ABSTRACT

With the acceptance of long-term economic planning, regional planning focused increasingly upon the following issues: the creation of an efficient space economy for economic growth; the modernization of depressed areas in line with the demands of national economic restructuring; planning the spatial distribution of population and economic activity; and planning for more strictly political or welfare reasons. The combined effects of the changes at national and international levels had significant effects on regional planning. Two major theories of regional development emerged under the general rubric of the modernization paradigm in the 1950s and 1960s: export-base theory and sector theory. Export-base theory derives its theoretical underpinning from the theory of international trade. Sector theory derives its theoretical underpinnings from the assumption that economic growth occurs in a number of discrete stages. Perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to combine these two strands of theory and to formalize their spatial implications in a closed region found in Friedmann's core – periphery theory.