regions to be taken forward in a progressive manner in the future... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent work in regional development has stressed the role of key economic actors in less favoured regions, particularly in high-technology sectors, in making those regions more attractive to outside investors. Of course, in less favoured regions (LFRs), there are rarely strong high-technology sectors able to reconfigure their local environment and provide the necessary local "buzz" to attract the attention of outside investors. In this paper, this issue is addressed by looking at how universities can play this role and have a broader systemic effect on the regional economic environment, by plugging gaps in the local regional innovation system. In this paper, a case study from Newcastle in the north-east of England is taken to consider recent developments which have begun to rebuild the regional innovation system. Focusing on the commercialization community around the university, it is looked at how this community of geographically proximate but initially organizationally and cognately remote actors built a common understanding to solve the problems involved in exploiting intellectual property in the impoverished regional innovation system (RIS) of the north-east of England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the results of research to explore a range of attempts to develop new regional forms, and considers the degree to which they accord to conceptualisations of the ‘new regionalism’ and accounts of the changing territorial structure of the state. It highlights the array of new regional configurations which now extends across the territory of the European Union, discussing the influence exerted by the growth of interest in European spatial planning over the course of the 1990s and considering the degree to which readings of new regionalist rhetoric have informed both the creation and substance of a number of recently conceived regional entities. The paper concludes by considering the implications posed by the growth of these new regional configurations for attempts to interpret the rescaling of governance and the reterritorialisation of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of journals published between September and December 2005 of Planning Literature Information Service. The urban and regional spatial development and Policy, include the "Urban Soundscapes: Experience and Knowledge," by Manon Raimbault. The local and regional economic development, include "Port Geography of UK International Trade," by Henry G. Overman. The theory and history, include, "Complexity Science, Complex System and Landuse Research," by Thomas W. Crawford.

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper summarizes empirical findings and results from the author's most recent research publication in Chinese: China's Unbalanced Economic Growth. It studies China's economic growth with a special emphasis on its regional disparities. It provides an analysis of China's overall economic landscape as well as an empirical study of China's unbalanced regional development. Based on its quantitative findings and results, the author predicts the emergence of ten Chinese metropolitan economies in the early twenty-first century and recommends a regional development strategy as well as implementation policies for China's future development. The major empirical findings, results and conclusions of this research are outlined in three sections: the first describes China's economic future—the emergence of ten regional metropolitan economies, the second reports the empirical findings of China's national and regional economic disparities and discusses policy implications, and the third investigates China's future economic growth and discusses its growth limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although there is great interest in the new knowledge economy, less favoured regions seem permanently disadvantaged because they lack a critical mass of knowledge capital to initiate accumulation, growth and economic development processes. This is a problem for policy-makers seeking to promote economic growth and territorial cohesion in such regions. Despite this, examples from two such regions, Newcastle, UK and Twente, the Netherlands, suggests that such companies can be very successful. This paper seeks to develop a conceptual model of how university spin-off companies (USOs) can improve their regional economies. The economic benefits that such companies bring are explored, to identify those elements which can potentially upgrade regional economies through knowledge accumulation, which are termed ‘building up territorial knowledge pools’. This paper concludes by developing a conceptual framework for the operation of the territorial knowledge pool; highlighting four different roles played by USOs in improving regional innovation environments and considering the conceptual and policy implications raised by the framework model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how regional development policy in New Zealand has attempted to reshape the organizational and institutional foundations of regional growth and innovation since the government initiated the implementation of growth and innovation-focused policies in 2000. Dealing with the governance and the economic dimension, the paper elaborates on the challenges encountered in different regional environments that range from metropolitan areas to remote rural regions. The paper outlines New Zealand's institutional and economic framework and the set of programmes used to foster regional development and innovation. Principal lessons from New Zealand's experience are the importance of the institutional set-up in regions, the need to tailor initiatives to different regional contexts, and insights into the complex relationship between regional development and regional innovation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of economies nowadays necessitates qualified workers more than ever. Given the great share of services in production and employment, the educational attainment of the people employed in this sector has a special impact on growth. Following this reasoning, the aim of this paper is to analyse the extent to which the differences in the location of the service sector can explain the differences in human capital, and, as a consequence, in development, among the Spanish regions. The results obtained highlight the ‘human capital-intensive’ nature that a great share of service activities have, and the tendency of ‘very high-skills’ services to be concentrated in regions with higher levels of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the planned reviews of the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON). The work of ESPON carries forward the Study Program on European Spatial Planning organized by Nordregio in seeking a better understanding of spatial development trends across Europe. The program differentiates the thematic policy impact and cross-thematic projects.

This paper applies growth equations to examine the impact of region-specific factors on China's growth in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, this study focuses on investigating the role of capital formation, initial conditions, labour productivity, human capital, openness, infrastructure, foreign capital and economic reform in China's regional growth. It is found that those variables account for 70-90% of China's growth in the past decades. The robustness of the findings in this study is tested by estimating alternative models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews perceptions of regional problems in Australia and opposing views of regional policy. It argues that regional conditions vary widely and that much of non-metropolitan Australia is not in decline, casting doubt on the existence of a divide and on arguments that the divide can, and should, be addressed by government. The article also argues that views on policy reflect perceptions of the nature and causes of regional problems, and of the capacity and desirability of government being involved in shaping regional outcomes. Current regional policy approaches, characterized by ‘pragmatic incrementalism’, are outlined and explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 7 years Australia has been undergoing substantial economic reform under a collaborative Federal and State government program known as national competition policy. These reforms have increased the nation's productivity and international competitiveness, and are generally held responsible for Australia's increased growth rate in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over the past decade. However, the reforms have been carried out against a background of increased interregional disparities, to which the reform program may have partly contributed. In this study we examine a number of Australian studies that have used computable general equilibrium modeling to uncover the regional economic consequences of national competition policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of geographic information system (GIS) techniques for rigorous analysis of regional inequality in China remains limited. In this article, the authors utilize recent data and GIS and spatial statistical techniques to analyze changing patterns of regional inequality in China from 1978 to 2000. It also identifies the changing clusters of regional development in China. They illustrate that regional inequality in China is sensitive to development trajectories of the provinces, and that conventional measures of regional inequality mask geographical clustering.

Presents a study that adopted a simple regional economic model to integrate and review traditional and modern urban location theories. Illustration of the power of initial conditions to determine the final result; Appreciation of existing spatial economic patterns in a region; Establishing of development programs to induce regional technology corridors and clusters.

Discusses the regional development and land use planning in rural British Columbia. Overview on the resource based economy of the region; Geographical difficulties; Passage of the 1961 Agricultural Rehabilitation and Development Act; Provincial development priorities.

Aceh is known as not only a rich but also a rebellious region. It experienced one of the longest wars against the Dutch colonial government. The seeds of conflict with the Indonesian government were sown early on during the independence period in the 1940s and 1950s. During the Suharto period (1966-98) Aceh developed from being a poor province to being the fastest growing provincial economy in Indonesia. However, the Acehnese believe that they did not gain much from this economic growth. This fuelled anti-Jakarta feeling among the Acehnese and also increased the popularity of the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) in Aceh. The military solution that the Suharto government imposed in the late 1980s worsened the human rights conditions in Aceh. As both the Habibie and Abudurrahman Wahid governments have failed to end the conflict, many Acehnese have been calling for a referendum to decide the future of the province: whether to remain part of Indonesia or to be an independent state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a model of regional cluster development in which the clusters and foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) are interdependent. Such clusters are characterized by a strong or dominant presence of foreign MNEs as well as a strong contribution by cluster-based subsidiaries to the overall strategy of the MNEs. The case of the Hong Kong financial-services cluster is used to demonstrate that interdependent clusters provide types of investment opportunities, particularly for "marketplace-seeking" and "information-seeking" investments, and benefits to foreign multinationals that go beyond those usually contemplated in the MNE literature, while the locations housing such clusters receive benefits that also go beyond those usually contemplated. The article concludes with implications for economic policy, firm strategy, and further research on the interaction between clusters and MNEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper reports on the administrative innovation for promoting integrated sectoral and spatial planning, based on the designation of Comarcas, by the Galician regional government in Spain. The region has suffered from peripherality and a heavy bias towards low productivity agricultural, fishing and food processing industries. Traditional regional policies had led to urban expansion but rural desertification. The Galician government embarked in 1991 on a radical new approach to development planning based on building new administrative entities based on urban and village networks. The new planning delivery system now exists and is already active in promoting more balanced and integrated planned development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that much of regional analysis has increasingly retreated into a mode of discourse in which concepts lack substantive clarity. Definition and application of fuzzy concepts in regional analysis; Concept of flexible specialization and agglomeration.

Councils of governments (COGS) have been subjected to powerful forces of change in the 1980s, due principally to drastic reductions in federal financial support. To survive, the councils have had to become more entrepreneural, to extend themselves in new directions. They have scanned their local and regional task environments intensively for opportunities to form and/ or join new networks and to provide more services in traditional and in new areas. The new style of council is described in this paper, using a market model. The model emphasizes opportunistic scanning of the regional task environment, and the assessment of issue networks as an iterative process in COG direction setting and implementation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]