Regional development is the process by which regions seek to create, maintain and strengthen their economic, social and environmental capacity. In doing so they address a range of issues that may impact their competitiveness, including: access to clean energy, jobs, housing and services, infrastructure and technology solutions, the quality of education, and natural resources. In addition to focusing on regional issues, many RDOs also work internationally as members of multilateral organizations that promote trade and cooperation among nations.
In the past, a large number of factors were considered to contribute to regional development, ranging from economic ones (including capital availability and accessibility, productive and overhead investments, entrepreneurship and innovation, physical infrastructures, sectoral structure, and technological infrastructure and progress) to noneconomic ones (such as cultural specificities, local demand and business strategies, and a certain level of’regional identity’). The latter often get into more or less black boxes, since they are not easily discernible or measurable, but this is part of a trend in human geography that has moved away from narrowly economic approaches that tend to ‘box in’ noneconomic issues, excluding them from further exploration and analysis.
In this context, research on regional development focuses on the interrelationships of these different elements to understand how they are linked and how they can be influenced. A guiding principle in this is that it is necessary to take into account the interconnectedness of people, businesses, and the ecosystems they operate within. The resulting research is very useful to the world community as it provides a deeper understanding of the economic-socio-environmental processes that are taking place in regions and their implications.