Regional development is the growth and innovation of a region’s economy. This is often done by improving infrastructure and services, promoting new businesses, and diversifying the local workforce to ensure future prosperity. It also involves addressing local problems such as poverty, unemployment, and climate change. The goal is to improve the quality of life for all residents of a region. Many governments have departments responsible for regional development, but there are also international organizations that work together to tackle global issues such as trade policies.
Research in regional development is a key area of focus in Development Geography. This field is concerned with identifying regional development indices and their mechanisms, analyzing the bottlenecks and improvement directions of regional development, and understanding the role of leading regional factors in the development process. Regional development indices include economic output, ecological efficiency, industrial structure, and agglomeration trends.
Researchers also look at possible regional development paths, which is a complex and conflictual process. Different views are presented in the literature, including evolutionary economic geography (EEG) and regional innovation systems (RIS). While these approaches treat the development of a region as a scientific process, they overlook the broader socioeconomic contexts that influence the outcome. These perspectives also ignore the complexity of the development process, which is influenced by noneconomic factors such as culture and identity. It is important to consider these factors in order to understand the complexity of regional development. In addition, it is important to recognize that the processes of regional development are dynamic and can change over time.